Month: April 2023

So far, I think I am a little behind on my project, I do not have as much project on the embroidery hoop project as I wish I had.

Completed Tasks:

• I read some embroidery books
• Contacted an expert
• learned basic stitches
• started a project

Uncompleted tasks

• finish a project
• learn slightly more complicated stitches
• Maybe try doing a slightly easier project with felt

For the presentation I plan on bringing the embroidery hoops or showing them as pictures. Since we have a long weekend in May, that should be plenty of time to work on the projects. The weekends and after school should be enough time to work on projects, unless I procrastinate.

During this long weekend, I worked more on the floral burst pattern, but I still don’t have too much progress on it. I worked more on the plant stems and leaves.

As you can see, the plant stems look very unnatural because of the crookedness. If I have time I might redo the plant stems.

Another problem I had was with the French knots. I saw while reading an embroidery book that you should individually do French knots, but I did all of the knots without cutting the thread. Later, when just one of the knots fell out, all three knots had to be cut out.

Also, I learned that you shouldn’t make satin stitches too long, or else the stitches will look unnatural and makes it hard to fill the shape. I read in Mary Thomas’s Embroidery Dictionary that when making large shapes you should either make the stitches shorter by going half the distance, or by doing a long-short stitch.

Above is a photo of the original design. The circles that are divided in five are where the woven wheel flowers go. I traced the design onto the fabric by using a light box.

Right now I am planning on finishing the stems and leaves then I’ll work on the flowers. Lastly l will do the French knots, which I think are the most challenging part of this embroidery project.

Since I learned most of the basic stitches used to create simple projects, I decided to actually start doing an embroidery project. I chose a pattern from the embroidery kit I already had at home. I started by tracing the design onto the embroidery fabric using a light box and a pencil, but I found that I couldn’t really draw on fabric that well using pencil. I decided to use a black Pilot Pen, which was easier to draw with, but it still didn’t draw as easily. The instruction book said to use a washable fabric marker, but I couldn’t find any in my house.

I started with back stitching the stems and satin stitching the leaves. I also wanted to do the flowers, but my thread kept getting tangled so I decided to do it later.

I started working on this project on Thursday, and continued it on Friday, but I still don’t have much progress. I tried not to get too distracted while embroidering, but doing it with nothing in the background was kind of tedious.

The instruction book said to add the French knots at the end as finishing details, but I decided to add them at the beginning for some reason. That was a horrible idea, because they kept falling out and I kept messing up. Whenever I worked on the knots I found that many of them fell out or got pulled through the fabric.

I definitely am still struggling at doing French knots, but I think that if I practice enough I’ll improve. This week I plan on doing more of the back stitch stems and work on the flowers and leaves.