One of the reasons I prefer hand embroidery over machine embroidery is two-fold.  1) you can not duplicate the look of hand embroidery stitches with a machine, no matter how hard the manufacturers try, and 2) hand embroidery creates dimensional texture, machine embroidery eliminates it.  I am not making a blanket statement that one is better than the other, but rather it is all about the texture and look you are wanting to create with your quilt’s overall visual effect.  They have very different results and this is a consideration in the overall design decision making process. 

So in the last post on this Clematis, I was talking about value and fabric selection.  This is also true for your embroidery thread choices in order to add color depth to the applique.  Notice my thread selections in the above photo and look at the value and color differences between the embroidery threads and the applique elements. 

With embroidery lines  marked with a white chalk pencil here are the leaves before embroidery:

After the addition of  the simple basic stem stitch for stems, leaves, and a whipped stem stitch for the tendrils has been added: (The leaf, stem and tendril embroidery use regular DMC cotton thread)

The magic transformation takes place by the use of  color and value, not the technical difficulty of any mysterious technique.  Afterall, how mind blowing can a stem stitch be? Do you see how using the same old basic embroidery stitch, but applying value makes a HUGE difference in the visual outcome?  Now look again and think about, what if I had used a darker green on the leaf veins? A plain green stem?  Can you visualize the big difference and what the visual result would have been?  Blah.

Next post I will show you how a specialty stitch (easy) adds the fluff and makes it all come together.

Sorry for the quality of the quick pics, but I hope they succeed in relating the idea.

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