It’s been a long time since I did any embroidery so I thought I’d dive back in. I hopped onto Etsy and bought a lovely kit from Oh Sew Bootiful which was a printed heart of flowers. I only bought the printed fabric kit and used up some of my mountain of thread to do it. It was a really fun project. Here is the finished piece ready for framing.
I sewed most of the kit during a visit to see my lovely mum for a few days. While I was there the cherry blossom tree in her garden was in full bloom. Mum has shaped it over the years and gets a lot of compliments on it from friends and passers by. Then sadly, while I was there the wind flared up and a lot of the blossom disappeared – so I had an idea. I took a photo of my mum with the tree.
The Oh Sew Bootiful kit included lots of French knots, so I thought I would try sewing some more onto the photo of my mum to bring the blossom back for her forever. I find French knots so satisfying – when they work. I accidentally picked up some cheap thread instead of my usual DMC one so I found it knotted a lot and it even broke a few times.
I’ve never sewn onto a photo before but, as usual, I just went for it to see what happened. The hardest part of this project was not getting fingerprints all over the photo as I held it in different positions and worked on the knots. I also had to be careful not to bend the photo or crease it.
I used a drawing pin to make lots of holes in the photo where I wanted to put blossom. I put a knot in the end of the thread to stop it coming through the holes in the photo and got French knotting. My top tip is to hold the photo up to the light regularly to spot any little holes you might have forgotten to fill with knots. To finish threads off I tied a knot and threaded the tail of the thread through the thread on the back of the photo as you would with embroidery on fabric.
I’m really pleased with how it turned out and am sure my mum will love it too. Now I’m looking at lots of other photos and wondering what I could do with them. You’ll see which one I’m stitching next in my column in May.
Have you ever tried stitching on a photograph? I’d love to hear your experiences or see your finished results.
Best song to sew photos to: Sowing the Seeds of Love by Tears for Fears (see what I did there…)
Best cake to sew photos to: Cheesecake
Costs:
Photo printing: 10p
Thread from stash: free
Total: 10p – a bargain 🙂
