Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Embroidery Picture Tutorial: Mini Valentine Heart

Today I have a picture tutorial for this cute little heart. Just in time for Valentine's Day. 

Disclaimer: I live in a basement apartment. And it's the middle of winter. My pictures are dark there is just no way around it. I am by no means a professional photographer, but I feel you will still get the idea from the pictures. Also maybe I am just to hard on myself. 

Materials

Disclaimer 2: I'm all about finding the best deal, reusing, recycling, thrifting. So A Lot of times I have no idea what I'm working with. This time time I do know a few things because I got them as Christmas gifts. 
  • an embroidery hoop ( I used a 6in hoop, but you could go smaller)
  •  needle
  • a woven fabric
  • Embroidery floss. For this project I used J&P Coats. A dark and light color. 3 gradient warm colors. 2 cool colors to off set the warm (so that's 7 colors all together).
  • sharp scissors
Step 1: First I started by drawing a 1 1/2in circle. Inside my circle I rough sketched a heart. I made sure both of my points fell on the same vertical line and that my 2 humps were on the same horizontal line. I then back stitched in the dark color and also backed stitched with the light color around the dark. 

I then took the darkest color of the warm trio and added 5 straight stitches going into the point of the heart.
  
Step 2. With the middle shade of the warm trio, I added 6 long lazy daisy stitches between the straight stitches.

Step 3. With the lightest of the warm trio I added a straight stitch inside of each lazy daisy. Then I added a pistil stitch in between each lazy daisy for a total of 7.

 Step 4. I went back to the darkest warm color and added a pistil stitch between each pistil stitch going in the opposite direction.
 Step 5. With the middle color I added lazy daisies between the pistils for 4 on each side.



 Step 6. With the lightest color fill in with straight stitches.
 Step 7. With one of the cool colors add a row of french knots evenly spaced around the heart.
 Step 8. Finish with the second cool color making pistil stitches around the heart between the french knots.
I made my heart into a button. There are lots of other ideas that will work for this to. I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial.

More Embroidery Tutorials You Will Love

 


Monday, January 23, 2017

The Long Break


I decided to take a break from the blog when I had a baby. That break lasted longer than I anticipated. My Baby is going to be 2 in a few months. I have no idea where the time has gone.

I never realized how important sleep was to my creativity. My baby has not been a good sleeper. My first child was an excellent sleeper. She was sleeping through the night by 6 months. This one.. we are just now getting 7 hours of sleep out of her.

With no sleep, I have felt like a vegetable most days. I can't say that my creativity has been completely lacking. There are still ideas in there, but actually getting those ideas on paper or figuring them out seems like an impossible feet.

This time has not been wasted. I have been growing myself in other areas of fiber art like knitting and embroidery. I hope to expand this blog to include those new possibilities.

Here are some sneak peeks of what I have been working on.
 This is one of my own patterns. You can find it here. Even after 3 years I still get asked to make them for gifts and to sell.
 This is the nurmilintu shawl pattern that you can find on Ravelry. It was really easy to accomplish. 

  This is one of my recent embroidery pieces. I have been making lots of little pieces that I can finish within a nap time.