I love encouraging my kids to be creative and make things, which is one of the reasons I have the kids’ artwork gallery wall, to display all their fun artwork.

I recently took the free embroidery class on Craftsy and I wanted to try my hand at a quick project, but instead of using some stock embroidery pattern, I thought it would be fun to use my kids’ artwork.

Instead of finding something the girls had previously created, I asked them to use a sharpie to make me a line drawing of something they loved. I was thinking it would be “my family” or “going on vacation” but for some random reason, my kids chose birds and cats as their favorite things.

Who knew? 
I took those line drawings and converted them to embroidery designs, which I used to try my hand at my new embroidery skills.  I think they turned out adorably, so I hung them in the playroom.

 If you love this idea and don’t know how to embroider, it is really easy.  I’ve cross stitched and quilted and (in my opinion) compared to those fiber arts, free hand surface embroidery is a lot more forgiving.

The other beautiful thing about this project is that it is DIRT CHEAP.  I mean, the supplies cost me less than $5. And if you have a decent craft stash, I’m betting that you could make your own embroidered art for next to nothing.

Supplies:

Woven Fabric (I used quilter's muslin)
Wash Out Fabric Marker
Scissors
Embroidery Needles
Embroidery Floss 
Embroidery Hoop (if you want to display your artwork in one, you may want to buy two)

Tutorial:

The process is pretty straight forward.  Trace the artwork onto the fabric with the wash out marker. Follow the lines with whatever embroidery stitches you like best, wash out the fabric marker and mount the finished embroidery in a hoop for display.

This video tutorial will walk you through all the steps.


I could definitely get hooked on this embroidery thing!