Friday, August 25, 2006

Have A Heart Swap


I wanted to show off a pretty heart I embroidered with silk ribbon for a swap going on at our Hand Embroidery Yahoo Group! I was inspired by some antique china I saw on e-bay and used what I had seen on the china to help me create a pattern. This was my first free hand design completely on my own.
  1. I used a water erasable pen and drew on the fabric an outline of where I wanted the middle flowers and then drew in the vines extending out from it.

  2. I then embroidered the vines in with 2 strands green cotton floss using the back stitch.
  3. After that I embroidered the middle flowers using variegated 7mm Bucilla silk ribbon. I stitched a spider web rose with Japanese ribbon stitches on the sides and tacked loop stitches around one side. Also I made a decorative lazy daisy stitch flower with a colonial knot in the middle, and two colonial knot flowers.
  4. Next I took the water erasable pen again and eyeballed where I thought flowers would look nice on the vines.
  5. I embroidered the little flowers on the vine in 4mm Bucilla silk ribbon using the colonial knot stitch.
  6. Then I took 4mm Bucilla silk ribbon using the Japanese ribbon stitch and placed leaves all around where it felt right.
  7. Can you find my initials "MA"? I hid them on a vine near a flower with green floss. I'm thinking in the future I may start using a signature bee...but first I need to learn how to stitch a bee!
If you would like to see more of my Silk Ribbon Embroidery Click Here

4 comments:

Susan said...

Your heart is beautiful! Very inspiring ribbon work.

Anonymous said...

Simply stunning work, Melissa! I've never tried silk ribbon embroidery.

Melissa said...

Sabine,
It is fairly easy and very fun. The stitches are very simple for beginners to make something beautiful!

Anonymous said...

What a lovely heart! I hope I get this one in our Have A Heart exchange. :-) I just found your blog and I love it! I've bookmarked it and added it to my faves. :-)