Showing posts with label stem stitch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stem stitch. Show all posts

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!