project // embroidered hexagon necklace

I love having embroidery around all over the place, but I rarely embroider on clothes. Maybe I'm bad at commitment, but I worry that I'll be too locked in with that. I'd much rather wear embroidery by making jewelry and other accessories. There's much more flexibility with that!

This simple project combines my love of embroidery, small cuteness, and a little bit of English paper piecing. You'll need to know how to baste a hexagon, but that's it. I'll get into more details of working with embroidered hexagons soon, but I just couldn't wait to show off this little necklace!




Today's free Hexagon Tinies pattern is this little jam jar. I'm a little smitten with it! Susi has been sewing things with jam on them, and so this design is thanks to her.

Download the PNG Pattern

For these patterns, I'm putting them up as JPG files so that you can resize them if you want/need to, and so that you could print out more than one at a time (which is tricky with PDFs). Just save the file then open them in an image editing software or even place them in MS Word.



You will need:

Two 1-inch hexies: one plain, one embroidered
One yard of thin ribbon
Needle and thread
Embroidery floss



Make sure that the ribbon isn't twisted, then stitch the two ends together. Using a full yard of ribbon makes this a long necklace that fits easily over your head without needing jewelry hardware. However, you can adjust the length to suit you.



Finger press (or iron!) your hexagons, then remove the papers. Place the stitched ends of the ribbon in the middle of one of the hexagons so that the necklace part is evenly positioned at the top.

I like having the hexagon pointed up, but you can rotate this to have a flat edge up if that works better for your embroidered hexagon.



Hold the two hexagons wrong sides together (again, make sure your embroidery is rotated correctly!), then running stitch around the edges with 2-3 strands of embroidery floss, hiding the knots between the layers. Try to get two stitches through each piece of ribbon, but at a minimum, one stitch through each ribbon.

I found that Wonder Clips are SUPER helpful here. If you haven't gotten any of these little clips yet, look for a sale, use a JoAnn coupon...just get some. (Oh, how I wish I had gotten this set...I could use another 50 of them, right?) Let's get back to work...



Oh wait...that was the last step! Except, you may want to give it a little pressing with an iron. I find that it makes quite a difference in giving it a finished look.





This is a really quick project, with the embroidery on the hexagon taking the longest. And with a small pattern like this, that doesn't take very long at all. Still, you could easily skip the embroidery and use this for fussy cut hexagons or simply to show off your favorite fabric.

With all of the free Hexagon Tinies coming out this month, you could have a whole new collection of embroidered jewelry! Not to mention, pretty much any of the Teeny Tinies would work on a necklace like this. You could even get a jump on Christmas gifts!

Happy stitching!