Tutorial: 'Love Without Reason' embroidery

I designed and made this embroidery for Mother's Day this year. A mother's love knows no bounds, it truly is 'love without reason'.  I am so pleased with how it came out, exactly what I had envisaged in my mind's eye. The design itself is very simple, with only four basic embroidery stitches, so even beginners should have little trouble with it.




MATERIALS:

You will need:
- The pattern (download it as a PDF and print it to A4)
- 20cm embroidery hoop
- 30cm square of fabric of your choice
- Pilot Frixion or other fabric tracing pen
- Embroidery thread in any colour you like
- Embroidery needle
- Two felt discs the same size as the inner hoop

STEPS:

1. Trace the pattern onto your fabric. You can refer to my tutorial 'Tracing an embroidery pattern' for this.
2. Stretch the fabric onto the hoop, making sure the tightening knob is on top.



3. There is no particular order to the embroidery of the elements, you can do it in any order you wish. The only exception to this are the yellow buds - embroider those first before adding the green stalks.

Here is a quick guide for each element, with links to video tutorials for the stitches from Mary Corbet's Needle 'N Thread (my online embroidery bible). Seasoned embroiderers will know these all by heart. Beginners - have a go, all the stitches used here are beginner-friendly and while some (like the french knot and satin stitch) may take a little practice to get 'perfect', you will be surprised at how easy they are.

Yellow buds - 1 strand - satin stitch
Flowers - 2 strands - lazy daisy petals and french knot centre. I used four different colours for the flowers, a pale blush pink, a darker bricky pink, orange, and aqua.
Leaves & stalks - 2 strands for the outline, 1 strand for the central vein of leaves - back stitch
Text - 2 strands - back stitch (an extra row of back stitch for the thicker parts)




4. To finish, you need to tidy up the back of the embroidery. Cut the fabric in a circle 4cm wider than the hoop. Put a felt disc inside the hoop. Cut a piece of thread 10cm longer than the circumference of the hoop. Knot at one end, then do regular stitches of the same length all the way around the hoop. Tighten the thread to achieve a 'yo-yo' effect with the fabric, and secure the loose end with a knot. Put the second piece of felt on top and stitch it onto the fabric all the way around with a blanket stitch.  (Or you can glue a piece of cardboard onto the back edge of the wooden frame. I have a mortal fear of using glue around fabric, as I tend to make a huge mess, but you may be braver than me!).




5. If you have used a Pilot Frixion pen to trace the pattern, give the embroidery a quick blast with a hair drier or steam it with a steam iron (without touching the embroidery) to remove any pen marks still visible. And your embroidery is ready to hang!