say hello to blue moon, our new pattern for july 2022.
i love adding new celestial-inspired designs to my collection, and i think this one will be a perfect fit!
ferns, moon + sun, stars, and flowers; muted earthy floss colors against the dark moody fabric... this design checks a lot of boxes for me. i hope you love it too. 🖤

i started with these pretty fern fronds. with 2 strands of the green, i am using whipped back stitch.

i started by back stitching the entire frond, and toward the top of the frond, you'll notice the back stitches that are already whipped -- see how the whipped back stitches are so much smoother?

this is a great stitch to use for delicate curves. just remember to keep your foundation stitches (the back stitches) short. if the stitches are too long, the curves will look jagged and they will lose definition.

still stitching these fern fronds... it's slow progress, but i know that good things take time.

...aaaand, the ferns are done! i'm so happy with the whipped back stitch... all those curves are so smooth.

i also worked on the blue moon, using chain stitch for the outline, satin for the leaves, and back for the stems [2 strands for all].

you can see that i made a small anchor stitch in the center of the moon and then worked the chain from the center out. i like the symmetry that this gives the piece -- on each half of the moon, the stitches are all going the same direction. (as opposed to chain stitching the entire outline as one long line.)
it's a small detail but it makes me happy.

star stitches [2 strands] for these stars. or are they flowers?

moving along, this orange floss is really brightening up this dark moody design, and i like it a lot!

i'm stitching the sun using padded satin stitch [2 strands]. here you can see that after i outlined the sun, and added a few straight stitches to loosely fill the area, i made several guidelines (the symmetry of the rays makes this so easy). and once the guideline stitches were in place, i just filled in each section of the sun with satin stitch.

the outline helps keep the edges neat, and the straight stitches provide support for the satin stitches.

for the rays, i am using reverse chain [2 strands] and really small stitches. starting each ray with a tiny anchor stitch at the innermost end of the ray, and then chain stitching outwards.

i'm using the pale blue floss [2 strands] and working on this trail of colonial knots (you can sub french knots if you want to, or little tiny seed stitches, or even use seed beads).

lastly, a few small details:

to each of the little peachy flowers, i added a layer of orange -- single strand cross stitches -- and a pale blue colonial knot [2 strands] to the center.
then i used that same light blue to make a straight stitch [2 strands] in the center of each blue leaf on the moon.