This week came and went a lot faster than I had intended, which meant I didn’t have as much time to work on my embroidery as I had wanted. This week my goal was to use DMC, a website that has various free craft patterns, to try following a completely written embroidery pattern. I spent a long time on the website checking out the various patterns and eventually I settled on a beautiful space/desert-themed piece.

The patterns I was looking at were all completely free, but they would actually include the exact threads you would need to make the pattern which was really convenient. You can simply delete them from your cart if you don’t need them. The pattern actually seems super easy to follow, even for someone who is a visual learner. I was really worried I’d have a hard time making sense of it as I haven’t yet mastered reading patterns for knitting or crochet yet. However, these patterns seem to include some pictures that label what stitches to do and where to put each stitch and colour. The pattern doesn’t seem to assume I know things like how many strands of thread to use, so I’m really excited to try following it and hopefully broaden my sources for new patterns.

However, as I mentioned, I kind of underestimated the amount of time I had this week to work on a new embroidery piece. My midterms combined with my latest obsession with the Formula 1 show on Netflix distracted me from the bigger picture, which is becoming an embroidery master.

So to make it up to you all I’ve decided to create an embroidery stitch cheat sheet! I got the idea from Tik Tok and it’s something I think could be useful in classrooms as well. The girl in the video calls it a zine, and it’s just a simple technique to make a little booklet. You could use it for whatever you like, she used hers to make a field guide for flowers. It’s just a fun way of making a visual representation for a project. I think this is something that would be super fun in a classroom for a variety of classes! It could be used to make a booklet of formulas for different units or to make a story in an English class. I’m sure this isn’t a revolutionary technique, but I thought it looked super fun and wanted to give it a try.

@lillymyrick

made this instead of taking notes in class today #zine #art #howto #tutorial

♬ Flies – Aubrey Key

In my zine, I wanted to include a little guide for how to do some of the common stitches I usually have to reference a lot. This way I would be able to flip back through it instead of googling it every time I inevitably forgot. I started by just following her video on how to fold it and labelling each of the squares so that when I unfolded it I would still know the order.

After that, I just decorated it and added the stitches I felt were most important. This was a super easy project but I had a lot of fun doing it! As I mentioned above, there are so many ways this could be useful in a classroom and it’s perfect for so many ages as it’s really simple to do. It’s really just a simple way of letting kids physically make a representation of their learning.

If you made it this far, thank you for following along with my embroidery journey! After I complete my DMC pattern, I’m going to try my hardest piece yet and I’m leaving the choice up to you! Below I’ve included 2 pattern choices and if you head over to my Twitter, you can take a poll and help me choose which amazing piece I attempt. Thank you all in advance for helping me make up my indecisive mind!