Embroidered Flowers

Hi :)  I am very excited to be a Guest Designer for Your Next Stamp this month :)

I love their cute and quirky designs, they just make me smile :)

They are celebrating their 6th Birthday and I get to join in the fun! Yay!

I got 2 super cute sets to create with,

Jessica with her Kitty and Phoebe with her Wagon.

I love them both!!!

I made the Jessica with her Kitty card for my daughter's birthday and you can probably tell that she is a "purple-loving girl".  She loves it when I do a bit of stitching on cards too and I thought Jessica would look great walking through a field of flowers :)

It's so nice to do some sewing on a card, it really adds an extra little something in my opinion and I think the receiver can see the love that's gone into the making of it :)

I decided I would try giving Phoebe some flowers too :)
I just did the stems slightly differently and used brighter colours this time.

So I thought I would try to show you how I made the flowers on these cards.  If you're like me, you've tried lots of different crafts before getting totally obsessed with card making :)  Cross-stitch was one of my previous loves and I have LOTS of embroidery cotton sitting around.

I've used 1 strand of green for the stems and 2 strands of a colour to make the flowers.
I've also used an embroidery needle, some white card and a small foam mat.

You could get very precise and particular and measure the stems so they are all even, all the same height, etc, but I haven't bothered about that.  It is all freehand.

So I pierce 2 holes with my needle for the stem, thread it with 1 strand of green cotton and start from the back coming to the front and tape the end to the back of the card. And do a simple straight stitch.  (You could do it without pushing the needle into the card on the foam mat, but I find the card gets bent that way)

Then take the needle out and thread with 2 strands of colour for the flower.  Now you are going to sew a French Knot.  You might already know how to make one, as they are used in some cross-stitch and embroidery work.  They are easy when you know how :) Ha ha

You come from the back of your work again.  Come up through the hole which is the top of the stem you made.  Leave a little thread at back and tape down.

Pull thread through to the front.

Hold the thread tightly in your left hand and wrap the thread over and around the needle.
I did 3 wraps for the flowers in the middle and 2 wraps for the outside flowers.  The more wraps you do, the bigger the flowers are.

Still holding the thread tightly in your left hand, you turn the needle down and into the same hole that it came up from.  Pull slightly on the thread in your left hand to tighten the "wraps" a little.

Slowly push the needle through to the back of the card, while holding your left thumb on the thread and keeping it taut, keep pulling the thread all the way through and you should have a beautiful little French Knot Flower.

I just use double sided tape to adhere all the threads to the back of the card.

As I use a fairly large needle, it leaves quite a largish hole in the card.  The top hole is covered by the French Knot, but I like to cover up the lower hole by using patterned paper as "grass".

For the Jessica and her Kitty card I had the 3 flower stems coming from the same starting hole.  But with the second card, I did all the flowers separately.

I hope you'll give embroidery on your cards a try :)

Kathy
Stamping Still