I Did A Thing, vol. 3

On an earlier post in this series, someone asked me how I choose the crafts/hobbies that I end up pursuing. A good question. The short answer is that, over the years, I’ve tended to “fall” into hobbies depending on whatever resources I had at hand – watercolour pastels, beads, to name a few. I like making things with my hands, especially if it involves something creative and/or colourful (as opposed to, say, mechanical things). Recently, though, I decided to take up a new hobby on a whim: embroidery.

I all started with something I saw on Instagram; it was a photo of what, at first glance, appeared to be a beautifully beaded dragonfly (hence my initial interest). On closer look, it turned out to be some kind of embroidery using fancy threads, which is very much Craft Level, Super Advanced but it got me thinking. Why haven’t I ever tried embroidery before? I don’t have a good answer to that question, but I do have access to Amazon Prime so the oversight, if you can call it that, was quickly rectified. Isn’t it wonderful to live in an age of instant gratification? Within days, I was ready to embark on my embroidering adventures.

I am very much someone who learns by doing, so I plunged right in without much in the way of preparation. On Amazon, I picked a book which looked like it had some cute but fairly simple designs – this one. Caveat: while the book is good quality, and the designs are indeed lovely, my copy had flaws; there were a number of pages that were duplicated, and a bunch more that were missing. The missing pages included those which, per the table of contents, likely included the instructions on how to make the various stitches indicated in the design. D’oh! I am too lazy to write Amazon, and was able to figure things out thanks to a quick Google, so no real harm done, but be forewarned if you want to order this book. [Edit: I did end up leaving a review which mentioned the issue.]

Anyway, this was the first design I decided to try:

Oh, I also forgot to mention that my Prime order of aria got delayed (don’t get me started), so I decided to use some leftover felt instead. This is the material I use as backing for my beading projects. While ideal for the latter, it did not work as well for embroidering; I’m pretty sure I got some calluses trying to poke the needle through. I rallied to the end, but I also went out and got myself some plain muslin, stat.

Here is my progress:

I managed to do this without turning to Google for help. Satin stitch is, in some ways, the easiest but you also have to pay attention to keep the edges neat and clean.

I had no idea how to do a chain stitch, so I looked it up. I found these instructions to be sufficient:

My efforts aren’t great, but they’re acceptable for a first try. As I was struggling with my thread being on the thick side for chain stitching, I realized that the design called for 2 different kinds of thread for the petals (wool) and the leaves (cotton). My thread was cotton, but the thicker floss kind. A few people on IG suggested that I just split it to get a thinner line when needed; not sure why I didn’t think of that, but I duly noted it for future reference.

And here’s the final product – I could not resist adding an Adina touch:

And here’s a pic of my second project:

I am quite happy with how it turned out, all things considered, though there is obviously room for improvement. It turns out that I love embroidering – like beading, it’s extremely relaxing. Unlike beading, the supplies are relatively inexpensive, which is nice. A huge bag of assorted colours of cotton thread is under $20 on Amazon, and looks like it will last a while. I do need to find a good yet space-efficient way to organize all my threads, especially the loose ones. Bobbins, anyone? I got a second book as well, which has a more naturalistic design approach. This one came in perfect condition and does have a stitch guide at the end — it’s so-so in terms of instructions, but it does include a wider variety of examples.

Next, I want to figure out what to do with my embroidery, because keeping it just lying around seems wasteful. The Simply Stitched book also includes instructions for making (embroidered) fabric totes, pouches, sachets, pillow cases, belts … you name it. I would love to incorporate my embroidery into some useful objects like that, but that will require me to learn to use my sewing machine, which is intimidating as hell. Sigh.

Off to Google “no sew pouch” – wish me luck!