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Deja vu about a 10-year-old me
I was taught how to embroider by my grandma back I was 10 years old. It was summertime with no school but the weather is unbearably hot with high humidity. I did not feel like going outside and play with other kids in the heat. Then, I saw my grandma sewing something and I became interested and begged her to let me play with needles and threads. Wise grandma said sewing might be too boring for you, let me teach you how to embroider. And grandma was right, I loved embroidering all summer long. Even when the weather got cooler, I still stayed indoors to embroidered as I listened to my friends playing and chattering through the window. However, when I started middle school at a boarding school, I became busy with study and gradually dropped this hobby. I remembered that I stitched butterflies and deers to my handkerchief and towels. I’ll add the pictures if I can find those relics next time I go to grandma’s house.
Back in August this year, as I was wrapping up thesis writing and job searching, I found myself have free time for leisure without feeling guilty, for the first time in 14 years. The number, 14 years, is the sum of 2 years in middle school (boarding school), 3 years in high school (boarding as well), 4 years in college, and 5 years in grad school. However, I had no idea what to do with myself nor with the newly found free time. As a result, I focused way too much energy on the other creatures living under the same roof (i.e. my cats, not my husband). I worry about their behaviors, appetite, and droppings all the time. I would fret over things like Taco only ate 80% of what he normally eats today, and why is he not overly enthusiastic when I was distributing his food. Usually, he would paw (slap) me if I didn’t set the food down within 1 milliseconds, but why is he just sitting there and politely waiting for his food today?
Or, I would follow Noodles’s every move around the apartment because she only peed once today.
I admit I may have become obsessed with my cats to the point that my husband complains that he thinks I love the cats more than him and he suggested me to get a REAL hobby other than cat watching. This is when hand embroidery re-entered my life, only this time I didn’t have a grandma around to provide me with all things necessary. Therefore, I turned to the next best thing, Amazon, and bought a couple of stitch kits and a lot of embroidery floss.
Embroidery projects and things I learned
Feliz navidad snowman
I purchased this stitching kit from Amazon. Although the product page claimed that the text on the piece is “Merry Christmas”, the actual cloth came with the text pattern of “Happy New Year”. Hmmm…I wanted to give this as a finished piece for my grandma-in-law, who is Hispanic, as a Christmas gift. Therefore, I decided to get a little bit creative and added “FELIZ navidad”, which is Spanish for “Merry Christmas”. I googled for fancy fonts and decided to adopt the hybrid font with “FELIZ” in all caps and “navidad” in semi-cursive with a flair of my cheesy heart design on the “i”. I finished embroidering everything except for the text, and I washed the cloth to remove the “Happy New Year” pattern. After the cloth dried, I wrote “FELIZ navidad” on the cloth with a heat-erasable marking pen and embroidered the text. I then ironed the piece to simultaneously remove my writing and flatten the crumbled surface due to washing.
I liked the chain stitch on the grey part of the hat. The chains make it resembled wool hats. I wished I had also done chain stitches on the red portion to give the hat an overall “wool” look. Speaking of chain stitches, I think this stitch is horrible for the “arm” as the stitches are loose and make the arms disproportionally swollen. In hindsight, I also would like to use 2 threads for the snowflakes instead of 3 threads to make them less chunky.
Flower ring
The second kit I bought from Amazon is a flower ring design. I decided to give this as a gift to my mother-in-law so I personalized this piece with her name in the center. I used her favorite color, purple, to embroider her name.
Two things I would like to be better at are the satin stitches and the woven roses. For the satin-stitched rose, I wasn’t able to provide equal coverage throughout each pedal, because I misjudged how much curve each pedal has. Near the end of embroidering each rose pedal, I ended up with uneven empty length on the opposite sides of the pedal. I’ll make it a goal to consciously evaluate how many long and short stitches I need to fit the curves when doing overall stain stitches. The woven rose did not come out as round as I wanted, which I should practice more as well.
Pillowcases
I also did some small embroidery pieces for pillowcases in order to differentiate which pillow is mine and which pillow is my husband’s. I did a small cluster of flowers for mine. I am pretty satisfied with the result but I am slightly worried that this dimensional embroidery (the woven rose) will be dismembered during laundry. Therefore, I sewed the bottom of the woven roses about 6 times and tied 3 knots per each thread start and end.
I embroidered my husband’s pillowcase with a chubby cat wearing a tophat per his request. I named it Tubbs, which is a chubby cat from the “kitty collector” game neko atsume. I used DMC C310, which has shimmer within the threads, to embroider the tophat. If you look really really closely, you can find a teeny bit of metallic shine that catches your eye (or maybe not). Also, the tophat is a bit too much on the left side, the right ear is not pointy and the bowtie is not symmetrical….It is hard to be a “stabber” while working on pillowcases because I can’t easily access the backside of the hooped cloth. I had to reach into the opening of the pillowcase and blindly access the backside.
DIY embroidery floss organization
I bought 100 different shades of DMC embroidery floss, but I refuse to spend money on getting 100 bobbins nor an organizer. Plus, money aside, most bobbins and organizers are made of plastics, which I would like to cut down in my life. To organized my threads, I upcycled a mooncake box and lined the inside with cut-to-size cardboards from cereal boxes as dividers. I bought 10 plastic bobbins and traced the shape to cardboards from cereal/pizza/cookie containers. I then cut ~95 of these handmade bobbins and used a hole puncher to create the holes at the top of the bobbins. Last but not least, I labeled and wrapped each bobbin with its designated thread. I am very satisfied with the results, especially after sorting the threads by color families. As you may notice, there are less than 100 colors in this box because I couldn’t fit everything, so the black/grey/white threads are stored in an empty box from loose leaf tea. I was initially slightly annoyed by the sliver of space on the right hand, but I think it is pretty brilliant that I can snuggly store my heat-disappearing pen and other small knick-knacks for embroidery (e.g.: thread cutter and needle threader).
Future projects
I want to work on keeping the back of my embroidery clean and neat. I am not showing you any back of my embroidery piece now. They are pretty bad and I am embarrassed to show you.
Embroider on sheer fabric, such as tulle, to create a “floating” aura for the embroidery pieces. To see what I am talking about, you can find gorgeous examples here. Because the fabric is transparent, I can’t hide messy strings and knots in the back, which is why I was inspired to practice keeping the backside clean.
Lastly, an ambitious goal: needle painting. I would like to embroider my cats like the awesome artist, @emillieferris. I will update you on my journey of embroidery beginner to above intermediate levels (and if I ever get to the expert level).
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