For the petals, I outlined each flower in a dark blue and filled them with a medium blue satin stitch. The choice wasn’t purely aesthetic. I picked blue because I was missing home specifically, the bluebonnets I didn’t get to see this year. The flowers in my pattern look more like hydrangeas, but the bluebonnet ache won out.

I worried at first that the blue would make the piece feel melancholy, as if I were stitching my homesickness directly into the cloth. But the opposite happened. The color stands out beautifully against the green vines, bright and lively, more reminiscent of summer blueberries

Working the petals has been my favorite part of the design so far. There’s something deeply satisfying about the way the satin stitch catches the light, the way the blues layer into one another, the way the flowers seem to bloom under my hands. They feel like a small celebration of the joy that  sits quietly beside nostalgia.