things to do with embroidery...

Sometimes when I'm working on an embroidery, people ask me what I'm going to do with it when finished. Sometimes, I don't know...I'm just stitching for the process of it. Later on, I might use these for another project. Sometimes I start out with a finished item in mind. Either way, I thought it might be fun to start a "series" of sorts that is all based on ideas of things to do with embroidery.

This first one is a project that I just finished. A stitched brooch. I've shown things like this before, and you could probably figure it out on your own, but just for fun, here's a few step by step photos:



I started out by stitching the hamster from my Jordnöts embroidery pattern. I used a lightweight muslin, then cut out around the stitching, leaving about 1/4" margin. I placed the cut out hamster onto wool felt, and trimmed that, making it about 1/8" larger than the fabric.



To the back of the felt, I stitched on a pinback. You could do this last, but it's easier to deal with threads at this point.



Then I sewed the embroidered piece onto the felt. I didn't pin it to the felt first, so it puffed up a little in the center. I love this. In fact, I thought about adding a bit of batting to make it puff even more.

You'll notice that it is frayed a little more in the last picture than in the freshly trimmed picture. That happened when sewing it together. Again, I love this. And, unless your brooch is going to rub on things a lot, it should be safe from entirely fraying.

Other ways you could do this:

Stitch directly onto felt for the top layer.

Make your brooch a little larger, sew right sides together and then turn it right side out.

Attached your stitched piece onto a thin piece of wood instead of felt.

Add your ideas in the comments!