Little Tree Drawing Mini Embroidery

My nine year old niece drew me a cute little tree and I wanted to embroider it.

I thought it would be fun to take her drawing, stitch it, frame it, and give it to her as a little gift.

Here is a photo of the original drawing.

Here it is transferred onto the fabric ready to stitch.

I used all stem stitch, since it's my favorite.

A long time ago I bought these little canvases with frames at a craft store which I thought would be perfect to finish the tree.

I stapled the fabric to the canvas (which I have written about previously here – it is my favorite way to finish my embroidery now).

Staple around all edges - pulling the fabric tight around the canvas.

Staple the corners - similiar to wrapping a present and staple.

All stapled!

Here it is all finished inside the frame and ready to send in the mail!

Merchant & Mills Scissors and Floss Love

I love embroidery scissors. I buy myself a new pair of scissors every so often as a treat for myself.

I've shared about my scissors in a previous post here.

So when I found these cute little Baby Bow Scissors, I just had to get them.

Maybe I live under a rock, but have you ever heard of Merchant & Mills before? I had not. So I took a look at their website. I love all they have to offer!

Look at the cute little "M" stamped on the scissors.

Just to give you an idea of how small these are - here is a photo next to "normal" sized embroidery scissors.

Now that I have discovered Merchant & Mills, I keep looking at their shop and want to buy everything! 

I mean, how awesome is their pin selection!?!

In other new, it's been a long time since I did a "Floss Love" post so thought these photos would be great for one! 

I am taking the Furry Nice Embroidery class that Nicole from Follow the White Bunny is teaching and our assignment was to gather our floss for the project. 

Here are my floss colors I have chosen. I will definitely post more about the embroidery projects once we start stitching. I am really excited about this class!

Please let me know if you are familiar with Merchant & Mills! Have you bought anything from their shop?

Something Old - Redwork Ladies

Another one of my older embroidery projects in my Flickr photos.  

I can't remember where I found the patterns on the internet but I loved their pinup look. 

I framed them in little frames I found at a garage sale.

work in progress shot

Floss Love Vol. 4: Bobbins!

Lots -o- bobbins.

My MIL found these containers of bobbins at, I think, a garage sale and gave them to me a long time ago. 

Whoever these belonged to took the time organize them so nicely - even wrote the color numbers on each bobbin.

WIP Wednesday

I've made some progress on my little sheep stitching. Any work on it has been during my lunch breaks.

I am much more excited about my other wip for the Phat Quarter group swap on Flickr. It's my first swap and the theme is "blinded by science". My deadline is April 30th so I have get going on it. I will post photos of it when I am finished.

My Tools

One of my favorite blogs, &Stitches is offering a competition for their readers - show our embroidery tool kits!

**Update - the competition is closed, but you can still see all who shared their favorite tools!**

My favorite embroidery hoops are the Q Snap frames. I think they are easier to work with. If I do use a normal round embroidery hoop I always use a plastic one, even though I have a ton of wooden hoops, I choose plastic every time. (Update February 2016: It's funny how things change. Since I posted this back in 2013, I switched to using wooden hoops and now never use the plastic hoops!!)

DMC embroidery scissors. I use this pair the most.

For transferring patterns, I use the Sulky Iron-on transfer pen with tracing paper. For smaller projects I will use Quilter’s Choice transfer paper. I like how it doesn’t smear and is easy to transfer onto the fabric.

I have been buying Dritz embroidery needles and I use that little purple square pincushion to hold my needles.

The pincushion is nothing fancy – I made it out of some felt and put some Velcro on the bottom so it will stay  in place on the couch arm.

Finished Purple Girl

Finally finished this purple girl.

WIP Wednesday

Ok, so this is technically not a "work in progress" but it soon will be!

I am excited for this one. I love sheep and when I saw this pattern from Floss Box on Etsy, I just had to buy it! I love it.

I am not following the exact floss colors the pattern suggests, but I know it will be cute no matter what.

Scissors

I've been eyeing a pair of embroidery scissors on the Sublime Stitching site for a long time - the black scissors.

So I was excited to get them for my birthday last week and I love them!

These black scissors bring my count up to 5 pairs of embroidery scissors now.

1. My first embroidery scissors I bought at Joann Fabrics.
2. My mom's embroidery scissors
3. I bought these DMC scissors at Joann Fabrics also
4. Another pair of my Mom's scissors

I also got a sheath from Sublime Stitching for each pair of scissors. They are great for protecting the blades.

What are your favorite pair of embroidery scissors?

WIP - Mask Embroidery

I've made a lot of progress on this mask embroidery I started from a previous post.

I had no idea what colors I was going to use when I started stitching this, but knew I wanted to do something more pastel-y, since my last few embroideries had so much black. I'm not sure if I want to add some filler stitches to it.

Up Close

This is an original design my husband drew that eventually will be a pattern on our Etsy store. . . Whenever that is ready. Its a work in progress. . . but we are slowly getting there.

New Embroidery Project - Mask

This is a new embroidery project I've started. Sort of a sneak peak to a new pattern that my husband drew.

Erro Embroidery - Finished!

Finally finished with the latest Erro embroidery.

I used 4 strands of floss and almost all of it is stem stitch.

See more of my Erro embroidery pics here!