My sister is the hand-lettering and drawing artist. A few months ago, I was hanging out at my sister’s apartment and saw all these cute little drawings on scrap paper! I grabbed a few of the small ones to turn into embroidery art 🙂 I can’t draw AT ALL, so this works well for me!
Back in February, I made this little pattern completely in Illustrator with some favorite fonts and a some little clipart images… I don’t have an ipad and apple pen, but that would probably be a cool way to combine the hand-drawing and digital aspects of this project.
- Scan and Edit your hand-drawn image
Here’s the original. This version would be perfect in an oval embroidery hoop. Click to Download the image.
Since my hoop is round, I scanned the image into Illustrator and started moving things around until it was shaped liked a square… This version works for embroidery, since we’re just tracing the shapes. If you were going to print it, you would want to remove all the not-quite-white in the background.
Click here to download the embroidery pattern!
I opened the image in word, and made a 4″ square to fit in my 6″ embroidery hoop.
*I alway think I can make the pattern 5″ to fit in a 6″ hoop, but it’s always a little too big.
- Print your pattern on water-soluble stabilizer
Then just print on the water-soluble sticky fabric stabilizer from Sulky (this is really the key to making EVERYTHING into an embroidery pattern) and stick to your fabric!
- Choose colors and start stitching!
Colors were a struggle with this project. I think I need to get a new pack of embroidery thread with more options… However, adding gold thread to everything helps!
The satin stitch on the word “Reach” looks really nice here, but it took forever to complete. The chain stitch is probably the best option for tracing letters
- Dissolve the pattern off the fabric & iron
Once you’ve finished your project, just dissolve the pattern in water (about 30 minutes) and wait for the fabric to dry! You’ll probably need to iron at this point, but mine had metallic thread so I couldn’t iron to much :/
Some people might choose to make this into a pillow or a banner (I’ll make one of those sometime), but I just like to put back into the hoop.
- Trim and Glue the Edges to the Hoop
Trim the edges to about 3/8″ (seriously… it feels like a 1/4″ isn’t quite enough and 1/2″ is too much), grab the hot glue gun, and fold in the edges.
One blogger I follow stains her hoops a dark brown to use as a frame – so cool!
Trimmed
Glued
Done!
Have you ever embroidered a drawing? I might look around for favorite quotes on pinterest to add to my collection..
Let me know if you use this pattern! I would love to see the results!
