Another Floral Embroidery Hoop + Free Pattern

Today, I wanted to share another embroidery hoop I made, this time with my sister-in-law! This was a wedding present for my other sister-in-law, who got married in April. I love giving handmade gifts to family and close friends, and it's my opinion that you can't go wrong with something personalized.

See my favorite tips for embroidery hoops here

Preparing Your Project

The pattern is designed for a 12-inch hoop, but you could go as small as an 8-inch hoop without the pattern's elements being too small. You can either print it out or tape a piece of tracing paper to your computer screen and trace it. If you trace it, you can also change any elements to further personalize the design. 

You can find hoops to display your work on Amazon for cheaper than a fabric store, especially if you buy a pack to make several. For fabric, I recommend either cotton or linen and suggest avoiding anything stretchy. It's also much easier to work on fabric with a tighter weave than a looser one. Muslin and quilter's cotton are both great choices.

You can find the pattern at the bottom of this post. I freehanded the couple's names and traced them on the pattern because I do brush lettering anyway, but you could use any font on your computer, find an online template, or do your own handwriting for your hoop. Just make sure you draft it out on scrap paper first and trace it on the hoop because pencil has a bad habit of not erasing from fabric. (We won't talk about my adventures in graphite...)

Pick Your Colors

Choosing colors is fun to me, but if it feels challenging, go with something simple to start. I suggest going with three to five shades of a single color for the flowers, and about three shades of green for the greenery. For this hoop, we used a couple of shades of burgundy and a couple more shades of pink because her wedding colors were burgundy with accents of pink. It was during this time that we discovered how similar "shades of burgundy" is. You should have a range of light to dark values, which adds more interest than having colors that are too similar in value. I always recommend DMC embroidery flosses, and you can find DMC color charts to help you figure out which colors go together.

Stitch Your Hoop

While you can fill in the pattern with any stitches you like, here are the ones we used.

• Larger roses: Wagon wheel stitch, also known as woven wheel stitch.
• Lines connecting the two floral sections: Using all six strands and without separating them, come up at one point, go in at the next, and continue until your lines are done. You're basically doing a couple of giant stitches. When you trace these lines, only draw a dot for each point instead of drawing the entire line. That way, you don't have to worry about lines showing if the thread shifts!
• Dark green ferns: Use two strands to do the fly stitch, starting at the top and working your way down.
• Greenery: Do the lazy daisy stitch for greenery with "loops" for leaves, and fill in the center of each leaf with a second, smaller lazy daisy stitch. The rest of the greenery is simply satin stitch, and the stems are all done with stem stitch.
• Baby's breath: Do stem stitch, using two strands of thread, for the stems. The white parts are simply lots of French knots.
• Balloon flowers (the darker burgundy flowers with deep pink centers): Fill in the flower itself with satin stitch and sew the centers with lazy daisy.
• Smaller, four-petaled flowers: These are all satin stitch with a contrasting French knot in the centers.
• Couple's names: I used stem stitch to outline everything, and I filled in the thick parts of the letters with long lines of stem stitch. I was suffering from an unfortunate lack of motivation at the time, so I used three strands of thread instead of my usual two. If you find yourself suffering from a similar lack of motivation, you could use three or even four strands. I switched to two strands for the date at the bottom.