july has been a really busy month for me, but i've been making some progress on my summertime garden hoop!

here's what i have done so far (using 2 strands for everything):

• the little purple flowers are made with simple straight stitches -- 2 straight stitches for each petal.
• for the sunflower, i back stitched all of the lines, and then went back around and whipped the back stitches for the outlines of each petal.
• the small dark green stems are lazy daisy and back stitch
• the sunflower stem and leaves are also back stitched! for the center of the leaves, i made rows of offset back stitches (also called brick stitch)
• the tulip leaves are in progress, and i'm using satin stitch for those.

i still have more lines to stitch, and i am also planning to go back and add some smaller detail stitches. this design is really straightforward, and it can be stitched as-is, or you can liven it up by adding more stitches here and there... think knots, small stitches in a contrasting color atop another stitch, freehand some flowers (those straight stitch flowers are easy to improvise!) or whatever else you can squeeze in.

i encourage you to think outside the lines! get creative, because that's what this is really all about

i'll continue to share my progress on instagram, and remember that there are some great photos and stitching ideas from other club members in the #cozybluestitchclub feed too! check them out and add your own.