Embroidered insect #6: Anatomical Ant

An ant has become the sixth design in my Anatomical range of embroidered insects.  

Elizabeth emailed me quite a while ago now with the suggestion of an ant – her kids were apparently loving the stitched insects. Her other idea was a spider, but I just didn’t have the stomach to sit through designing and embroidering one... I was already casting about for other insects that'd work well as embroideries, so it was a timeous mail. Thanks Elizabeth.

The design came together fairly quickly and then I hit a snag: colour. I knew I didn’t want to embroider the entire ant in black or grey, but couldn’t get my head around how to introduce additional colour while still staying true to the original idea behind the Anatomical designs, which was to keep the insects as lifelike as possible.

Enter Ant-Man.

Anatomical Ant had ended up languishing among my other half-finished designs and sketches, waiting for inspiration to strike. Which happened halfway through the movie. It hit me that Paul Rudd’s costume featured red accents and that this was how I could liven up my embroidered ant.

I’ve added some white as well, to lift the design, as the charcoal grey and rust red are quite dark, strong colours. And taken one or two liberties with ant realism for the sake of engaging stitching.

The pattern is available on Etsy and Craftsy

Daisy chain monograms in black and white

Fresh and modern, Daisy Chain Monograms are for stitching your stamp on anything fabric, from personalised notebook covers to hand-crafted wedding favours. The pattern features four variations of a striking but simple alphabet incorporating different and unusual chain stitches, including lazy daisies if you were wondering how the name came about. 

I've always wanted fabric-covered sketchbooks with an embroidered element and have gone for contemporary black and white. The way I've constructed the notebook covers creates a fabric pocket inside each of the front and back covers for storing ideas scribbled on to slips of paper and small inspirational items such as beautiful packaging, thread and even leaves, grasses and flowers. Pastels or bright thread colours would give the monograms a different feel for different personalities and/or occasions.

Weddings kept popping into my head while I was embroidering the monograms. But really, they're suitable for tea towels, cloth napkins, fabric-covered boxes, Christmas tree decorations and stockings... anything you'd like to personalise. Great for gifting handmade.

They're easy to transfer on to fabric and quick to embroider, in stark contrast to traditional monograms that require hours of painstaking satin stitch. Hopefully this is a happy alternative.

The pattern includes step-by-step photographic instructions on how to make the notebook covers - from measuring your notebook to creating a sewing pattern to embellishing it with the embroidered monogram. It's available as a digital download from my Etsy and Craftsy shops.

Lucky Fish alphabet and lettering

Based on my original Lucky Fish pattern, Lucky Fish Lettering is a complete alphabet that can be embroidered as is or split up to create monograms, names and phrases - or personalised rosettes.

Lucky Fish Lettering hand embroidery pattern

The design sat around on my computer for absolute ages. It was only when I started playing around with typography - my Deco Alphabet and ABC patterns in particular - that it fell into place in my mind and has now become part of a bit of series of alphabet, lettering and monogram patterns.

I knew they worked as lettering, as I expanded on my Lucky Fish pattern to create the full alphabet. If you're not familiar with the story behind that pattern, lucky fish is really just a South African way of saying, "Lucky you." As in, "You lucky fish."

I wanted to arrange the letters so the pattern could be embroidered as a complete alphabet or broken up into individual letters, to give it legs (as they say in the ad industry). The idea is for you to stitch the design as is or use the letters to create your own monograms, names, words and phrases. And the personalised rosettes are a fun idea for monograms.

Lucky Fish Lettering alphabet embroidery pattern

In addition to the complete embroidery instructions with close-up reference photos, the pattern includes step-by-step photographic instructions on how to make two different rosettes. It's available in my Etsy and Craftsy shops.

Wild Coral, the latest in the Wild series of embroidery patterns

I only intended to design three patterns for this series: Wild Grass, Wild Pods and Wild Ferns. But a number of you requested a fourth towards the end of last year and so I thought, why not? I was enjoying designing them and you were enjoying embroidering them. I was reading All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr at the time and there’s a strong theme of the ocean – sea molluscs in particular – in the book, which got me thinking of the deep.

Coral reefs are considered the grasslands of the sea and so for this fourth Wild pattern, I delved into that world and it’s fascinating shapes and forms to create Wild Coral. I had no idea how diverse coral could be, or that you got hard and soft corals. I imagine a lot of soft corals are mistaken for seaweed. It was these that convinced me to go ahead with the idea, as the soft corals provided the variety of shape and form I needed to incorporate enough different stitches into the design.

I got to try out a new stitch called all-over stitch, from Embroidery Stitches by ME Wilkinson. (I shared the link to the free book download with you in my January newsletter.) I had one of those heart-quickening moments when I realised it was perfect for creating the intricate network of a piece of fine branching coral. It’s really just straight stitches, but placed in such a way as to fill an area of embroidery in an interesting way. Mary Elizabeth shows hers illustrated inside a rectangular shape, but I took a more freeform approach to create the shape of the coral.

The Wild Coral pattern is available in my Etsy and Craftsy shops.

Tree Stack : Festive embroidery pattern + printable gift tags

Split them up, keep them together or rearrange them, that’s what I like about this design – its versatility. While embroidering the 10 different trees, I kept thinking how well they’d work as individual designs on napkins for the Christmas table, but how equally effective they’d be stitched as is on a child’s Santa sack or rearranged to create a forest scene as the centrepiece of a holiday quilt.

And although some do look fairly festive – festooned with star stitches, Fair Isle patterns and stitched garlands and baubles – at the same time they’re not strictly Christmas designs. With a change of thread colour, the trees wouldn’t look out of place incorporated into home décor or as a detail on a tote bag.

They’re quick and easy to embroider and because each tree features different stitches (two in particular are slightly unusual), the overall design is somewhat of a sampler, which is always fun and interesting to stitch.

Another thought that struck me while embroidering the trees was that they’d work really well as gift tags, so I created 12 printable tags as an added extra to the pattern. All you have to do is print the last two pages as many times as needed on to white cardstock and cut out the tags. I’ll be punching holes in mine and threading through a loop of black and white baker’s twine as a finishing touch.

Whether you use it for Christmas or not, the pattern is available on Etsy and Craftsy.