sew and sew

One thing I've been wanting to improve for a while in my craft work is my embroidery skills. I know a few basic stitches and do cross stitch every now and then but I've never done any freehand embroidery. I got a lot of inspiration from pinterest and watched a few videos on you tube but never really got round to giving it a go.

Yesterday my mum bought me this lovely book called stitch with love by Mandy Shaw.

This book has very good instructions for some traditional embroidery stitches and some great projects to try. I was really inspired so I got a scrap of fabric and had a go at the different stitches. This seemed to go OK, I found some stitches easier than others but none of them were as scary as I thought they would be. When I felt more confident I wanted a project to have a bash at. The first project in this book is a blanket, I didn't think my skills were quite up to that so I needed a quick fix, something small and pretty to make, to make me feel proud of my new skills. I headed to pinterest and found a really sweet mobile phone cover it didn't look to hard to make so I gave it a bash.

Here the end result. There isn't much embroidery on it but it was taxing enough for my skill level. Here I've used running stitch, back stitch, stem stitch and french knots. I'm so chuffed I can do french knots now :) I'm pleased with how its come out and really enjoyed the embroidery I wanted to do more.

For my next project I wanted to do more actual embroidery and decided to do a little picture. I wanted to make it for my good friend Boo and so straight away I knew I had to do a bunny and a bear. I searched the Internet for pics I liked and then had a paddy with the printer before I could get the composition I wanted.
 I knew I wanted to do a night scene so I cut up some old dark jeans for the backing fabric then copying the print out drawing the design freehand onto water soluble stabiliser. Then it was time to start stitching.

After a few hours this is what I had, and then with the magic that is water soluble stabiliser after a quick dip it turned out like this.

I love it and I'm really pleased that Boo loves it too. I'm not gonna say it was easy, but it wasn't as hard as I though freehand embroidery was yesterday.