Embroidery: as easy as you wanna be

Remember that 2 Live Crew song "Nasty as you wanna be"? Yeah, me neither. I just remember seeing the cassette everywhere (that's right, cassette), both the "dirty" and "clean" versions, one summer vacation spent in Panama City Beach, Florida (PCB baby!).

And that's a huge tangent.

What I really wanted to post about was my brief and wholly satisfying experience with embroidery. I have a history of taking up hobbies that are heavy on the equipment buy-in (piano lessons?) and difficult to master (for me, sewing). I joke that large loom weaving is the only hobby I haven't started. Yet. But embroidery is dead easy to get started with! A few years ago I received Sublime Stitching as a Christmas gift and had pretty much ignored it. I mean, I looked at it with brief interest and a resolution to get into it many times, but it languished on my bookshelf.

Recently, friends of ours welcomed their first little one into the world, and I wanted to make them something. I had, nearly the same week, come across a delightful blog called Checkout Girl through an equally delightful blog that was already in my reader (Posie gets Cozy). Both hugely talented ladies embroider like the wind. If the wind could, you know, embroider. I'm not good with analogies. Anyways, I was inspired.

And this was my contribution:









I'm so pleased with how it turned out!

All I had to buy was easily found at Jo-Ann's:
- an embroidery hoop ($2)
- a few colors of 6-strand floss (pennies each)
- a tapestry needle ($3 for a pack of 3), and I really had no idea which kind of needle to get. I just kind of picked one at random. It worked!)
- I used fabric from a vintage bed sheet as the canvas, and some acrylic felt that I already had on hand.

I think the bird is my favorite part!

(by the way, the "W" is for the baby's first name")