A few months ago I stitched one of the Raggedy Ruff kits I had in my stash, it was called Susie the Cat, it had a black and white cat surrounded by echinacia flowers. I made it into a cushion for my friend…

When I was hand embroidering a white denim jacket with flowers last month I thought it would be nice to embroider white daisies round my blue denim jacket. I’ve worn my white one a few times already and I love it…

Initially I thought of hand-embroidering them but I was concerned by the fact that this jacket, unlike the white one, was made with a stretch denim. I didn’t want to spend hours embroidering them only to find they totally distorted when I wore it. Equally I really didn’t want to use a stabiliser as it would make it difficult to work through that as well as the denim.

I remembered the echinacia and decided that made in white, they would look like daisies! Unfortunately I couldn’t find the pattern but Andrea kindly sent it again. I traced about twelve flowers onto bondaweb and then had a rummage through my fabrics. I’m hoping that the bondaweb and stitching on top will make everything stable enough to withstand a little stretching.

I thought of using white on white patterned quilting cotton at first but it looked a bit too stark. I then had a rummage through my batik scrap box and found some light ones which I’d used for the low volume background of the humming bird quilt I made for my niece. I did a bit of fussy cutting too as some of them had daisy sort of designs, they worked out pretty well, though they were fiddly to cut out! I arranged them along the back and two just coming round each side. It would have been nice to have more on the front but then I would have stitched through the pockets! I used thirteen flowers all together.

I thought of using a denim needle but couldn’t find one in my drawers so I used a top-stitching one instead. First thing to do was to do a basic outline. I chose a fairly dark variegated blue thread. Some of them were somewhat wobbly but I know from previous Raggedy Ruff patterns that wobbles are not noticeably once it’s finished – luckily!!

I went round a second time putting a bit more definition on the petals. I also used a variegated orange to stitch on the centres of the daisies.

Once I was happy with the basic flowers I changed to a cream/off white variegated thread and added some detail on each petal. Once that was stitched I just need to add a few stems so they weren’t just hovering in mid air…

I thought of adding a few grasses but having shared a photo on my Skipton Stitchers whats-app group, the general consensus was that it was finished enough.

I’m really pleased with this one, I love the effect and it didn’t take half the time it took to hand embroider the other one. It did make me wonder what a denim jacket would look like with a large design of Andrea’s on the back, she’s just done one with a baby giraffe and the mothers head looking down, wouldn’t that look amazing on a jacket! If you fancy doing one of her raw edge applique designs, please follow the link to her website, she’s got some beautiful designs.