Needle painted Peony

This project is fully embroidered with long and short stitch. 

The purpose of this embroidery is to realize a project in needle painting, which is not necessarily obvious. I know that many of you find this technique very difficult and sometimes, fearing not to get a satisfactory result, give up without even trying

By using many pictures, I will try to guide you here step by step and I hope that by following this tutorial you will be convinced of the beauty and versatility of this technique.

The design of this project and the numbering of the petals can be downloaded HERE

The most beautiful needle paintings are made with the most basic embroidery thread, namely stranded cotton.

Taking advantage of the very large color gamut of the DMC collection, the most popular in Europe, here is the list of threads that I think to use to embroider this flower.

DMC stranded cotton 3803, 777, 3831, 3832, 961, 962, 3716, 818.

It may be necessary to add B5200 to add some light and also 4170 because I did not find a plain pink lighter than 818 that is satisfactory. We’ll see.

These are just the colors needed to embroider the petals. We will decide afterward for the yellows of the stamens and the greens for the leaves.

I chose to embroider this peony on a sand colored linen fabric to bring out all the nuances used from the lightest to the darkest.

Petal 1

This petal is embroidered with DMC n° B5200, 3716, 962, 961 et 3831.

Then more stitches with color 962.