Californica 2023- January the California Peony

Project Californica Begins!

For January I'm working on the Paeonia californica flower also known as the California peony.

This is the first time I'm doing something like this so I'm a little nervous! Can I pull this off? Maybe. Maybe not. But nothing ventured, nothing gained!

So the California peony is described as having flowers at tip of the stem that nod. So cute and agreeable! The petals are dark red or purplish, sometimes almost black, so a lot of variety there! The tips of the petal are lighter. The petals are elliptic in shape and ½–1 inch long, usually longer than the sepals.

One of the things I'm learning is that I don't know the names of flower parts. I thought I did, but I was wrong! So that's another adventure for this year. I'm trying to learn the names of the flower parts and figure out how to take an image of a flower and transform it into an embroidered flower that pleases me. For some reason at this moment that seems to mean that I want to make the flowers look fairly realistic and less symbolic but at the same time, I don't really want to do thread painting which is an interesting challenge I've set up for myself.

I'm attempting to document what colors and what stitches I do for each month, but I recognize I don't really know the names of parts, so while I'm writing down what I think is correct, it might not be. Yikes! Let me know if I'm wrong!

Here's the plan:

Colors: DMC 309, 310, 702, 725, 902, 3347, & 3348

Petals (A): Satin Stitch- 3 strands of 902 for the bulk of the petal and stem stitch 309 along the tips (couching might be really nice too!) 2 strands of 902 and 1 strand of 310 for bottom petal "behind" the stigma in the shadows

Sepals (B): Satin Stitch- 2 strands of 902 and 1 strand of 309 for part of the sepal and 702 for the tips (consider blending the strands for some gradation into the tips)

Stigma (C): Satin- 3 strands of 3348

Anthers (D): French Knots- 3 strands of 725

Stem (E): Satin Stitch- 3 strands of 3348 (Rope stitch might be nice)

Leaves (E): Fly Stitch (stitched close together or a tight fly stitch)- 3 strands of 3347

Name: Backstitch- 2 strands of 310

Box: Split stitch- 2 strands of 310, but maybe you want to save this for after you've completed more months to get a nice even stitch across months...

Stitch guide:

Reference photo:

 

This picture is not mine and can be found here.

I'll post photos of my work after I've done January! Fingers crossed it looks good! I'm kinda concerned that I'll be posting my own Nailed It! but....