Learning Embroidery

The past few days around here have been snowy and cold, so I decided to mess around with something new, embroidery! Inspiration to learn the technique came from a piece of fabric that I picked out for a present that my friend, Liz requested. She adores my scrap fabric embroidery rings on my wall :)

I started by searching for tutorials on basic stitches and found an excellent one that I was able to print out here from DMC. Now, the nice thing that I learned from my venture in to the embroidery world, is that you can stitch free-hand, and since I like to doodle, this kind of got me a little pumped. However, there are patterns out there in case "doodling" isn't your thing. I found a bunch that I am excited to try from Andrea Zuill of 'Badbird's'. Below is one of her designs that I used to practice a few different stitches.

Since I was in the learning process, I just used scrap fabric and leftover burlap from the wedding that I had on hand. Although, I noticed that the majority of people use a muslin canvas for their work and the large gaps in the burlap make it a little tricky to work with. I think it turned out pretty neat though!