Embroidery Attempts

At the end of last year, I got back into embroidery. I had done some as a teenager, but life gets busy as you know, and I hadn't done it since. I think part of what inspired me to start again was that I inherited Grandma's embroidery supplies--floss, needles, a hoop. I remembered her letting me trace pages from coloring books onto cloth, so that she could later embroider the tracing and use the square for a quilt. I love having the things that she made, especially my quilt I received when I was 8 years old. Here are some small samples of what I worked on last year; I especially enjoyed experimenting with new types of stitches:






The above 3 or 4 are a banner I made and decided to hang at work. They were having some sort of Halloween cubicle decorating contest or something. I went into Word and chose a font, then printed out the letters I would need for the sign. Then I traced the letters, and used a chain stitch to make them appear more bold. Some letters were better than others (obviously), and it took me a few letters to get the hang of the stitch.




These are the first practice stitches I had done in years. I used a floss that would gradually change colors (hit and miss), but it was fun to try doing different things with it. The lady bug was fun because it has a ton of French knots (knots for circles/spots). The initials are something I was playing around with to see what I could do regarding monogramming. Ryan keeps joking around about having napkins and stuff with our initials on them.

We will see what new projects come my way next. I have been trying to bridge the gap between "old-fashioned" that has no use (lacy flowers and stuff), and modern with a classic style.