Embroidered denim jacket {Pt.3}

Hello my friends!

Welcome back to another episode of what-have-I-been-up-to-recently!

This week I thought I’d post an update of the progress I’ve been making on my embroidered denim jacket!

I’m sure it’s going to look awesome when I finally finish it, denim is super tough to embroider but the stick and stitch paper is magic. Once I’d finished the dandelion and dandetiger I decided to cut away pretty much all of the excess design and and reprinted the pattern so I could literally cut out all the flowers I want to included and play with the layout as I go along, its made the process feel much more organic and if I want to move something from A to B it doesn’t mess with the overall design as I’m now making it up as I go along. So that I have plenty of room to manoeuvre I reprinted the whole image on the sticky paper flipped the image over and printed it again which means I’ve got more flowers to play with.

The wildflowers from Disney’s Alice In Wonderland (the 50’s disney cartoon) are literally my favourite part of the movie and I’m so excited to finish this project.

The pansies were actually really hard to do, I did actually completely unpick one as it was looking so evil! (I really don’t recommend trying to unpick on denim) because these flowers are so much smaller than the ones I’ve already finished I decided to outline them in tiny black stem stitches that I could just colour in between the lines which did speed the process up.

The next part I’m going to be working on is the iris and lily, the stem of the dandelion and I’m thinking of adding a couple of naughty daffodils at the bottom.

Hopefully it wont be too long before I post another update to track how everything’s going! So that’s it for this weeks denim-jacket-project post…I hope you enjoyed it.

As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!

Ps. Its really hard to photograph this nicely in its current state!!

Psps. if you want to see part 2 its HERE

Embroidered denim jacket {Pt.2}

Hello my friends and welcome!

I scheduled this to post last night (Saturday) but for some reason it didn’t work!?

Anyhoo…

This week I thought I’d post a super quick update of the progress I’ve been making on my embroidered denim jacket!

Watching Alice In Wonderland (the 50’s disney cartoon) is literally one of my favourite childhood memories (along with Sleeping beauty) and I just love the Wildflowers so it made total sense to decorate this jacket with them.

I can only embroider the denim for a few days at a time as its so thick it just hurts my fingers too much (I’ve actually taken to wearing plasters as I hate thimbles!) and I’ve removed the rest of the stick ’n’ stitch paper as it had begun to unstick in places. My new plan is to reprint the design and just stick on each flower as I go – it also makes it look a little less daunting.

So far I’m incredibly pleased with how its looking, the Dandy-tiger is my favourite as it look so 3D! 

Continue reading “Embroidered denim jacket {Pt.2}”

Embroidered denim jacket {New project Pt.1}

Hey friends,

I don’t know about you but as a craft minded person I sort of have a craft bucket list of all the things I’d really like to make (or at least have a go at!) something I’ve always wanted to create is an amazingly embroidered one-of-a-kind denim jacket!

I found this particular jacket at my local thrift joint about eight months ago and totally fell in love with its ridiculously long sleeves, its a bit big but the sleeves are just too cool, plus its really soft.

Continue reading “Embroidered denim jacket {New project Pt.1}”

Embroidered Butterfly #2 {Orange tip} (updated May 2024)

Hello my friends! 

**This post was edited on 17/5/24 as I’ve remade the butterflies and updated the pictures**

How ya doing?

I’ve got a new butterfly embroidery to share this week. I recently got the chance to be the adoptive parent of some Orange tip butterfly pupae – I did a post on them a couple of weeks ago (links at the bottom incase you fancy giving it a read!)

So this is #2 on my Embroidered Butterfly challenge. According to Butterfly Conservation there are 61 types of butterflies in the UK.

Continue reading “Embroidered Butterfly #2 {Orange tip} (updated May 2024)”

Embroidered Butterfly #1 {Small tortoiseshell} (updated May 2024)

Hello friends! 

**This post was edited on 17/5/24 as I’ve remade the butterfly and updated the pictures**

I’ve got a new butterfly embroidery to share this week. I’m really happy with the Small tortoiseshell photograph (that I posted last week!) I particularly love this type of butterfly, they always seem so happy – don’t get me wrong all butterflies seem happy, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t like/was scared of them (not that there’s anything wrong in that of course).

So now I’ve created a few practice versions of these I have decided to give myself a bit of a challenge…I’m gonna have a go at creating all 61 types of British butterflies…in scale with each other!

That’s right in scale!!

Yep I’ve gone and got cabin fever cos its been raining too long! I mean honestly it’s been persisting pretty much everyday since the middle of February. 

Continue reading “Embroidered Butterfly #1 {Small tortoiseshell} (updated May 2024)”

Embroidered Gatekeeper butterfly

Hello my friends!!

This week I thought I’d post a new embroidery that I’ve been working on.

Looking back at the Gatekeeper butterfly photographs (that I posted last week!) I decided to embroider one similar to my other needlework butterflies – I’m developing quite a collection of needlework bugs/insects.

As always I started by roughly drawing four wing and body shapes onto calico and then filled them in with the closest coloured threads I had. I like to block colour first using two stands of embroidery floss and then blend using a single strand (on the smallest needle imaginable – its like a hair!)

Continue reading “Embroidered Gatekeeper butterfly”

Embroidered Large white butterfly

Hello friends! I hope you had a good week!

I’ve got a new butterfly embroidery to share this week. I’m really happy with the Large White photograph (that I posted last week!) I particularly love this type of butterfly – they’re so beautiful but because the caterpillars eat cabbages humans consider them a pest.

So I decided to embroider one similar to my Holly Blue.

Continue reading “Embroidered Large white butterfly”

Embroidered Holly Blue butterfly

Hello my friends!

This week I thought post something new that I’ve been working on…as you know I love needlework and I embroidered bees before and wanted to experiment to see if I could create a 3-d butterfly.

When I saw the Holly Blue butterfly and was able to take some photographs of it (that I posted last week!) I knew that I wanted to create a piece of art about this insect.

So I decided to embroider one similar to the bee I did last year, but instead of being a flat piece I want to try and make it a little more three dimensional. 

Continue reading “Embroidered Holly Blue butterfly”