Tag Archives: embroidery

Let’s Go NOVA

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Go Wildcats! I went to Villanova for a time, and made this for a fellow Villanovan in celebration of their win in the NCAA March Madness tournament. I used a canvas from Joann and some acrylic paints to do a paint pour with the Villanova colors. Paint pours are super simple and usually turn out awesome (if you stop while you’re ahead instead of messing with it too much). You just mix paint with some water or flow acrylic (a special product to make paint move easier), and pour it on the canvas. Then you tilt the canvas around to make the paints move and mix together.

After the canvas dried, I traced my pattern onto the back of the canvas so I would know where to stitch. The pattern is mainly backstitches and satin stitch, with 6-strand thread for maximum fluffiness and volume. Canvasses are a bit tricky to stitch in since the holes don’t close up as easily as with fabric, but I was dedicated to the paint pour background so I stuck through it.

Project completed May 4, 2018.

Flowers in Her Hair

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This is from the wonderful Namaste Embroidery’s pattern “Flowers in Her Hair”. It’s mainly fishbone leaves and lots of wagon wheels! It was a joy to do for one of my friends from college, even all the single-strand satin stitch that was very difficult to get parallel. I loved choosing all the different green shades for the leaves, and I figured I’d offset it with some nice bright flower colors.

Project completed April 2, 2018.

Embroidered Wreath

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Let’s start off with an old project – hand embroidery was what started my journey towards quilting, in a roundabout way. 🙂 This is a project I made for my mom for her office. I used Namaste Embroidery’s tutorial for double hoops to make the wreath shape. I had done some simple embroidery before, but this was my first project that I planned out by myself (with PowerPoint!). I wanted to use different kinds of stitches to make petals and create different shapes, and link them with little baby flowers and leaves.

Modified lazy daisy stitch petals with wagon wheel centers and fishbone stitch leaves

I used stitches I had done before but in different ways – a lazy daisy stitch is usually used as a line or small petals with a common center (see off to the right, those light green petals and dark green stem are also lazy daisy stitch). I wanted to make bigger petals that were reminiscent of sunflowers, so I made the lazy daisy into more of a triangle shape. The wagon wheel is always a great flower center, and I stitched it by putting different colored strands together to make a new thread.

Elongated pistil stitch petals with french knot centers and fishbone leaves

I really like the look of pistil stitch, and I varied the number of french knots on the end throughout the petals. French knots have great texture and I liked using them in two different ways on these flowers.

Satin stitch petals with pistil stitch and fishbone leaves

I like these flowers, but it was my first real usage of satin stitch. I think if I did it again, I’d use lazy daisy stitch or even backstitching with a larger thread size to fill in the space. It ended up being tedious, but it turned out nice.

Self-drafted design

Project completed March 2, 2018