My latest completed embroidery project was this pretty floral design by Lucy Freeman, which I copied out of Love Embroidery Magazine. This is the third template by Lucy that I’ve made, and the second time I’ve been partway through before realising I’ve been drawn to her work again!
The first one was my floral wall hanging, and the second was the floral wreath I made last year.
Thankfully, this project was much smaller-scale! I picked it because I wanted to learn how to approach embroidering a peony. I think eventually I’d like to make an embroidery of my wedding bouquet, and that had some gorgeous pink peonies in it, so I need to work out how to draw them and stitch them.
I have also attempted to press the flowers in my bouquet, but that’s only been semi-successful. Possibly more on that at a later date. I think I can salvage something, enough to make a collage, but it won’t resemble the real thing!
Anyway, on to this peony piece.
I have a lot of cotton fabric in different colours to use, so I decided this would look really pretty on lilac. I am a little obsessed with orange on this colour!
I enjoyed stitching the peony. Per Lucy’s instructions in the magazine, the key is getting the stitches in slightly different directions for each petal. As always, I got better at doing this the more petals I completed. I can tell the ones I started with versus the ones I did last!
I’ve started going to a knitting group after work, and this was the first project I took with me. I’ve been three times now and it’s alright, the ladies are very nice, but the pub we meet in is very noisy. They are all knitters and crocheters, though, and hearing them talk about their projects and exchange advice has really made me want to find some IRL embroidery chums. I keep trying to get a group going, but it’s been very difficult to find traction and get people to actually commit to a meeting.
When I’d finished stitching, I decided it’d look really nice if I made the hoop match the fabric. At first I thought about trying to paint it the same/as close as I could get colour, but then decided to try covering it with the same fabric.
It came out pretty well… Next time I do it though, I’ll actually take the time to measure and cut the tight size piece instead of entirely winging it! You can see where I did not have enough fabric to cover the metal bits and then had to glue extra on after!
I also finally finished this sunflower been working on for 2-3 years! I wasn’t going the way I wanted, and so I kept losing faith in it and stashing it back in my project bag. It’s finally done, though, and it’s fine.
It’s just a bit off. The petals aren’t quite right. The centre isn’t quite right. I’m trying to think of it as an imperfect, slightly mutant sunflower. If I stick it up high on the wall, I’ll not notice.
I am now working on a piece with lots of lettering. I saw a poster with “your anxiety is a lying little bitch” in the background of a YouTube video, and I knew I had to stitch it for myself, and it seemed appropriate as a project to work on while I make myself try to join a new social group. I decided to make it extra hard by using navy fabric and metallic thread… not ideal when I’m working in a dark pub if I take it to “knitting” group… but I am excited for how it’ll turn out.
It might also get distracted from that and work on some Christmas ornaments… We’ll see!
These are lovely!