For my final blog post I decided to do a little self-reflection on the progress I made and the fun I have had over the course of the last 10 weeks – lets get started!

Stitching Skills

I seen the most progress in my Chain stitch – if you were reading from the beginning, then you know I STRUGGLED with this stitch for the first few weeks of my learning project. With the help of Youtube and Tiktok – I think I am about 1,000 steps closer to mastering it. Seeing myself using this stitch in my projects is so rewarding now because I really dreaded it at the beginning of my journey.

My FAVOURITE stitch was the Embroidered Rose, which I had learned early on in my journey and actually only used a few times! I will get my use out of this skill as I work on a few Christmas presents (I will touch on this again later on!). But you can

check out my roses to the right:

The Satin stitch was one I felt like I had mastered early on, but I did feel like something was missing towards the end of our semester so I spent some time playing with the stitch and seeing what worked best. I tried out the following approaches:

• Less strands
• More strands
• Tighter stitching
• Different start/end points

Learning Resources

Ok, I tried a handful of different resources throughout my learning journey and I am going to rank them for you & give you reasons to why I believe them. Check out my resource summarization in a Canva creation below as well as linked here.

Recap

To summarize this experience in a whole – I loved it! Did I achieve my goal of embroidering my niece a Christmas present? No, BUT I have started it and I am feeling very confident (check out the sneak peak of it below).This project will include every skill I learned throughout the semester:

1. Transferring a design

   

2. Lettering stitches
3. Floral stitches

I am happy I took it step-by-step and skill-by-skill rather than jumping into random projects each week, I think this helped me create a strong foundation with transferable skills. I am excited to continue embroidering and I do think that, my gift giving game has gotten better!

Thanks for following along for the past 10 weeks!

Hi Everyone!

This week I tried out something different for my learning project. Not only did I do a small piece, but I also taught my roommate a few basic stitches and she created a piece as well! I am travelling for the month of December so will not be home for Christmas, so we thought we would use our time over the break to do some festive crafts.

I did what I think most anyone would when looking for a DIY project – I turned to Pinterest.

We both found designs that we wanted to do, but unfortunately, they were both being sold by Etsy store fronts. While I enjoy using Pinterest to find ideas for embroidery I have found it is mostly just doing that on the platform, finding ideas. It seems as though there are not as many free resources for patterns or tutorials for hand embroidery as I first expected – it can be a little disheartening when you find a design you really like only to click on it and see that it costs $8.95. Back to the positives, I am able to find a lot of ideas and inspiration on this platform though, and that is how we used it this week.

We both found designs we liked and I figured I had a good idea of what stitches I could use and so I just drew a basic outline of what I wanted and got to work on my piece. Mine used only one stitch – the satin stitch, but I felt like all my recent projects that used a satin stitch just didn’t look as nice as it could – it was uneven and just looked kind of messy. I asked Google for help on “How to make your satin stitch look better?”.

My search brought me to a blog post “Satin Stitch Secrets” by Jessica Lang Embroidery. This post helped me understand the techniques to improving my satin stitch work, using sections and only 1 or 2 ply floss (not what I was wanting to hear as I knew this meant it would take longer). There was also a YouTube video linked in her blog , but I mostly relied on the instructional photo you see in this post.

The above also helped me in teaching my roommate how to perfect her project. I taught her how to start off her project, follow a pattern, and three types of stitches (satin, french, and single back stitch). We decided that while doing the tree, the stitches should be a little bit thicker, so taking note on what I learnt from my search – instead of using 1or2 ply like me, she used 6ply with her green floss. When she did her satin stitch, she also used 2ply to ensure she had a neat looking stitch.

I had so much fun teaching a friend how to do this, I think this is going to be a hobby that sticks after our learning projects are done! My roommate seems to be hooked as well 🙂  Check out our final products below – the next step is to get them finished off and hung on our Christmas Tree!

I love that this journey has allowed me to feel like I am successfully completing DIY projects – Woohoo!

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

My oh my, I can’t believe how fast this semester is flying by and I have a feeling our learning projects will be complete before I know it.

I was really looking forward to this week

of my learning project, if you read last weeks you know I had made embroidered the outline of a pumpkin (see photo evidence) and my goal for this week was to spice it up a little bit. I am happy to announce that I did accomplish my goal – with the help of classmates, photo inspiration, and for finishing Gilmore Girls so I could finally quit procrastinating and get some work done!

The end goal in mind was still from the inspiration that I had gotten from And Other Adventures’ DIY Fall Floral Pumpkin Hand Embroidery . The final product by And Other Adventures was definitely the goal, but my skills just aren’t quite there yet, and, not to make excuses BUT, I “YOLO’d” the roses and two leaves then used another leaf outline from a completely different pattern… so my final product is make shift.

So like I just said, this project was just a punch of different resources thrown together to create this small piece of fall decor:

1. Inspiration from And Other Adventures (an embroidery company)
2. Pumpkin outline from Google
3. DMC – a website with MANY free embroidery patterns. This was actually recommended by one of my classmates, a true lifesaver as I was running out of resources to use!
4. Past knowledge – I already knew how to create a wheelbarrow rose and a few leaves, so I free handed those!

Step-By-Step Pumpkin Decor

Step 1:

Found an idea pattern, unfortunately this pattern was not free. Knowing I still wanted to do something similar, I decided to piece this project together.

Step 2:

Find a pumpkin outline – Google was my friend on this one! More details on this step can be found in last weeks blog post which you can find, here.

Step 3:

Check out more floral patterns, DMC helped with this one! I found a floral pattern I liked, which you can find linked here! Again, I knew I had to get creative, so I picked out the flower/leaf that I wanted. Printed this pattern off and copied it onto my project. The patterns from DMC are amazing, they have a full PDF tutorial for how to complete the project – I will definitely be returning to try out an entire project!

 

Step 4:

Putting my prior knowledge to use – I already knew how to do a rose as well as a leaf with a satin stitch… so I got busy!

Step 5:

COMPLETE… Kinda.. I think I do want to add more detail to it later on as it seems a little empty in comparison to my inspo pic, but I am happy with it for now!

Thanks for reading about my mismatched project! I think this was my favourite part of the learning project so far – it allowed me to create my own piece by using the assistance from multiple online resources, even my prior knowledge had been built using the internet… pretty cool!

 

Hello Everyone!

My goal this week was to work on transferring patterns to my embroidery cloth… with ease. I had such success last week with simply googling what I was looking for, so I gave that a go again this week. My Google search of “How to transfer a pattern to embroidery fabric” brought me what I swear was a million results, at the time I searched it was after a long day so I thought a video would work best for where I was learning was at that moment.

I selected a quick 4:27 minute  Youtube video to help guide me in my learning, Kristen Gulu with Gulush had an excellent video on How To Transfer an Embroidery Pattern! With my low attention span, I’m not going to lie… I did not watch the video in entirety (I know,  I know), but she had showed me what I was looking for in the first 1:40 minutes. WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER.. right? Anyways, with Halloween right around the corner and having a very limited amount of fall decor in my house, I thought I should make some!

OK, so I did another Google search (side note: what did we do before Google? I can’t remember), this time in the search of “Free pumpkin embroidery patterns”. Surprise surprise, my search for a free pattern came up short. I did find some inspiration from And Other Adventures – an embroidery company based in the U.S. – lets take a minute to appreciate how CUTE these pieces are

I didn’t think it looked too hard:

1. Outline the pumpkin with a stitch of my choice
2. Statin stitch the stem
3. Add some cool detail

Easy money. I learnt how to do that my first few weeks. Back to my handy dandy friend, Google, for yet another search, this time “Pumpkin outline” in the hopes I would find a basic pumpkin I could embroider. After finding what I was looking for it was time to get started. Since this week my focus was transferring the pattern onto the paper, I did that and not a whole lot more. This week my progress ended with outlining the pumpkin with a chain stitch.

I found transferring the pattern the way Kristen explained in her video to be seamless, and not how I would have done it without using Youtube. If you have been reading my posts, it is no surprise that I struggle with the chain stitch, so in the spirit of making your weaknesses your strengths (or at least a little better), that is what I chose to outline my pumpkin with.

 

 

 

 

Next Week

DETAIL, DETAIL,DETAIL! I am going to find a fun way to make my pumpkin into more of an aesthetically pleasing piece of decor. Decorating my house is a fun way to express myself, so I think I am going to have some fun with this!

I am not going to lie, I felt as though last week I was starting to, dare I say it, get bored with my embroidery journey BUT – This was my favourite week yet!! Put some of the skills I have learned so far to the test with doing more project-based practice. Let me tell you, this made a world of difference in my motivation to keep on learning!

This week I had seen my two year-old nephew and he reminded me of his love for dinosaurs and in particular that “Auntie is scared of dinosaurs”. A little backstory on that, I was Facetiming my nephew and my mom, he wanted to show me his new dino that made noises, I made a BIG deal about it scaring me and he has NEVER let it go! Anyways, this had me thinking – if I was going to make an embroidery for my niece… my nephew needs one too, right? The answer is YES.

So I got started by google searching “dinosaur hand embroidery pattern free” (I feel like I have gotten in the habit of searching for ‘FREE’ things since being a student!). I did a scroll through my google search and ended up picking the first result, not because it was first, but because it didn’t look too complex and it wasn’t just the outline of a dinosaur.

Gathered, a crafting website had the pattern of the dinosaur I decided on – Free quick dinosaur embroidery. I found that this website articulated the steps of this pattern almost similarly to how a recipe would be:

• Outlined the stitches I would need to know
• What materials will be needed
• Free template
• Step-by-step guide to the actual embroidery

 

So far this has been one of my favourite learning resources – it was simple and everything was laid out for me to follow. I am not sure if this would have worked as well when I was learning the stitches, but it worked pretty darn good for following a pattern!

The ‘recipe’ had 3 dinosaurs, but I decided to do only one and to make it bigger… this ended up biting me when I ran out of embroidery floss, not once… but TWICE. I ran out when doing the bottom part of the brontosaurus so had to switch colours for the legs… which I then ran out of that colour as well. I will be finishing it after a quick trip to Michael’s but here is a picture of my work in progress!

I still haven’t aced the transfer of template onto the fabric, so I know what I will be working on next week!

 

Week 4 on my hand embroidery journey, here we gooo!

This weeks goal: To be able to successfully embroider lettering via TikTok tutorials

I am not going to lie, I spend my fair share of time on TikTok – trust me, you do not want to see my screen report summary. By no means am I a TikToker… as I have never posted a video, but I feel pretty comfortable using the search bar. SO that is what I did, I opened up the app on my phone and did a search “Embroidering Letters”. Please refer below of a screenshot of the results to my search.

I allowed for my search to become more refined by selecting one of the options you can see in the screenshot above and to the left under “Others searched for”. Continuing this search by selecting “Hand embroidery for beginners letters”. This allowed me to pick a TikTok with ease as one account, @emily_bea, came up in my original search and my more focused on.

It was a pleasant surprise when I clicked on her account and seen 37 tutorials on hand embroidery!!!

I followed Emily’s tutorials for the following lettering:

1. Simple lettering
2. Block lettering
3. Handwriting

As you can see, I didn’t love the way my block lettering looked as I filled it in, but, I do like how it looks with just the outline done!

I liked that the TikToks are short, about 1 minute in length, and though they can be hard to “rewind” in time on my phone, it is very easy to do when on the computer! There were a ton of different resources on this platform, with a wide variety of skill ranges. I found that TikTok was less of “buy my products” push than what I experienced with Youtube. Again, I enjoyed that the videos were short and to the point and VERY easily paused when needed. All in all, I found these TikToks incredibly easy to follow and I will absolutely refer back to Emily’s page as I continue on my journey.

My consensus on TikTok is, YES, it can be trendy and helpful! I would love to know what everyone else’s thoughts are on TikTok – any other ideas on how it can be used as a positive platform or learning resource?

Next weeks goal: To transfer a pattern to my embroidery fabric & work on putting all my newly learned techniques to the test!

Please see below the three videos I referenced during my progress this week:

@emily_bea

How to embroider cursive writing! #embroidery #embroiderytutorial #embroider #diy #howto #tutorial #stemstitch

♬ [Hip-Hop] Sad LoFi Sound – アイスカプロジェクト

@emily_bea

How to embroider block lettering! #embroidery #embroiderytutorial #embroider #diy #howto #tutorial #lettering

♬ A little uneasy lo-fi hip-hop(794918) – kai

@emily_bea

How to do simple lettering! The first of a few I want to make #embroidery #embroiderytutorial #embroider #howto #diy #tutorial

♬ Lo-fi hip hop(219685) – NAO-K

 

I had FUN this week! I turned to Pinterest for some creative inspiration and instruction for this weeks blog post and WOW to say I was overwhelmed with ideas would be an understatement. A quick search for “Hand Embroidered Flowers” brought on hours in the rabbit hole that is Pinterest.

There were so many resources that I couldn’t pick just one, so I didn’t! Making my choice on which tutorials to follow was strictly a “judge the book by the cover” kinda thing. I know, I know – that isn’t always the best approach but it seemed to be the only way I could manage the high volume without clicking through every link.

OK – so what did I learn and how did I learn it?

• Satin Flower – this tutorial was just a video uploaded to Pinterest, there were no external links to click. This video was easy to follow and only like 20 seconds!

  

• Embroidery Rose – This one had a 3 step photo tutorial but there was also an external link… so of course I dug further. From the website there were more detailed photos and, buckle up because it is getting exciting, there were MORE flowers and leaf tutorials. Thank you, Miss Kate.
• French Knot on a Stem Stitch Stem – Ok a continuation from the above resource. I selected the “Hand Embroidery” tab on from the menu and started my search to where I found a post “5 Unique Ways to Stitch Hand Embroidery Leaves”.
• Satin Stitch – Yet another Miss Kate tutorial.
• Fish Bone – Ok, I am getting repetitive but it isn’t my fault that Miss Kate ROCKS.

My Work

I stayed fairly conservative with my flowers today as I truly had no idea how detailed they could get! You can check out my flowers below. I am particularly proud of my rose with the fishbone leaves! The amount of reality TV show I watch while working on this is a combination of impressive and sad. As I start to become more comfortable with the stitches I have learnt I can really start this

project will turn itself into a hobby and I am excited! It has been a great way to shut my brain off and, I can’t believe I am saying this, I find it relaxing!

What to Expect Next Week

Stay tuned for next week as I learn how to use the stitches I have learnt in lettering as well as maybe draw out a design as I am starting to realize I am not too good at free-handing!

 

Cheers!

OK. I wanted to document my most recent embroidery practice through an animated video BUT I tried to get videos of me doing the stitches & it was just not working, so I pivoted (again, cue Ross Geller).

 

 

Adobe Express

My pivot lead me to an Adobe tool, and, WOW! I have always been a fan of Adobe but it just keeps getting better and better, this week I tested out Adobe Express as a way to show case my most recent efforts in my embroidery journey.

I was overwhelmed with the templates to choose from, please see a summarized list below:

1. 1. Social Media Stories & Posts (Instagram & Facebook)
   2. Posters
   3. Logos
   4. Flyers
   5. Collages
   6. Book Covers
   7. Album Covers
   8. YouTube Thumbnails
   9. Resumes
   10. Invitations
   11. Menus

AND these were just the templates on the homepage – if you click on the ‘Projects’ tab on the left side there is even more!!!! This is where I found the ‘Worksheet’ templates, over 1,600 of them, SCORE! Now initially, I was thinking this is what I would use Adobe Express for, to create worksheets for my lesson planning, but as I explored further I began to think it would be a great tool for students to use as well!

Unfortunately, there is a Premium feature – though I found many of the templates and editing tools to be free! One premium feature that would have come in handy for my project in particular would be the photo background remover,  but I could still made do without it.

 

I clicked around the homepage, checking out the different tools and templates that I could use, there were some Premium templates but for the most part I found them to all be free. I decided I wanted to create a poster and my with creative skills lacking, I selected a template rather than starting from scratch. Once I was in the project editing I found that there were many cool tools to be used including: Text, Photos, Shapes, and other Design Assets.

 

You can also start from scratch by clicking the big purple + in the left hand corner of the home screen, where you will be given the option on what time of project you want to create. In addition to creating a project, you can also edit photos a number of ways – one being by removing the background, though this requires a subscription. There is also the option to edit videos and pdfs – neat.

 

 

Once in the ‘Projects’ tab you can see your work in progresses, but what I found to be particularly cool was that you can also share your projects with others and vice versa where you can collaborate together. That is an awesome feature for group projects!

How would I use Adobe Express as an educator? I would use it to create posters for my classrooms and worksheets for my students.

How would my students use Adobe Express? To create visualizations that they otherwise might have done by hand. One example I have would be for students to create a Book Cover as an alternative for a book report!

How does Adobe Express fit into The SAMR Model? I think that it sits on Augmentation – the features of Adobe Express can improve the creative process as there is more ideas and both teachers and students can be more creative or flexible with their ideas – but it does not completely transform what would be done without it.

 

 

My overall review of Adobe Express would be that it is easily navigated, full of incredible variation and a great tool for both teachers and students!

Back to My Embroidery Journey

This week I practiced the stitches I had learnt in the following week – really focusing on the 4 basic stitches, seen in my Adobe Express creation below.

 

I also free-handed a little bit of a make-shift rainbow from the 4 stitches outlined in the poster above. It is very crooked as I still haven’t learnt how to transfer over an outline, but I do feel confident I am getting stronger with my stitching 🙂

Coming Next

FLOWERS & LEAVES and all that fun stuff is my plan for next week – I am excited for it!!

OK! Week 1 into my embroidery journey and I am reminded that it is not as easy as it looks. I was extremely humbled this week.

I sat down with my embroidery material with the goal in mind that I wanted to learn how to start an embroidery from the very beginning as well as a good amount of basic of stitches. Being a very visual learner I thought YouTube would be the perfect place to start. I learned very quickly that there was a whole world of resources for beginners like me on YouTube – it was truly a task to find which one I wanted to watch.

One video by I Heart Stitch Art (Sarah) particularly stood out as the title of the video literally had everything I wanted to learn in the title “Embroidery for beginners – Stitches, knots, needle threading & More”. This video was awesome! From it I learnt how to load my hoop and properly separate my thread and thread it through my needle as well as the following stitches:

• Back Stitch
• Running Stitch
• Stem Stitch
• Chain Stitch (I struggled with this one.. hence the title of my post)
• French Knot
• Lazy Daisy (OK, I reaalllly struggled with this – picture proof below)
• Satin Stitch

This video was great in terms of instruction but it also broke each step down into ‘Chapters’, making it extremely convenient to find the time where the stitch you needed more practice with was.

I wasn’t just glad to have stumbled upon this video because of Sarah’s great instruction but, low and behold, she also has an Etsy Shop, Blog, and Instagram where she has more free resources (SCORE!).

This week proved to me that embroidery is definitely “in” right now just by the amount of resources available – I don’t think I will have any shortage as my journey continues!

What to Expect Next Week

More of the same will be coming next week while I try out some more complex stitch work and maybe try to find some more resources to assist me in the ones I struggled with this week!

 

 

Hello Everyone!

This project couldn’t have come at a better time, well actually, better timing really would have been around April 2022 (you will learn why soon) – but I am not one to complain… so anyways, I am glad it is here now! During the pandemic when we were all spending waaay too much time at home, my roommate gifted myself and the other girls in our house an embroidery kit. Ok, you could be thinking either “Wow what a great gift idea!” or “Is that really a gift if you have to do it yourself?” – well she had done so in hopes we would do it together to pass time, which we did exactly that, so the end result wasn’t really our focus.

Anyways, this kit was incredibly fun.  Was I good at it? No not overly. Did I complete it on my own? Also no, I think it took 4 of us to finish this very basic piece. The point is that despite it not being perfect and not doing it from scratch, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I spent the time where I wasn’t confused about what I was doing, thinking about my late grandmother who always gifted handmade things. Those gifts were so special and now that she is no longer with us, even more so.

Fast forward 1.5 years to this spring, May 2022, my brother and sister-in-law welcomed the most beautiful little girl into our family. Now, I was thinking about gift ideas and just stumbled across the thought that our grandma would have made something incredible for her, so I thought I should continue on this tradition. Knowing I am not near as creative nor as talented as her, and keeping in mind I had only done one beginners embroidery kit over a year ago (which took me an embarrassingly long time to complete), I ordered a custom pattern off of Etsy to do an embroidery pattern for my niece. This pattern has been printed out and sitting on my desk since May 2022 – so, here comes the reason why this project is perfect, I am FINALLY going to learn how to do this pattern and complete it in hopes it can be her Christmas present!

Let’s talk about my game plan (sorry about the sport lingo, I was a student athlete, remember?), since the only embroidery I have ever done was 1.5 years ago and I had 3 friends helping me – I simply don’t remember anything I had once learned so we are starting from scratch and we are going to learn from only online resources! WOOHOO!

OK, back to the game plan, since I was feeling extra motivated when I first got this pattern I had already purchased the materials I thought needed but to refresh my mind I did a fast Google Search for “What you need to start embroidering?”.

Wandering Threads Embroidery quickly reminded me what I would need:

1. Fabric 
2. Embroidery Hoop
3. Floss (not for your teeth, FABRIC FLOSS)
4. Needles 
5. Scissors
6. Fabric Pen

I had everything at home except the fabric pen but figured I would need more colours of floss and more fabric as I am going to need a lot of practice – so I put in an order from Michaels.Now that the materials are taken care of, I am going to spend the rest of my journey from now until Christmas learning different stitches (starting with the basic and working my way up), how to incorporate the stitches into a piece, how to transfer a paper pattern to fabric and completing mini projects along the way.

Here are a few pictures of my Grandma Val’s work – both cross stitching and embroidery.

Stay tuned & wish me luck!