Last year I embroidered two cross stitch pieces, and two embroidered designs from kits.
I already showed you the California and New York state pieces in this post: Little State Samplers Cross Stitch. I didn’t want to just store them in a drawer for years, so I set about to frame them myself.
I bought two 5 x 7 mounting boards, marked the pieces, and used a pretty tape.




The finished samplers in their dollar frames:

Not bad.
I received this Hawthorne botanical themed embroidery kit as a gift.

It contained an insert with illustrations of many stitches. I enjoyed the variety of stitches used to complete this design. My favorite was the fly stitch for the feathery leaf. I added some additional colors for interest. I have two shoebox size plastic bins of floss to choose from.



Why use a kit? The hardest part of creating free form embroidery is getting started and transferring a design; with a kit it is more likely that a design will be actually stitched.
For taking part in an Instagram sewing challenge, I won a voucher to Rocco-Sienna’s embroidery shop.
I chose a cute little alpaca (or llama) design, and a little scissor set, which is not part of the embroidery kit.

I hesitated on choosing this one because I thought I would get tired of embroidering so many French knots, but I enjoyed making them.


Both of these kits came with hoops. I always consider making something out of embroidered pieces like a little pillow or ornament as an alternative but these remain hooped.