Embroidered Floral Wreath

I’ve spent the first three days of my Christmas break frantically stitching to get this floral wreath finished so I can gift it to my Nan!

I started it weeks and weeks ago but with work being such a drain, and the losing the previous weekend to my anxiety hangover, I got horrendously behind until we were in Last Minute Panic Station.

This pattern is another from Love Embroidery magazine (from 2022!) and created by Lucy Freeman, the same artist who designed the floral wall hanging I took 18 months to complete last year. I just love her bold florals!

I did sort of know better than to take this project on with a deadline – given how slow I’ve been with all other embroidery prices this year! – but I was feeling motivated and optimistic following all my little christmas kits I’ve been making recently. And honestly as soon as I saw this piece on the cover of the magazine it’s been hanging out in the back of my mind!

I couldn’t find the light sage shade of linen the instructions called for so right from square one I was off piste and making life more difficult for myself with this much darker green fabric I used!

I also didn’t make this at the full size because I didn’t have a hoop big enough to mount it on – or the time to go bigger – so I made it at about 75% of the size in the magazine instructions.

I love this green colour but it was so dark none of my usual marking tools (pilot friction pen, water erasable pen, or pencil!) would show up. I ended up using a white watercolour pencil which did show up but.. it soon started to wear off as I handled the fabric and it would only be clearly visible in very specific lighting conditions! That was quite the nightmare, definitely slowed me down and led to mistakes.

Since I had a different fabric I also needed to switch up the colours a little bit, plus I wanted to try to work from what I had already in my stash rather than having to go and buy even more!

This was fine but I soon realised I was going to need a lot of the golden green/wheat colour I was using because those are chunky beasts that devoured floss with a doubled threaded (twelve strands!) needle. I had to work out what colour this was because it came from my bag of gifted random unbranded floss.

Somewhat stupidly, I’d assumed that the numbers on those skeins were nothing to do with DMC colour codes so I’d not bothered to record them. Turns out that these unbranded skeins of floss are made by a Chinese company, the same the operates as the brand CXC, and the dupe the colour codes that DMC use. So, for the last five years I should have been noting these down when I wound onto bobbins!

I continue to live and learn. 

Anyway, I did have the label with the code for this colour so I decided to try a match with CXC because it’s 25-50p a skein instead of 80p-£1.50 for DMC! I also ordered a few more colours I was in danger of running out of, and honestly I couldn’t tell the difference to the DMC branded ones so for large projects I might go for CXC in the future.

Actually working on the stitches for this thing wasn’t too bad. They’re pretty simple, though I did fuck up the pink flowers and was too far gone before my brain surfaced and I realised I’d not made the petals fat enough…I think they’re meant to be more like poinsettias, but it was too late to start again so they are whatever they are.

I also struggled with keeping tension in this linen fabric where I had to move the hoop around the design as it was also getting fatter with stitches, and eventually too fat for my hoop. So some stitches ended up too loose or too tight, and I had to “fix” them in the ironing step.

Over all I don’t think this is my best work, I did it in too much of a rush, but completed and from a distance it does look pretty cool.

With the stitches done I had to fix some iron on adhesive to the back. I was familiar with this from the wall hanging, and indeed had the adhesive left from that. I didn’t think the light Heat n’ Bond I had was stiff enough, and I doubted how well it’d prevent the  linen fraying when I cut it, so I also ironed some fusible stabiliser I had in my stash on top of the adhesive layer and it was more suitably rigid after that.

I cut it out with nail scissors as those turned out to be the sharpest and most precise scissors I have. I only got a few areas of fraying and overall I was pleased with how it held up.

I hot glued a hoop to the back to hang it from. I do love a reason to use my glue gun, it has been too long since I had it out the drawer!

The design in the magazine also called for cutting out leaves and gluing them around the edges but I didn’t have any fabric, or even felt, in the right colour so I left that off. I think it looks ok without, especially with the darker fabric helping it to pop.

Then it was out to the garden for a natural light photoshoot!

I am happy with the end results, I just wish I’d had more time on it! I’m a bit sad to now give it away, but I could always make myself one in the future.

I always have a bit of a weird experience when I follow someone else’s design – I really like the look of it, and I couldn’t create something like this, but also I don’t feel as inspired when I’m actually working on it so my motivation wavers much more than it does when I’m doing my own thing. They do teach me new stitches and approaches though, so it’s always worthwhile!

These were the TV shows and audiobooks I had on while I worked on this in the last four days! –

• A lot of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
• Muppets Treasure Island (always rooting for Tim Curry).
• Muppets Christmas Carol (the best one)
• Red one (rubbish)
• Lovehard (now in annual rotation)
• Holidate (meh)
• Dear Santa (Jack Black as satan/Santa, fun despite child actors)
• School of Rock! (How is this over 20 years old?!)
• Whole series of No Good Deed on Netflix (good)
• Quite a bit of Silicon Valley (weird to rewatch given where we are with tech bros now!)
• Ghosts US on iPlayer (aggressively mediocre compared to the original!).
• Ex-mas (Leighton Meister is gorgeous even if this fell flat and she had no chemistry with the guy from Upload)
• Upper Middle-Class Bogen on Netflix (love an Aussie sitcom but only 2 seasons of this are good)
• Audiobook of I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue (almost finished)