Showing posts with label embroidery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label embroidery. Show all posts

Monday, April 7

Ombre Chevron Embroidery

I'm posting this from Chicago, the first leg of my big giant trip. It hasn't really set in yet that this is it, I'm on my trip. I'm catching a bus to St. Louis in just over an hour where I'll be visiting some family I haven't seen in ages. The good news is that my first bus here was nowhere near sketchty, which is what I had feared. Two lessons I've learned so far: for jeans to be truly mutli-purpose they must be a good, unfaded dark wash, and that to secure a good, non-motion-sickness-inducing seat on the bus, you must show up plenty early. 

Anyway, a while back, I posted a chevron embroidery project I stitched up, and I'm still pretty smitten with how it turned out. I bought the pattern on Etsy and switched up the thread colors, and then it sat on a shelf for months because I wanted to "finish" the back and never bothered to look up how. Do you ever do that to your projects? Neglect them because you're waiting to make them "perfect?"

Regardless, that cross-stich project gave me the stitchin' bug, and as with most projects I wanted to come up with my own version. I did some searching and ended up downloading the "StitchSketchLE" app on my iPad and messing around with designs. I wanted something simple, because I'm a simple kind of girl, but you can also use a stylus pen to freehand draw something! You can save and email the pattern file to yourself for printing, and then voila, you've got an original cross-stitch design! 

So I used three shades of green thread, though the difference between the last two does not look terribly obvious in these photos. I also gave up on "finishing" the hoops and just cut the cloth in a sloppy circle and called it good. I'm trying to really embrace imperfections. Tell me I'm not alone in that struggle... Do you have a hard time calling a project "finished?"

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Friday, September 6

Chevron Cross Stitch Emroidery

When I joined Kollabora, my fav new online DIY community, I started seeing all kinds of rad embroidery and cross stitch projects. I wrote a little bit about my history with cross stitch here, but it is probably the first craft skill I remember my mom teaching me when I was little. I remember cross stitching some Looney Toons pattern as my first project, ha! 

I am an impulsive person, and a really impulsive crafter! So one night at probably 10 or 11 o'clock, I decided I wanted to start a cross stitch project... And 15 minutes later I had found, downloaded, and started a pattern! I found this bossy chevron pattern on Etsy and I loooove how it turned out. I switched up the colors of course, much to boyfriend's dismay. ;) 

I used white as one of my colors, underestimating how much it WOULDN'T show on the fabric. Silly me. You can see them in the "work in progress" photo above if you look, but they really weren't visible from afar. So I outlined the white arrows in a single strand of dark purple. I would have used black, but couldn't find my black thread. For everything else, I used a 6" hoop, 14 count aida cloth, and 3 strands of embroidery floss. 

The whole stitching process is so relaxing. It seems like something that could be tedious and repetitive and boring, but it's almost mesmerizing once you get into a groove. I love the texture of each stitch, the pull of the floss through the canvas, and the use of the grid. Now I just need to learn how to finish or "frame up" this piece and get it on the wall! 

Have you done any cross stitch projects? 
What do you think of this modern pattern for an old fashioned craft? 

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