Happy Valentine's Day

I've recently picked up a new favorite hobby. While I love crocheting, it has now been paired with embroidery. I'm not talking cross-stitch. That's boring. I'm talking "Make it look like whatever you want" embroidery. My favorite website for all-things embroidery is Shiny Happy World with Wendi Gratz. That woman knows her stuff and is an EXCELLENT teacher. I've been learning stitches and how to do all kinds of things and decided I wanted to make something for my husband. But what do you make a guy? More importantly, what can you make him that is embroidered and not lame?

Well, one of the things I love about Wendi is that she creates the templates of what she embroiders and transfers them to fabric in a variety of ways. Most commonly I use the heat transfer pencil method. I draw what I want, flip the plain white paper over and follow the outline on the back. Next you iron the paper onto whatever fabric you want to use. Lastly, you go to town with your needle and thread. Here's what I did.

You can kind of see the marks left from the heat transfer pencil- it's pink.

The almost finished product. I used several different stitches which I love. The one I used on the clouds and sun is my favorite.

Framed. For the record, what it says (in French) is "I love your butt, Valentine". Yes, we're classy. But luckily we both speak French fluently so we can mask it from most people.

Here's a sneak peek of my St. Patrick's day creation...

This was inspired by a video pin that I have. If you want to pick up a fun new hobby, I recommend embroidery. And if you're brand new, I recommend watching all of Wendi's tutorials. She makes it easy peasy to pick up.