A Bit of Embroidery

I find embroidery to be much freer than counted cross stitch. Wanting do do some embroidery, I purchased a quartet of Sugar Skull embroidery patterns on Etsy this afternoon.

I selected the one on the top left because I liked all the colours. 

I gathered fabric, stabilizer, and threads from my stash. I wanted to use one of my 4” hoops to FFO it so needed to reduce the pattern on my printer. 85% brought it down to about 3.375” which would fit nicely in a 4” hoop. Pictured is a 5" locking hoop.

I think the fabric is muslin. It was pretty thin so I fused medium interfacing onto the back then attached the printed water-soluble stabilizer onto the front and began stitching. First - the outline with backstitch.

Then the green stems and leaves. 

The leaves were done with the fishbone stitch.

Then came the blue flowers,

and the French knots for the centres.

Then the orange eyes, pink flowers, 

and the French knot centres.

Then finally the French knot pupils.

Rather than use satin stitch on the bands around the eyes, I used two parallel rounds of chain stitch.

I had to make substitutions for three of the bold colours; Cody Hoover’s Floss Color Tool and the DMC thread colour card were a big help for this.

The pattern calls for two strands of thread except for the French knots which called for all 6 strands. Since the image was smaller, I only used 4 threads for the French knots.

My next step will be to dissolve the water-soluble interfacing on the front and let it dry. Then a firm pressing face-down on a soft towel will smooth everything out before it gets mounted into the hoop for finishing.

I couldn't help myself. I made a little video of my progress through the process. Click on the 'play' triangle twice,

Next day...

I washed off the water soluble stabilizer. It's dried and pressed.