Last week we did our monthly Craft Club down at Norden Farm and this time it was all about Embroidery. We took our little group of participants through a few basic stitches and then showed them how to make their own artwork. We love embroidery, I (Sammy) like free hand embroidery an H is partial to a bit of cross stitch. We thought we would show you some of the examples we showed our students last Thursday.
I really enjoy the freedom of free hand and the flexibility of using any fabric you like. Most of the designs I stitch I end up leaving in their hoops, but you can always take them out and frame them up too. 
These are four of my favourite pieces, they show a range of different stitches on different fabrics.
This stag picture is done in basic back stitch on teal taffeta with a gold metallic thread. Sometimes the simplest things make the best pictures.
This Hello beautiful is taken from an idea I saw on Pinterest , I used spot cotton fabric, chain stitch for hello and back stitch for beautiful. For the love hearts I used lots of different stitches to appliqué some red fabric hearts and stitched love with chain stitch.
This little guy is one of my favourites, I love using long and short stitch to give texture, it worked so well for this foxes fur. I used some fabric, a lovely blue and black tweed used to be part of a jacket that was my Dads.
A few years ago my Mum gave me a great stitch leaflet she had kept from the seventies. It is falling apart but I still use it as a reference when I am stitching. I love the drawings that accompany the descriptions. Here are some of the basics from the leaflet.
As well as the leaflet, I have a few books that I use for ideas and for learning new techniques. These are my favourites, Adventures in Needlework by Jessica Aldred and Emily Peacock, Love Embroidery by Future Publishing (the guys behind Mollie Makes) and Doodle Stitching by Amiee Ray.
Love Embroidery has great projects to use your embroidery on as well as taking you through the basics.
I adore this Brooch from Adventures in Needlework, I haven't made it as a brooch yet but I used the template to stitch a piece for a friend of mine as a birthday gift a couple of years ago.
Doodle Stitching has a great selection of cute templates and it comes with a DVD of all the images so you can upload them to your computer and print them any size you like. There are a few more books in this series to try out too.
We had such a fun time last week and all our ladies went home with the start of hopefully a fun new hobby.
Our next two Craft Club evenings will be released for booking shortly over on the Norden Farm website. We are making ribbon rose corsages at the end of May and creating Button Jewellery at the end of June. We will let you know more as soon as the booking goes live.
Sammy xxx
Don't forget the closing date for the Company Magazine #StyleBlogAwards is this Saturday!
So if you haven't already voted for us, Pretty please pop over and cast your vote now. We are up for Best Blogging Duo and Best Craft Blog. If you have voted, Thank you so much and keep your fingers crossed for us!
