Embroidery

I have the very VERY bad habit of trying something new (recipes, techniques, skills) at inappropriate times. Like...when you have to bring a dish to pass to feed a large-ish group of people, and you decide to try to make Monkey Bread for the first time at 8:00 PM the night before, and you go out and buy a brand new bundt pan and everything, and the top ends up blackish and burnt and stuck to the pan and you find yourself "gluing" the good bits of pastry back together on with caramel sauce...yeah.

Anyways, I always pick the wrong time to try new things. So given my track record, it only made sense that I would try to learn how to embroider and make a gift for my dear friend's new baby girl. And I needed to finish it in a week, in time for said friend's birthday.

It turned out waaay better than the monkey bread. I used a pretty fabric remnant that I'd been hanging on to forever - and in fact, I just realized now that the banner of this blog was created from a scan of the same fabric.


I screwed up a ton along the way, but this website saved my life. I cannot learn things by reading. I have to watch someone do it, and then repeat. Over and over again. So thank you, mighty interwebs and the Needle 'N Thread site, for being so awesome and having tons and tons of videos. Without you, I could not have mastered the chain stitch. The site also has some great hand embroidery patterns suitable for total beginners, so I picked out a lovely letter C and got to it.

And now it hangs sweetly in Baby C's room. I think she approves.