I just want to point out that I don’t know anything about proper embroidery, there are so many stitches and ways of doing things and eventually I want to learn more but for now this is just a very basic and easy way to create something without much effort.
To start you need to draw your design on tracing paper. If you don’t want to draw then you can just trace any design / photo you like.
Then I placed it on top of some felt, you could use any material but this is nice as easy as the needle goes through without much effort.
I cut some embroidery thread, you will notice it is a bunch of thinner strands, I pulled three off, you can adjust the amount you use depending on the thickness but as it was going to be doubled once it went through the needle the three strands would become six which I felt was right.
Once you’ve threaded the needle find a point on the drawing to come up through, I used the corner of the camera.
Then start to stitch around the outside like this…
Once you have reached the end you need to go back around to fill in all the gaps, when you’ve finished secure the thread with a knot (I ran out if thread so had to use a new piece to go back around otherwise I would have gone around twice before knotting it).
Repeat for all the different sections, you can use as many colours as you wish.
Then when you have finished you just need to rip off the tracing paper. If you hold over the stitches and rip either side then it will just slip out, the smaller the design the trickier it is to get it off but on the design below this one I used the needle to do the fiddly bits.
The back looks like this…
And the front looks like this…
I’m a little bit addicted as there are so many possibilities!
This would be great for older kids to practice their stitching. I also have another much easier version coming up for younger children.
Once you have finished you could do anything with them, stitch onto cushions, stick onto cards, even frame them and hang them up on the wall…
I will be sharing what I’ve done with all of mine over the coming months!
