I’ve just finished a Christmas present for my friend, it’s a little embroidery mounted in a bound embroidery hoop. The design is from Bustle and Sew, the pattern has a fox in the centre but as my friend is a cat person I changed the head and narrowed down the tail.

It’s a long time since I’ve done “proper embroidery”! I had a few problems with transferring the pattern onto the fabric, mainly because the air fade pen faded too darn fast, like I didn’t even have chance to choose my thread the first time…I think I need a new pen!

I bondawebbed the appliqued part first, then stitched the letters, with hindsight I would have been better to do the applique last as the changes I made did affect the ‘weight’ of the design, I would have centred it differently.

Due to the issues with my pen, I traced and embroidered the letters first, then went back to trace the flowers, I just marked the stems as I felt that would be sufficient.   I’m really pleased with the flowers, heart and stems, it came out much neater than I thought it would.

I found that the flowers weren’t quite lined up correctly with the writing, making the circle unbalanced, so I’ve added a little extra embroidery (her stylised initials -hope she doesn’t read this post!) and some extra French knots to fill in gaps between the flowers which I seem to have gained!

I stitched round the cat with blanket stitch and added whiskers etc, he’s a little more cheesy than I hoped but all in all I’m pleased with the result. I added a few extra flowers around the cat to try to balance out the design

I bound the embroidery hoop with a Debbie Munn check which happened to incorporate the main colours. I used my glue gun for the first time…and fell out with it! The instructions suggested I had 60 seconds before it dried, no I think I had about 5! I tried again but it then wouldn’t work so I resorted to PVA glue, it did bring back primary school memories as I peeled it off my fingers!

Despite the issues I had, I’m really pleased with the present and hopefully she will appreciate it too 🙂