Monday, May 16, 2011

my first attempt at hand embroidery

I have been planning/crafting things for Charli's 1st birthday for about 5 months, now.  I'm a little obsessed!  My most recent idea for her butterfly garden themed birthday party was to get a pretty white tablecloth for the dessert table.  Unfortunately, I was unable to find an inexpensive, and also pretty, white tablecloth.  I decided I would buy the cheapest white tablecloth (at Walmart for $11.92) and try my hand at embroidery!  Because it's a butterfly garden theme, I already had butterfly templates that I thought I could just trace onto the tablecloth.  I figured I was just going to use what's called a running stitch, but then I thought I'd actually do some hand embroidery research, & I found this very helpful website with excellent video tutorials.  I chose to use the very pretty stem stitch.  I used $0.35 embroidery floss from Michael's.  DMC colors 518, 602 & 704.  I started with the pink butterfly with a small stitch.  It took forever.  I also didn't pull it very tight, so it's not great-looking.  The next one I did was the blue butterfly.  I used a much larger stitch for this one.  It was done much more quickly, but I think it looks sloppy.  For the green butterfly, I compromised my stitch length, & I think it turned out very nicely.  Now I just need to decide if it's worth embroidering butterflies on each corner of my tablecloth, or just keep it the way it is.  Comments are appreciated! 


2 comments:

  1. Nice! What about one butterfly on each of the other corners (1 in each color)? I think it looks beautiful the way it is though.

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  2. If the other corners will be seen, I think Mandy's comment about one more in each corner would look really cute. If only the other front corner will be seen, then maybe three more on that corner. It looks great--you are amazing!!!

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