I sat down and drew up a design for my blanket. The middle section with all the embroidery and handprints will be a 32 X 32-inch square. This will be framed by denim squares. I was planning on using 8 inch squares but might be changing this to 6 inch squares as I was able to find some that were already cut. I began working on my blanket for my mom. I emailed all my siblings and got them to send me the handprints of all of their family members. I am still waiting on a few handprints. I traced all the handprints with fabric markers. Each family got a different color and they were each traced around a heart with the family name in the middle.
I knew that I wanted to do more than simply use fabric markers for the handprints. I watched a YouTube video on 15 Basic Hand Embroidery Stitches to get me started. As I sat at the ball diamond watching my son at baseball practice I watched the video and practiced my stitches. After I had practiced all of the stitches I decided I would try my hand at making some simple flowers. I made 6 daisies on a yellow background. I know that before I begin doing anything fancy on my actual piece I need to do some more practice pieces. I am feeling that I could embroider the names as It would be either a simple running stitch or a back stitch.
Here are the stitches that I have taught myself. I am going to continue to work on these as a few of them I was pretty shaky on. I have found that the tighter the material is in the hoop the easier it is to do the embroidery. I plan on starting to embroider the names this week and then start on doing the hands. I know that they are currently done in fabric marker which should be fine but if I want this piece to last I feel that it would be best if I embroidered each hand on its own. For this I will go through my embroidery thread and will pick different shades of each of the colors so each family member will have a slightly different colored hand but they will all blend together. Before I begin working on this embroidery I am going to take the time to make a heart like you will see in this Heart Embroidery for Beginners YouTube video. It shows a bunch of different embroidery stitches again and I think that some of these would make the names very unique and distinctive.
As I sit and am practicing and learning how to embroider I am thinking about my Mom and Dad and that over the long weekend they would have celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and all the love that they shared for so many years and the love that they showed to all of us kids and grandkids. I am putting this love, these memories and more love on top into this blanket. Each stitch is a work of love and each handprint is a hand to hold in a moment of sadness, joy or happiness.
This might take me longer than I originally anticipated but it is a work on love and I am learning along the way and loving the journey that I am on.
Videos of me learning how to do some of the basic embroidery stitches: (Was sitting at the ball diamonds for a bunch of these or in my car as my son had ball practice)
I am no sewer but I am so surprised at how many different kinds of stitches there are, I had no clue! Can I say that I love how sentimental this project is, I cannot wait to see your journey and how the blanket begins to take its shape.
Christine, I didn’t know that there were so many different types of embroidery stitches either. These are just a few of the ones that I have found that are basic ones for beginners. I am looking forward to learning a few more different ones that will help me in being able to add the extra little details that I am wanting to. I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to make this idea come to life and to have extra meaning behind it with me learning a new skill as I am doing it.