This blog post is your “if you like X-kind-of-stitching, embroider Y-design” guide to choosing the next embroidery project for your hoop.
Read on and see which of these stitching approaches has you motivated to start a new project.
If you like repetitions . . .
Jacobean gives you repeating floral clusters and vines in the round. You might work all of one color on a motif, moving around the circle. Then move to the next color. You might choose a motif and work it four times. You might stitch all of one quadrant and then repeat it.
A single structure sits at the center of Lighthouse, but there are plenty of repetitions in the nested, back-stitched waves, the stripes on the lighthouse, and the French-knotted blossoms covering the stony island.
Snowflake Christmas Cottage gives you a cabin embellished with fun stitch combinations — and then repetitions of pine boughs all around it. Enjoy rendering the curved brown branches with the outline stitch, the four-square pinecones with straight stitch, and the green boughs with straight and outline stitches.
If you want a project that’s faster and easier than others . . .
Choose Patchwork, and master the most basic hand embroidery stitches in this hodgepodge of quilt blocks. Fill one section with straight-stitched stars, another with back-stitched grids, and another with four-petal blossoms using the lazy daisy stitch.
All three of our Country Garden in-the-hoop designs are great for beginners or anyone looking for a quick stitch. Get them in a bundle or individually: Country Garden Kits & Patterns.
On any of them, you can star with the star-filled backround in straight stitches and then choose individual elements for mastering a variety of stitches. There’s the Wagon Wheel stitch for heads of lettuce, satin stitch for turnips along with lazy daisy for the leaves topping them.
If you want a project with a variety of motifs and sections . . .
Grow gives you a mosaic of garden-themed blocks. Each one is a discrete scene using a variety of stitches. Start with the seedlings at far left, move onto a mini garden situated above oversized sunflowers. Next stitch a fall window scene of dried plants and tinctures sitting over the graphically-styled “GROW.” Finish it off with the lupines at far right using big loopy lazy daisy stitches.
All of our Traditional Band Samplers offer up discrete rows of motifs and fill patterns. Here’s Honeybee Sampler. See how there are narrow borders along with wider rows of repeating fills. In between are fun motifs like the hive and clover, a honeypot, bear, and sunflowers. Work it row by row OR each time you sit choose a motif or a repeating pattern to stitch.
Create is a collage of elements connected to creativity. They’re shown not in a scene but in a layered combination that’s like a stitched vision board. Render it motif by motif: butterfly, bird, yarn, dressmaker dummy, painbrushes and more — all swirling around a woman’s image.
If you want a project that lasts longer than the others and is a bit more complex . . .
Sit A While is a rich living room scene with textured curtains atop golden boughs and a tucked-away cat. The carpet and the wallpaper each have a colorful repeating pattern. The green plants give you leaves and blossoms, and there are even a couple of small framed pictures to stitch.
Christmas Pines is our most ambitious Traditional Samplers. While the stitches aren’t difficult, it’s a piece that you can settle in with and expect to take more than a couple of days to complete.
I’ve been stitching it for the second time recently. I started with the row of pinecones at the top, stitching boughs and then cones. Next I started in on the hanging wreaths and moved onto the house. I’ve still got a ways to go, but I love the colors — and the heavier linen-cotton fabric base.
If you love stitching grids . . .
Each of the mountains, valleys, and pathways in Mountain Time are filled with a different pattern of straight and backstitched patterns and grids. This is a relaxing project that celebrates time in nature.
Tree of Life substitutes circles for leaves, and each circle is filled with a geometric pattern–many of them multi-color layered grids.
Which stitching preference is yours? Are you a lover of grids? Do you like to keep things easy or are you after a more complex project? Click here to browse all of our designs which eye toward your own stitching approach.
Tis the season to start stitching your holiday gifts and decor...
Our stick and Stitch patterns are perfect for making Christmas tree ornaments and for adding holiday motifs to linens and other fabric projects. Check them out over in the Stitched Stories holiday shop!
