Showing posts with label embroidery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label embroidery. Show all posts

Monday, November 20, 2017

Embroidered Swirly Christmas Tree

A Free Embroidery Tutorial


Sometimes creativity needs a kick start or a reboot. That is what embroidery is for me. I love the colors and the motion of sewing in and out of the fabric. It is an art that makes you go slow and think through the creative process. If I am drawing blanks when it comes to crocheting or knitting I always turn to embroidery. It is just a slightly different medium to give my brain a rest and think on different things.

I made a few of these last year during my Christmas break. It was to late in the season to blog about them, so I have been holding on to them until now to share them with you. These trees were a fun way to express my creativity. There was no right or wrong, I just let the curls make their own rules.

Tutorial 

To start I marked my fabric where I wanted to add the buttons. I made a long triangle and then I staggered where I would put the buttons on the tree.


After that I rough sketched where the swirls would go. (It might be better to put the buttons on first then add the sketch of swirls). 

I put the fabric in the hoop and stretched it tight and added the buttons using 3 strands the silver thread. I made 6 long stitches through the button holes and then put 2 stitches over each of the 6 long stitches.

I picked 6 to 7 colors and just went to town with the stem stitch all around the tree. I started at the bottom and worked my way up. I tried to work it so that one color never touched itself, and that the swirls went across the whole tree at some points.


The point is to have fun and to just let the stitches speak for themselves.

As you go along you can go back to the empty spaces and fill them in with other colors.


What colors would you make your trees?



What do you like to do to express your creativity? I'd love to know in the comments. 

 More Embroidery Projects You Will Love:

Finding Inspiration in Nature

Embroidery Bookmark



Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Color Pop Pillow

A Refashion of a Sweater to a Pillow


I found this sweater at Value Village.
It has a cool pattern and it is bright, so bright I had a lot of trouble getting good pictures because it was so glaring.  I knew I wanted to do something fun with it. For Christmas my daughter got a new duvet for her bed, so I thought why not make a pillow to match her new duvet.


I started by adding fusible interfacing to the inside of the sweater where I wanted to  add the design.

Then I drew out my simple design on the interfacing. With the embroidery thread that I chose, I made a back stitch around all my lines.





I flipped it over so the pattern was showing. I made a satin stitch around all of the back stitches following the pattern. This fabric was very hard to work with for the satin stitch even with the interfacing, if I do this again I'm sure I will use a different stitch. For the last "stem" I used the fish tail stitch to give it a different look.


When I was done with the embroidery design, I straightened out the sweater and marked out a 16 1/2 by 16 1/2 inch square. I cut the the square out, then used my sewing machine to sew up 3 of the sides with the design facing in. I stuffed the pillow with fiber fill. To finish it off, I ladder stitched the opening closed. 

My Daughter loves her new pillow. She calls it her reading pillow. She says that it is perfect for leaning back on for reading a good book. I hope this brings you inspiration to think outside the box, when looking at clothes with patterns. Maybe they are not something you would wear, but they might serve another purpose.



More Projects You Will Love


Bohemian Charms Necklace

Simple Adult Crochet Yoke

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Finding Inspiration In Nature

An Embroidery Tutorial

Don't you love all the flowers coming up. The Peonies down the street make me swoon, my favorite tiger lilies bloomed at the church next to us, and maybe the best thing is that the Black Eyed Susan's have popped up in my yard. I just could not resist stitching them up.

I might have to take more pictures as their seeds come in and stitch them up with lots and lots of french knots in the middle.

For now I want to take you through the steps of what I did to make this necklace happen. By the way, it is my daughter's last day of school tomorrow, and this beautiful necklace is going to her teacher, who has called my daughter Sunshine a few times. I thought this would be the perfect gift to remind her of the sunshine in her life.

First I drew out the rough design of what I wanted with a heat sensitive pen


Then I added the center stitches. I went with straight stitches, starting in the middle and working my way outwards. Starting with the light color first.





I worked 1 layer of woven picot petals equally around the center.




After the 8 petals, I went back through and filled in 6 more woven picot petals between the first set of petals.




I made 2 more woven picot petals in green for leaves. Then I chose 3 colors of green and filled in the background with the fishtail stitch and long stitches at random. When I was happy with the back ground I tacked down some of the picot petals in the positions that I wanted then to stay.




I hope you have found some inspiration to get outside and find wonders to stitch and treasure.

 

More Embroidery Projects You Will Love

Morpho Butterfly

Embroidery Bookmark


Friday, May 5, 2017

It Is Well With My Soul: An Embroidery Project


If you follow me on Instagram, then you have already seen this project in formation. I wanting to share it with everyone else and add a little template for it. For the template I drew it out took a picture of it and then edited it and put it into a pdf. I have it originally drawn and in the transverse.

I started by drawing it out on a note book. When I was happy with it I copied it on to the fabric using a heat sensitive pen.


For all the the lettering I used the stem stitch and I filled in with long stitches in the thicker sections.


For the flowers I used stem stitches for the stems. I added lazy daisy stitches in yellow for the yellow blossoms. I added a dark green stem on top and added blue french knots to that stem. I also added long green grass accent. 


I framed it in a frame matted to fit a 5 by 7 pictures. 





Here is where you can find the Template. It should print out to fit in a 5 by 7 frame.


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Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Embroidery Morpho Butterfly Necklace


Last month I had a soft launch on my personal Facebook page for selling some embroidered necklaces that I made. This Butterfly Necklace was by far everyone's favorite. I wanted to show you the progression photos of how this project came about. 

Pictures of the Embroidery Necklace



First I drew a simple outline of what I wanted. I then went through and satin stitched around the outline in black, adding some long stitches at the tips of the wings. 



Then I continued with the black and made some back stitches to define the wings some more.




I then started filling in with short and long stitches. I started with 2 strands of the darkest color. 




Then I put one strand each of the dark and the medium color together. 




This is with it all filled in with the medium color. 




I then did the same as above for the little wing but with lighter colors to show depth. 



One day I hope to get confident enough to sell them to the public; I'm not sure if I am there yet. 

Some other Posts you might like

Embroidery Bookmark 

 Mini Still life 

 

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Saturday, March 11, 2017

Embroidery Bookmark

A Free Embroidery Tutorial


I have another little project to share with you. I also have a crochet project that is getting closer to being ready to go up on the blog. But first the book mark.

This is a great project for when you need a quick gift for some one. It shows off your embroidery skills and shows that you care enough to spend the time to make something by hand.

Book Mark

Finished Size:3in by 7 in.
Item Needed 
  • Fabric 
  • felt or interfacing to put in between the fabric pieces
  • embroidery floss
  • embroidery needle 
  • pinking shears
  • embroidery hoop



 Start by drawing a simple pattern that will fit in a 3 by 7 inch space.

 Take the fabric out of the hoop. Add the interfacing and other piece of fabric stacking it with fabric facing up, interfacing, and fabric facing down. Cut the stack so that it measures 3 by 7 and with the embroidery picture centered.
Add a chain stitch around the outside edges of the book mark.
Tip: Start with your tail in between your layer of fabrics.
Finish off by trimming the book mark with pinking shears.
Now Go, and enjoy a good book.

More Embroidery Tutorials You Will Love


Finding Inspiration in Nature

It Is Well With My Soul

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