Today I am so excited to introduce you to Shelly Georgopulos, a fiber artist and the owner of Shelly Sells Lemonade. I featured some of her feminist embroidery designs in my roundup of the best modern embroidery kits for beginners. Half of the net profits from her Etsy shop are donated to charities that support women and people of color. In her shop she sells original embroidered art, embroidery patterns, and even wearable art! Check out some of her items for sale below:
Today, Shelly will be taking us through a crash course in embroidery. If you love coloring, you may be surprised to know that your skills coloring on paper are pretty transferrable to coloring with thread. Shelly will fill us in on all the steps to get started, and you can do what you do best — create!
Take it away, Shelly!
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Hand embroidery is super popular right now because it’s easy to learn, inexpensive and completely portable.
This Saguaro Cactus Sunset Pattern was designed specifically to give you a chance to use what you know about coloring on paper to color with a needle and thread. It’s a simple pattern that uses only two different stitches so that you can focus on using the embroidery floss to play with color, light and shadow.
Basic Embroidery Supplies to Get You Started
All the supplies used in this tutorial can be purchased at your favorite local craft store or online through the gallery below!
Here’s a graphic you can save to your DIY and craft boards on Pinterest to remind yourself of all the embroidery essentials:
Embroidery Floss
DMC is the established leader here, with nearly 500 colors of thread available. DMC threads are sold in six strands and can be divided out to any number of strands you’d like to use for your project. The tiny pendant necklace shown in the photos was stitched with one strand; the cactus in the 4″ hoop was stitched with three strands. The easiest way to buy specific individual colors of floss is on their website.
DMC Floss Colors Used in This Tutorial:
- Greens #934, 163, 3013, 730
- Purples #553, 211, 333, 550
- Black #310
- Yellow #444
Embroidery Fabric
You can stitch on virtually any fabric, but most folks like to avoid anything with stretch. I like 100% cotton or linen that’s a medium weight. If you need a name brand, Kona Cotton is readily available at big box stores and it comes in a rainbow of colors. If you need to purchase online, I like Fabric Bubb.
Embroidery Needles
Buy an assorted pack of needles from the embroidery section of your craft store. They have a fairly large eye that makes it easier to thread than what you would use if you were sewing. Use the smaller, thinner needles with one to three strands of floss and the larger needles for four to six strands.
Scissors
Any scissors will do, but if you become addicted to embroidery, cute thread snips are another tool to add to your supply kit.
Embroidery Hoops
Embroidery hoops are available at craft stores in round or oval and made of bamboo or plastic. If you buy a bamboo hoop you can use the hoop to finish and mount your project. The sample piece in this tutorial is stitched in a three inch hoop.
Pencil or Pen
Any pencil or pen will work but if you’re nervous about covering your lines, you can purchase a water-soluble pen at craft stores or Amazon. I tend to avoid the air soluble pens because the lines usually disappear before I finish the project!
Embroidery Finishing Supplies
I like to back my hoops with a piece of muslin or any thin, light color fabric. Then, you’ll need glue to secure the fabric around the hoop for display. Some people swear by a hot glue gun but I prefer Aleene’s Original Tacky Glue.
How to Transfer Your Pattern to the Fabric
1. Mount your fabric in your hoop. Fabric has a right side and a “wrong” side but it’s hard to tell the difference and it’s not a huge deal if you can’t. If you can tell which is which, mount the fabric so that the right side faces you when you lay the hoop flat on a surface so that you can draw on that side. See below.
2. Pull your fabric taught in your hoop and tighten the screw. Lay the hoop flat against the pattern and center the image before you trace. You need to be able to see your pattern through the fabric.
3. Hold steady and trace the pattern onto the fabric. Try not to move as you trace. There are many ways to get a pattern on your fabric; I like to use a window or my computer screen as a light source and trace the pattern which is easiest when using a fabric that is light in color.
Here’s the free embroidery pattern — click it to open it in a new window!
Common Question: “What should I use to trace on my fabric?”
I prefer a fine tip pen for a simple outline like this. For a more complex pattern I might use a water soluble pen but that requires you to fully rinse your project when finished. Pencil works fine too; test some pens and pencils on a scrap of fabric before you start to trace.
Now You’re Ready to Stitch!
The entire cactus, the ground and the tiny flowers are all stitched with satin stitch. This simple stitch is perfect to fill a shape or an area with color.
In our Saguaro Cactus pattern, the stitches on the cactus are vertical; the stitches on the ground are horizontal.
This is a simple stitch but it can take practice to get the tension just right. Too loose and it won’t lie flat, too tight and it will distort your fabric and cause puckering.
Satin stitch looks different depending on how many strands of floss you use. You can work with any number of strands (one through six). Fewer strands create a delicate look that allows you to blend colors smoothly; more strands give a chunky appearance. Simply pull the thread apart to work with a smaller number of threads.
How to Satin Stitch
- Bring thread up at A, poke down at B up at C and back down at D. Repeat.
- Continue like this until area is filled.
- When you are using different colors to shade an area, you can lay your different color stitches side by side or you can blend and layer them.
Here’s a video demonstrating how to satin stitch:
To Practice: Fill a practice shape with one, three and six strands of floss before starting your cactus. Use shorter stitches and longer stitches to see how the length of your stitches affects the look.
How to Tie Off Your Ends
When you are finished with an area, bring the needle to the back of the fabric, snip the floss with enough so that you can tie a knot and then trim the rest of the floss so that it is close to the knot. Or, you can weave your floss under some stitches to anchor it and snip close enough that it does not show on the front of your piece.
Satin Stitching Your Cactus
Once you are comfortable with the satin stitch, use the pattern and reference photos as a guide to fill the cactus shape with satin stitches. You may want to work with the darkest colors first and then layer the lighter colors on top. Imagine the sun in the top, right corner of the hoop so that the sun is hitting the right side of the cactus. Use your lightest shade of green where you want the sun to hit.
The pattern and reference photos are meant to be used as a guide. This is modern hand embroidery and not paint-by-number so have some fun with the floss! Consider where the light is coming from and place your highlights and shadows accordingly. Embroidery floss looks great when it’s layered so if you don’t love what you’ve stitched you can either snip the threads and unpick the stitches OR layer more stitches on top. I prefer the latter!
Finally, add the small yellow flowers with three or four strands of floss.
How to Back Stitch
Once the shapes are filled and you’re happy with the colors, the fill and how you show shadow and light you’re ready to add an outline for extra pop.
The reference piece uses two strands of black floss and a back stitch to outline the cactus and the surface of the ground.
Traditional embroidery would encourage you to keep the length of the stitches uniform, but this is modern embroidery so use a longer stitch on the straight away and shorten it on the curve if you like.
- Bring thread to the front of the fabric at A.
- Poke your needle down into the fabric at B and up again at C. Repeat.
Here’s a video demonstrating how to back stitch:
With the outline in place, we are done stitching! Now it’s time to finish our piece for display.
How to Finish Your Embroidery Project
I like to back my hoops with a piece of muslin or any thin, light color fabric. The extra layer of fabric ensures the piece will stay taut in the hoop and keep the colors true.
- Lay the muslin and embroidery face up on top of the smaller hoop. Try to center it as best as possible. Loosen clasp on outer hoop so you can easily slide it over the fabric and bottom hoop.
- Tighten the clasp a bit but allow enough play so you can pull the fabric until you are sure it is centered. Tighten the clasp as you pull the fabric taut. It should ultimately be as tight as a drum.
- Trim the muslin as close as you can to the hoop and trim your embroidery so that it folds over the muslin and hoop without leaving excess.
- Run a bead of glue on the top part of the hoop and on your embroidery.
- Move around the hoop, pressing the fabric to the hoop until it’s secure.
- Allow time to dry and you are done!
Here’s another video demonstrating the process of finishing a project:
Hopefully this tutorial has shown just how easy it is to get started coloring with thread! Embroidery is a fun, relaxing, and inexpensive creative hobby that is simple to get started with. You can use free patterns like the Saguaro Cactus provided in this post, one of the many embroidery kits available on Etsy, or even create your very own pattern!
Shelly Georgopulos is an American Fiber Artist who works from her studio in the Philadelphia suburbs. She loves teaching embroidery and sharing what she’s learned from a lifetime playing with a needle and thread. Stitch tips, craftivism collaborations, video tutorials, hand embroidered jewelry and lots of patterns can be found at Shelly Sells Lemonade.
If you enjoyed this guide, be sure to subscribe to her YouTube channel and follow her on Instagram for even more embroidery tips!
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