Be Lucky!
It's the first day of Spring and it's time to shake off all the dark and embrace all things bright and beautiful!
Here's a project to bring some fresh greens to your home. It involves a bit of applique with wool felt and embroidery with straight, chain and whipped back stitches.
You will need:
- Essex Linen in Ivory
- wipe off transfer pen
- 7" embroidery hoop
- DMC stranded cotton thread in blanc, 310, 317 and 700. All stitching is done with 2 strands of thread.
- embroidery needle
- 100% wool felt (I used Baize, Popeye's Gal and Forest)
- Bondaweb
- Small, sharp scissors
- Iron
- Be Lucky free downloadable pattern and guide
What to do
1. Start by transfer the design (all except the green clover leaves) onto your Essex Linen fabric by putting the fabric over the pattern and tracing the lines using a wipe off transfer pen.
2. Stitch the 'be happy' with DMC 310 using a chain stitch.
3. Trace the green clover shapes onto the Bondaweb, cut roughly around the Bondaweb and iron onto the felt pieces.
4. Cut arround each shape and then remove the paper from the Bondaweb. With the Bondaweb-side down, iron the clover shapes onto your fabric in the correct locations. If you like, you can add a whipped stitch around the clover leaves.
5. Add the white detailing to the clover leaves using DMC Blanc and a straight stitch.
6. Add the dots around the clover leaves using French knots and DMC 700.
7. Stitch round the circle using DMC 317 and a back stitching. Then add a whipped stitch to the back stitch using DMC Blanc.
8. With a damp cloth, remove any pen lines you can see.
9. Centre your fabric carefully in your embroidery hoop and when you are happy tighten the screw as much as you can . Trim around the hoop, leaving a 2cm border. To gather the excess fabric behind the hoop, use a running stitch all the way round the circle of fabric and pull tight.
10. Hang your masterpiece and feel the luck flow to you!