Embroider a Garden of Flowers

Wow, summer is fully upon us: hot days, fireworks at night, and beautiful flowers everywhere. I hope you are having fun and staying cool. Road trip anybody? Pure Michigan is all around us! 😊

For several years now, I’ve offered a program at our library called Maker Magic! We gather together and create a new craft each month, usually seasonally based. I have a great core group that’s been coming for years, but we get new faces each month as well. Below are a few pictures from past Maker Magics!

It’s a program for adults, but parents can bring their children to craft with them if they are twelve years or older. I’ve always resisted making easy crafts or kid-like crafts though. Rather, I challenge the kids, and sometimes the adults as well, to learn new crafting skills. I’m hopeful that maybe I’ve even turned some folks onto skills, such as embroidery and cross-stitch, that have become a new passion or hobby for them.

Our spring programs were wiped out when the library was shut-down because of the Coronavirus pandemic. And at this point, the future of fall programming is still up in the air. But as we work hard to provide programming virtually or at-home, I came up with a summer Maker Magic Take-it and Make-It program. I picked one interesting craft and created 42 kits for patrons to take home and make on their own. Registration was required and all 42 kits have been spoken for.

So, while you may have missed out on getting a kit, I’m going to share the craft and instructions with you here in my blog. As my Maker Magic regulars can attest to, I like to write very detailed instructions. Please read and follow them along in order, and you’ll do fine. Any questions, feel free to email me at graib@cidlibrary.org.

If you make this craft, please take a selfie of you and your finished project and send it along to me at the above email address. I plan on posting your wonderful creations to the library’s Instagram account in the near future. You can also post it to your own Instagram account and tag the library, cidlib, and I’ll repost it to ours. Good luck!

I found this craft on Pinterest. Actually, what I found on Pinterest was a picture, no instructions included. It was pulled from something called google.co.za which I discovered is the Google search engine for South Africa. To the right, is the original picture I found. I liked it immediately, but I tweaked it a bit as you can see. I like the results. I hope you will, too! Here we go...

Grow Flower Button Embroidery

MATERIALS NEEDED

Seven buttons 8-inch hoop 11-inch piece of fabric (we’ll discuss fabric types below) 9-inch square of felt Green embroidery floss: I used DMC 367 Embroidery Needle Scissors Tacky Craft glue (such as Aleene’s) or a glue gun

Fabric discussion: Tightly woven ​even-weave fabrics are best for embroidery. You can use fabrics such as cotton, linen, rayon and polyester blends. I used broadcloth, which is a cotton.

About the needle: embroidery needles are sharp needles with larger eyes than a regular sewing needle, so that you are able to thread it with embroidery floss.

1.) Choose the buttons you want to use on your project. You can use however many you want, but seven fits nicely on an 8-inch hoop.

2.) Plan out where you want to place your chosen buttons on the fabric. HINT: Once I figured out how I wanted my buttons placed as flowers, I took a picture of the placement to refer back to as needed.

3.) To start, lightly sketch with a pencil the “grow” and grass line on your fabric. HINT: Practice sketching the line on scrap paper before sketching on the fabric. Place the hoop over your scrap paper to figure out how long to draw the grass line. Next, you will lightly sketch the stem lines for your flowers, based on where you want them and your flowers to be. You will sew directly over all lines as you stitch, but having them lightly there will help you to know where to stitch.

4.) It’s time to put the fabric in your hoop. Unscrew the fastener a few turns and separate the two parts of the hoop.

Place your fabric over the inner hoop without the fastener. Center the design so that the “grow” line is placed as in the sample, just below the middle.

Now place the outer hoop over the fabric and lower hoop. You may have to unscrew the fastener a bit more to get it to fit over the fabric.

Tighten the fabric in the hoop so that it’s taut and easy to embroider on. Pull the fabric as tight as you can, stopping to tighten the screw on the fastener. It’s kind of a process: pull fabric, tighten the fastener. Keep doing it till you get it right. All the while you want to watch the design on the fabric and keep it centered in the hoop.

5.) The thread you embroider with is known as six-strand floss in the craft world. We are going to separate the floss and just use three strands at a time. While separating floss can be a little tricky, we’re doing it for two reasons. One, it will make it easier to thread your needle. Secondly, it can be harder to embroider with six strands of floss, and we don’t want that to happen, especially if this is your first-time embroidering.

How do you split your floss? Start by cutting a length of floss, about 18 inches in length. Please don’t cut it longer: if it’s too long, it tangles easily.

At one end of your cut piece of floss, with your finger, separate out three strands from the six. Hold three strands in one hand, and three strands in the other hand. Now slowly, and gently, pull the two groups of strands apart.

If they start to get tangled, stop! Hold them up and allow them to dangle freely. They should untwist, so that you can continue to pull the two groups apart. Proceed in this fashion till you have two separate lengths of three-strand floss. Good job!

6.) Set the one length of floss aside to use later. Thread the other length of floss through the needle. Do not bring the two ends of floss together. That would be a double thread. We are using the single thread method. (If you use the double thread method you’ve made your three-strand floss back into six strands. Don’t do it!)

At one end of your floss, tie a knot.

7.) We’re going to use a split stitch to create the embroidered design. NOTE: I got the instructions and pictures for how to do the split stitch and the lazy daisy stitch from a website called allpeoplequilt.com. Here’s a link to their website:

https://www.allpeoplequilt.com/how-to-quilt/embellishing/basic-embroidery-stitches-pictures-diagrams-and-how-tos

How-to do a split-stitch: Pull the needle up at A and insert the needle back into the fabric at B, about 1⁄8"–1⁄4" away from A. Then, holding thread atop the stitching line, bring the needle back up at C, piercing through the center of the first stitch, and pull the thread down at D so it lies flat against the fabric. Continue in the same manner, pulling with equal tautness after each stitch. HINT: In this diagram, they started stitching from the right side.

Embroider the grow and grass line first. Start at one edge and embroider straight across. DON’T stitch the stems at this time; you’ll go back and stitch each stem and sew on its flower one-by-one.

As you’re stitching the grow/grass line, you can make bigger stitches on the straight-line parts. But when you get into “grow” you’ll want to make smaller stitches as you go around the curve.

HINT: as you are embroidering, a couple of things to keep an eye on. As you’re stitching, the floss tends to get a little twisted. From time to time, let go of the needle, hold the hoop up, and allow the needle to dangle; it will untwist itself using this process. Also, it’s important to keep your fabric taut as you work your piece. Pull the fabric tight again and tighten the fastener a bit from time to time. It’s easier to stitch on fabric that’s pulled tight.

When you finish with one length of floss and have only a short piece left, you’ll tie a knot on the back. Finish with a stitch so that the thread and needle are on the backside of the fabric. Run the needle under a stitch on the back and pull through slowly creating a loop. Run the needle into the loop and pull gently but firmly to make the knot. Take the needle off of the floss. Trim the floss to about ½ inch from the floss.

Re-thread your needle with floss, tie a knot and continue stitching. When you get to the end of the grow/grass line use the same knot technique to end the line.

8.) For each flower, stitch the stem up from the grow/grass line, using the same split stitch. When you get to the top of the stem, sew on one button. HINT: Some of your buttons may be two-hole buttons and some may be four-hole buttons. Four-hole buttons can be sewn either of the two ways shown above.

9.) When you’ve finished sewing on a button, the floss should still be on the back side of the fabric. Now you’ll use the lazy daisy stitch to add leaves.

Add as many or as few leaves as you want. You’ll run the thread down the back of the fabric, taking a stitch or two in the stitches on back, till you get where you want to add a leaf. You’ll add leaves using the lazy daisy stitch.

How-to to make a lazy daisy stitch. Pull the needle up at A and form a loop of thread on the fabric surface. Holding the loop in place, insert the needle back into the fabric at B, about 1⁄16" away from A. Bring the needle tip out at C and cross it over the trailing thread, keeping the thread as flat as possible. Pull the needle and trailing thread until the loop lies flat against the fabric. Push the needle through to the back at D to secure the loop. HINT: A is the part of the stitch that attaches the leaf to the stem. Pull the Pull the needle up at A through the point on the stem where you want you leaf to begin.

After the leaves have been added, you’ve finished embroidering. Great job!

10.) It’s time to properly finish the project and make it ready to hang or give as a gift.

Tighten your fabric one more time and make sure the fastener is screwed tight.

Set the hoop down and trim all the way around in a circular fashion. Trim the excess fabric to about an inch. Don’t trim it too short or it will be hard to do the next step.

11.) Set the hoop down again with the back side up. We’re going to glue the excess fabric down as in the sample picture to the left. (This picture is from a previous Maker Magic project, so don’t be shocked it doesn’t look like yours’ does.)

Using either tacky glue or your glue gun, run a generous line of glue around the top edge of your hoop (NOT the inside edge as it could bleed through to the front.)

Pull the excess fabric over the glue and press it down. I usually work in sections and do about a quarter of the hoop at a time, so the glue doesn’t dry before I get to it. It’s very important that all the excess fabric is pulled neat and tidy into the back of the hoop so it doesn’t hang out, impeding the placement of the felt circle.

12.) When that’s done, place the hoop, bottom side down, on the square of felt. Trace around the outside of the hoop.

Cut the circle out. Because you want the felt circle to be slightly smaller than the hoop so that it does not hang over the edge, cut the felt just INSIDE the line you drew.

Run another line of glue around the TOP edge of the hoop. Carefully place the felt circle onto the back of your hoop. Press the edge firmly all the way around, helping the felt to adhere to the hoop.

Felt side up, allow it to sit till the glue is dried.

And now your Grow Flower Button Embroidery project is complete. I think it’s a super cute craft. Considering all I had to work from was a picture, I felt pretty good about how mine turned out, to be honest. And I hope you feel the same way about yours.

That’s all for now. I’m sorry my posts aren’t coming as often these days. As we slowly reopen the library, I go into the library to work some days and on other days I'm able to work from home. It’s a very busy time for us all at our library, and that means, unfortunately, I don’t get the chance to post to the blog as often as I’d like.

Take care. Stay safe. And please, wear your mask. 😊

P.S. Check out a few more shots from past Maker Magic programs. We have lots of fun and everyone goes home happy, with amazing crafts they magically made themselves.