Guest Post: Cousin Aimee

You lucky, lucky readers. My super creative cousin Aimee was so kind as to write a guest post for me. She's amazing. For Reals. Check out her Etsy store. And she is the hot babe modeling the wedding veils. She kindly put together this tutorial, which I should have posted weeks ago (Computer malfunctions, I swear!) but there is still time to make some for Christmas presents. Enjoy, and leave her some comment love!

Embroidery Hoop Collage Tutorial

My friend saw this picture on Pintrest and decided to spruce up her apartment with a cute embroidery hoop collage. I fell in love with it and thought, “hey! I can do that!”

I decided that these little collages would make great gifts for my boyfriend’s sisters because
1). I don’t have a lot of money for gifts this year,
2). I want to get them something to show them I care, but this is a gift that is not too much of a gift that they’ll feel bad if they don’t get me anything, and
3). It’s cute and personalized.

Materials:

• Embroidery hoops of different sizes. They range in price from $.59 $1.69. at Joann’s and Hobby Lobby. I used a 12” hoop for the biggest ones and then all the way down to a 4” hoop for the little tiny ones.

• Fabric scraps. I think vintage fabric would be so cute here! You can get vintage fat quarters on etsy, but it’s a bit pricier. I went for vintage prints and used coupons to bring the price down.  You only need a little bit, so this is a great way to use up fabric you already have.

Technically, that is all you really need. But I jazzed mine up a bit, so here are some optional materials:

• Hot glue gun (to secure the raw edges of the fabric)
• Embroidery floss
• Embroidery needle
• Fabric pencil (a regular pencil with a  white eraser will work)
• Ruler
• Acrylic paint and brush

Unfortunately I didn’t take pictures as I went…but this is soooo easy.


Step 1:
If you are doing a black color scheme, I would paint the hoop using acrylic paint. It only took a few minutes. Let the paint dry completely before moving on.

Step 2:
Put the fabric in the embroidery hoop. Secure the hoop and then turn it over and trim the edges of the fabric

Step 3:
Flip the edge of the fabric over so you can see the wood of the inner hoop. With your glue gun, squeeze a thin line of glue along the inner hoop. Fold over the fabric so it is secure. I went around my hoop in two or three inch sections until the whole thing was glued tight.

Step 4:
Using a ruler, mark the center of the fabric with a little X. Then sketch the design you want to embroider with your fabric pencil. If you mess up, use a white eraser! To make this step easier, I found a thin, hard back book to put underneath the fabric.  You could also sketch the design before securing the fabric in the hoop, but stretching might alter the pattern.

Step 5:
Using your coordinating embroidery floss, embroider the pattern you sketched. I did the names of the children in each family. So the big hoop had the parents’ initials and an ampersand, and then each hoop corresponded to each child.
I did the girls’ names in cursive to add a little bit of girlie-ness. But you can do whatever you want.
Don’t forget to play around with different stitches. Youtube is a great place to find tutorials on how to embroider.

I tried chain stitching:

Stem stitching:

And of course, back stitching:

Tip: Use French knots to dot your i’s.

And that’s it! You’re all done. Arrange them and hang those babies up on the wall!

Photo credit:
http://projectnursery.com/projects/grahams-bright-and-colorful-space/