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Design Your Own Hand Surface EmbroideryYes, of course you can. Designing your own basic hand embroidery is fun, fast and easy. No skill required to begin! I heartily recommend setting aside one sketch book for this. You'll want your favorite designs to last a lifetime and when inspiration strikes you'll know where to go to set them down on paper. When you find time to play, get out your sketch book and a pencil. Doodle all you like. Begin with a small curve. Add a circle on either end. Done. The line is your stem, the circle is your favorite flower. You decide what type of stitch to use with your design as you choose fabric and thread. Stems can be sewn with outline stitch, stem stitch, feather stitch, running stitch, whipped or not, back stitch, etc. Perhaps you have a flower you do very well, a bullion rose, a straight stitched aster, a 5-petal daisy with the lazy daisy stitch, or even a circle full of french knots. Whichever you decide, your sketched design is just a placement guide. If you think of it in that manner, you will be able to change your projects with ease by merely changing the type of flower and stem. When you hit on a design you love, go over your pencil marks with a permanent black marker. Know that the smaller designs can be combined into much larger ones depending on what your particular project needs, so there's no need to go bonkers.
Any time you're ready to use your designs on a piece of fabric, trace off your designs to tracing paper. Cut them out separately and place them and change them by moving them around. Trace several for larger designs. When you need a reverse image, merely turn the tracing paper over! This saves a lot of headaches if you really want your right and left to match. Tape all components to a larger piece of paper and go over your designs, adding or subtracting elements, in permanent marker so you can see it through the fabric! Brilliant!
The scissors are holding down a reversed element that was still a little wet from the marker. It shows through the linen but not very well in the photograph, so I kept it on top, but you'd place everything on a large sheet of paper and put the fabric OVER your designs, then trace. You may find a better way to trace than I, but I use a blue water-washaway marking pen on my fabrics. Any kind of pencil leaves behind ugly dirty marks and I hate that! I'm only using my sketches for design placement anyway, so I don't mark a lot of tiny leaf marks, etc. I'll put them in as I go, wherever I want, and I know I can always rip out what I don't like and begin again. Sure. :) If you need inspiration, please consider embroidery magazines. Creative Needle and Sew Beautiful are my favorites, and of course any embroidery magazine coming out of Australia is worth its weight in gold for inspiration. Inspirations being tops in their field, in my not so humble opinion. You can purchase baby clothes patterns that frequently come with embroidery designs. You've purchased the right to use them so go ahead! LOTS of books are published that give you ideas and designs, look into them. Dover is a publishing company that puts out many, many traceable pattern-filled books, all copyright free. Doll clothes and teddy bears, Crazy quilt books too! They are remarkably suited to surface embroidery design. All fabrics and threads are used and you may find a lot of inspiration there. I certainly have. Here's a glance at my sketchbook: Very tiny elements that get put together in zillions of different ways: The circle is a signature flower, lines are stems, with or without leaves. Slightly larger elements
Corners, hems, scallops, etc: You may find you like to be a bit more detailed once a plan comes together, so take notes. You're allowed to write notes! Use colored pencils if you like. Crayons are too hard to sharpen for me, so pencils are best. Any dark marker will make your finished idea permanent, so feel free to erase errant lines before you get to that stage. If you've ever purchased embroidery kits you will find the instructions to be very helpful. I save all of mine. Especially if I've learned a new technique or stitch, like that Brazilian embroidery pillow I did. I've incorporated a lot of new things through the years largely because of kits or classes, or PBS specials, etc. Use different and better ways of marking to suit yourself. It's a whole new world in which anything goes, because it's all up to you. Ideas have come from these books for me: Schwalm
Embroidery
by Christine Bishop A larger list is on this page: Bookshelf
When you feel ready to move on to filling stitches, consider tracing the main parts of a photo you've taken. I used my husband's photo of a female cardinal and went from there, it's on the index page. You progress as you practice, practice, practice! You don't have to be perfect to begin. Just begin. :)
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