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