Stitching Stories With Book Lover's Embroidery
Hello! I’m Aimee Ray and I’m so excited to show you my new book, Book Lover’s Embroidery! It’s full of iron on hand embroidery patterns inspired by my life long love of reading.
Inside are over 50 original patterns inspired by classic stories and characters, quotes, cozy reading spots, some patterns to customize with your own text and lots of fun book motifs too.
I’ve had the idea for this book since I designed some Jane Austen patterns for a kit a few years ago.
I started out by making lists of my favorite books and collecting quotes from books, and quotes about reading. Then I did LOTS of sketches.
I used to do a lot of type design and most of the lettering in these patterns is hand drawn.
After scanning in my sketches, I traced them in Adobe Illustrator.
The iron on transfers can be used more than once, and there’s even a pocket in the back to keep them in.
Along with beginner’s embroidery instructions and lots of stitches diagrams, it all came together into one of my favorite book projects yet.
Here’s my kitty Kitto “helping” me stitch the cover!
Today I’m going to share a free pattern from the book, and give you some tips on embroidering text.
You’ll find the pattern and pattern guide with colors and stitches below.
I used a few different techniques here, using 2 of the 6 threads of floss.
I stitched ‘are’ and ‘good company’ in the Back Stitch, and ‘always’ in the Stem Stitch.
For the Back Stitch, make a small stitch, then come up ahead of the first stitch, and put the needle back down again where it ended.
Continue down the line, making a small stitches backwards from A to B, then come back up ahead at C and back down at A.
For the Stem Stitch, come up through the fabric at A, down at B, then back up at C, to the side and middle of the first stitch.
The stitches will overlap a bit, making a nice smooth line.
The main thing to keep in mind when stitching text, is to keep your stitches small and close together, especially around curves. This will make your lines smooth and easy to read.
For the big B in Books, I first did the thin lines in Stem Stitch, and then the thicker parts in Satin Stitch.
To make a Satin Stitch, make a stitch from A to B, across the area you want to cover. Make another stitch from C to D, right next to the first one. Keep them close together.
You can use almost any outline stitch for words, I like to use the Stem Stitch for cursive, while Back Stitches work best for the tiniest text, like the bottom line in this design.
I hope you give embroidering text a try, and check out Book Lover’s Embroidery with patterns especially for lovers of reading and stitching.
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Blog post by Aimee Ray
