Please welcome back Darcy who is no stranger around here. She has stopped by in the past with her Terrace Dress, Color Blocked Cartwheel Wrap Dress Tutorial, and her favorite pattern. Now she has an embroidery tutorial! Here it is! Enjoy!
Hello! It’s Darcy here with a tutorial on how to add embroidery to anything you’d like, but without an embroidery machine.
The first thing you want to do is to sketch out your design on the fabric using a fabric marker. Start simple! You can always add more later.
Next, pick a stitch to outline the design. I used a thick straight stitch.
Follow your outlines on your design using whatever stitch you chose. It’s literally that easy. I stopped and picked up the foot for sharp corners. Remember, it is not going to be perfect and that’s OK! It is a handmade embroidery and a little bit of imperfection is part of the charm!
After that, you continue to sew the garment following the instructions from the sewing pattern.
For this little birthday dress for my daughter, I started with the Cartwheel Wrap Dress and modified it using the Building Block Dress to have a zipper in the back!
Thanks for having me today on the blog! And I hope you all have fun embroidering!
It’s so cute! I have never even thought of using my machine to do embroidery and now I want to give it a try! What kind of thread do you use?
Yes the thread looks thicker did you use something different in bobbin also?
What is a “thick straight stitch?” And did you use embroidery thread?
My guess is that Darcy was using what my Janome manual calls the “triple straight stitch” and that looks like three straight stitches next to each other in the diagram on my machine. Maybe not all machines have it, but with some experimenting you might be able to find a stitch that works for your purposes.
This has long been one of my favorite things to do with a sewing machine, though I do it infrequently. I randomly machine embroidered a jean jacket in the 90s that had started out plain white, then got dyed deep pink, then the multi colored embroidery. It sounds a little much, but I got compliments on that jacket nearly every time I wore it. I also did a personalized appliqué/.machine embroidered Christmas wall hanging portraying my daughter’s family for their first year in their new house. It’s very satisfying play.
This is darling!
Lovely ,I will try this. What a beautiful little girl!
I echo the above questions: what is a “a thick straight stitch”. My machine doesn’t have a setting to make a straight stitch any thicker. In the photo under that statement, it looks like the pink flower out line is couched. In the video it looks like you’re constantly going forward and back. Is that a stitch setting?
Many machines have a triple straight stitch which almost mimics a hand embroidery straight stitch in that the pattern goes forward then backwards then forwards again creating a ” thick straight stitch”. One of my old sewing books suggested creating a sampler of sewing machine stitches by using a striped fabric, or adding lines to a plain fabric, backing the fabric with stabilizer, and then playing with all your stitches on your machine, changing the length and width to see all the possibilities.
I’ve been using CADHOBBY IntelliCAD for my personal projects for a few months now, and I can say that it’s one of the best CAD software for hobbyists. It’s user-friendly, and the learning curve is not steep.
https://www.cadhobby.com/