Over the weekend I started a new piece of embroidery. It's been a while since I've embroidered, so it feels good to get back to doing some hand stitching!
The plan is to fill in this 4" circle with flowers and leaves. Originally the circle was 6", but I scaled it back. You can see the original outline along the left side of the photo. It's been so long since I embroidered, and it takes far more time than sewing, so it seemed more realistic to start smaller.
This type of padded embroidery is called stumpwork. The neat thing about stumpwork is the dimension you can get from padding the pieces.
Here I'm using one layer of wool felt pieces for padding. You can have multiple layers of felt and really get some depth going. Poly craft felt is also fine to use as padding.
I'm using Appleton crewel wool thread. I've always used crewel thread for this type of embroidery, but I'm pretty sure the other types of needlepoint threads can also be used.
The background is a piece of plain cotton canvas (7 ounce). The background fabric needs to be something sturdy to hold up all the surface stitching. This is just plain canvas I found at the fabric store in the utility fabric section.
WIP photos are being shared on Instagram. Follow along and watch me finish this piece! It's already progressed quite a bit from the original photo. I probably won't post many WIP photos here, but will show you the finished piece when I'm done.
