As I mentioned in my earlier post, I really struggled with some of my initial stitches because the fabric that came in my embroidery kit was really firm. To add to that, it had really large holes in it, almost like the point was to go through the holes and not the fabric. I found out, pretty quickly honestly, that the fabric that came in the kit was meant specifically for cross stitch. There was a moment where I wondered what the differences were between cross stitch and embroidery, I mean, both are putting a needle through fabric to make a design, right? There are some major differences. My friend Allison described Cross stitch as “the paint by numbers of the needlepoint world,” and that is, essentially, what it is. Allison was also the one who confirmed that my fabric was not meant for embroidery, and let me know that I was using the wrong needle.

I went on a mission to get some actual embroidery fabric, and of course turned to Pinterest to tell me what that was. If you’re curious, the best fabric for embroidery is 100% cotton. I headed into Fabricland, a place that my friend was very intimidated by, but lucky for me my mom always loved Fabricland so it was a pretty comfortable place for me to be. I found a couple of colours of fabric that I liked, neither of which was white (which was probably a mistake) and went to get it cut. I only asked for 0.3 of a meter of each fabric because I know my mom has a closet full of fabric that I can steal when I’m home for Thanksgiving. The 0.6 of a meter of fabric cost me a whopping $13 and absolutely changed my life—and my embroidery skills. I quickly got to work practicing on the new fabric, and once I was confident in my abilities I decided to trace a pattern and get started.

As it was my first real design, I decided to go with something pretty simple. I found a website through Pinterest that offers a variety of different and original patterns for free, all you have to do is subscribe to the newsletter. Seriously there are so many options, I was a little bit in heaven. Here’s the link to the website I got this pattern from.

The Beginning

The Middle

The pattern I chose didn’t have any stitches that I wasn’t comfortable with and didn’t have that much detail to it. I started with the writing in the middle and then worked on the wreath around the outside.

 

I’m a little spacey

I made the mistake of working on the leaves around the flowers before making the actual flowers. As you can see, there ended up being a gap between the flower and the leaf that was next to it. It was an easy enough problem to fix but was definitely a good learning moment for me. The finished product was, if you ask me, quite well done. I’m pretty proud of the progress I’ve made so far, and can’t wait to see how I continue to improve my embroidery skills.

The finished product