Roses are my absolute favorite thing to hand embroider…I mean, who isn’t obsessed with them? These flowers are a bit more complicated than some of their floral counterparts (i.e daisies). But it’s so fun to get creative and figure out different ways to stitch them!
Each of these methods gives the rose a unique texture and look. From simple to more realistic and 3-dimensional, I’ll be going over how to embroider roses with some of these techniques today!
How To Embroider Roses
Here is a video tutorial I created on how to do the cast on stitch and the bullion knot roses.
Supplies
You will need:
- Embroidery Needle
- Scissors
- Embroidery Hoop
- Embroidery Floss
- Linen or Cotton Fabric
- Water soluble or heat erasable marker or pen to mark the fabric
- For the ribbon rose you will also need a chenille needle and silk ribbon
Bullion Stitch
- Pull your thread through the back of the fabric and pierce the fabric slightly below the initial stitch. Come back out where the initial stitch is with the tip of the needle. Keep the needle positioned in the fabric with about half of the needle sticking out.
- Twist the thread around the tip of the needle. Make the wraps the same length as the space between the initial stitch and the fabric the needle is grabbing.
- Pull your needle and thread through the twists. Then, secure your thread by going down through the fabric at the base of the stitch.
Make two knots for the center of rose and work your way around the outside to resemble little petals. Pair it with a few embroidered leaves, and you’re done!
This is also a great way to embroider smaller roses or even a little rose bud. Make 1-2 knots and add some leaves around them.
Cast On Stitch
- Pull your thread through the back of the fabric and pierce halfway through with your needle below the first stitch. Come back out where the thread is coming out of the fabric.
- Make loops with your working thread and place them over the needle. (The amount of loops you make depends on how much space you left between the needle and thread.)
- Pull your needle and thread through the stitches you made. Then, secure your thread by going down through the base of the stitch.
The cast-on stitch is used in a similar way as bullion knots. Start in the center and then work your way out around the circle. Once you are happy with the fullness of the flower, you’re done! Check out this full tutorial to make cast on roses.
Rose Wheel
This hand embroidery stitch is an amazing choice to use for a full-bodied flower. This stitch has many different names including the woven wheel, spider web rose, woven rose, and wagon wheel roses.
This stitch is great to use for small and large roses. Depending on the size circle you draw, you can make a variety of sizes. The height and density of it can also be changed by using fewer or more strands of floss.
- Mark a circle shape on the fabric.
- Make five straight stitches all sharing a center point, evenly spaced around a circle.
- Come up through the back of your fabric near the center of the “star” you just made
- Start weaving over and under the stitches.
- Continue weaving around the spokes until you have completely covered them.
- Secure the thread by going back down through the fabric and securing under stitches or tying a knot.
These roses work great for surface embroidery, but you can also stitch them on knit fabrics. Or try this stitch out using ribbon for an even more interesting texture!
Ribbon Roses
Did you know that there are stitches unique to only silk ribbon embroidery? These stitches include the rolled rose, ribbon stitch, and a few other variations of stitches.
Ribbon makes is super easy to really define each of the rose petals. They are much more 3-dimensional and really appear to pop off of the fabric.
Check out this beginner ribbon embroidery tutorial to learn how to make beautiful roses!
Fill Stitches
The image above uses a variety of simple embroidery stitches to fill in the shape of a rose. These include the satin stitch, long and short stitch, and split stitch. They are common stitches that are used to embroider individual petals of roses.
Here you can find how to do these types of stitches. For brevity, here are a couple of the defining features of each stitch.
- Satin stitch – a neat and smooth way to fill in shapes such as individual flower petals
- Split stitch – another way to fill in shapes that adds a bit more texture
- Long and Short stitch – a way to fill in shapes to blend colors and add shading
Thread Painting
This technique is definitely a more intricate and challenging way to embroider a rose, but it’s a great way to make a realistic-looking one. Thread painting, aka needle painting, uses the long and short stitch to blend thread colors together and add shadows and highlights.
Each rose petal in the photo is shaded from dark to light, which adds a lot of of dimension to the rose.
If you’re interested in learning how to thread paint, check out Trish Burr’s comprehensive beginner guide to embroider a Tudor rose or this blog post that shows you how to thread paint a flower.
Rose Embroidery Patterns
Now that you’ve learned how to embroider roses, it’s your turn to give it a try! All of these PDF patterns use a variety of the different techniques that we went over today. You can also find embroidery kits of them here.
Want to learn how to embroider other kinds of flowers?
Check out these other posts:
Or if you’d like to learn how to thread paint flowers, check this post out:
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