Embroidered Wedding Hearts

My little sister got married this month (April Fools Day!) and when I learned of her engagement, I immediately got to work on a surprise garland of embroidered hearts. I started with the colors she had chosen for her wedding bouquet, a fun colorful blend of bright pink, green and purple.
I made a total of 14 hearts, each one with a different color combination of blended wool felt, buttons and matching threads. Two of the hearts were embroidered with their names and date and place of their wedding. I then put foam board in between each heart and a back heart to make them more rigid, and blanket stitched them together.

I actually ran out of time and wasn't able to stitch the hearts to the ribbon before I flew to Oregon, but was able to get it finished on the drive to the wedding location - whew!  Then, while my sister was out, I hung them up in the cabin where her reception was held. They looked great with her coat, too - how cute is she?! 

Congratulations, Jen and Clay!! xo

 

Purple Stuffed Kitty!

I made my first stuffed kitty, wow, it was a challenge! I don't own a sewing machine so I hand stitched everything.  The first one is always a learning experience, right? Still, I think she turned out super cute! She is about 10" long, made with blended wool felt. I had fun adding a braided necklace and the delicate gold whiskers.

I also discovered a new chain stitch I absolutely love! It's called interlaced chain stitch and looks more complicated than it is, but is actually quite easy! If you want to give it a go, you can find how to do it here, at the wonderful Needle 'n Thread, the best online resource I have found.

Written by Mary Corbet, you will find loads of written instructions and videos of basic and advanced stitches, thoughtful book reviews of a huge library of how-to books, project lessons, free patterns, informative and interesting blog, I can go on and on. Subscribe to her blog, learn and be inspired!

Here is a close up of the interlaced chain stitch. I followed her instructions but used three colors instead of two, and eliminated the final step of couching the threads. Sweet, huh?


Interlaced chain stitch with green split stitch below, click to enlarge!