embroidery hoop

Timing Embroidery Hoop

Julia 5 Comments

Another project I made for the Package Pals swap I recently participated in was this embroidery hoop with a quote Meaghan and I both love.

Meaghan said this quote was something her and her husband had been focusing on since they are in the process of an adoption where they have very little concrete timing. I know its something I have to remind myself of often as I tend to want to plan things and let myself think I know what I’m going to make happen in my future, even though God often has different (better!) plans.

I whipped up a template (download here), traced it onto some fabric with a water-soluble pen, and embroidered in a range of blues and purples. One of my favorite parts is what I did with the outer hoop – I wrapped it with washi tape! I love how that turned out 🙂 For the word timing, I mixed strands of different colored embroidery floss, which I also love!

To finish the back, I ironed some white flannel around a piece of cardstock the same size as the inner embroidery hoop to get nice edges. Then I just tucked in the white fabric I had embroidered on and sewed it to the flannel to give a nice finished look.

Comparison Embroidery Hoop

Julia 16 Comments

I’ve had a fair share of car trips and plane rides lately, and wanted some hand work to take along. I found a ton of embroidery hoops at a garage sale last month (a grocery bag stuffed full of all different sizes for $5!), and have wanted more of them to put around the house since doing an embroidery hoop swap earlier this year. I decided to stitch up one of my favorite phrases lately:

Sometimes I have a tendency to look at something awesome about someone else, and instead of thinking how great it is that they are blessed with that talent/personality trait/situation, I think about how unfair my life is that I don’t have it. Which is completely lame. And messes up being happy about things I have that I should be psyched about because my life is pretty good.

So here’s to not letting other people’s gifts make me forget about my own. If the grass looks greener on the other side, maybe I should just water my own grass! Or appreciate that I even have grass.

I used this sparkley DMC embroidery floss for the word joy. While it was a huge pain to work with, I am completely in love with how it shines! I also painted the outer hoop red, and I love how it adds a pop of color and ties in the red from the word comparison 🙂

comparison printable

And here’s the image I made up to trace for my embroidery, in case you want to make your own or just print it out! Download the pdf here. It is sized for a 6″ circle hoop – but you can adjust the scale as desired. I ended up freehand-adjusting the word ‘joy’ and adding hearts – but this is what I started from.

Wild Olive Stitch Swap

Julia 22 Comments

Last month, I joined an embroidery hoop swap at wild olive. When I signed up, I provided some colors and things I like. I got this information about someone else, and whipped up a four inch ready to hang embroidery hoop based on those likes. And someone else should sending me a surprise package in the mail! My partner’s identity is a secret until she receives the package, but until then I thought I’d share what I made.

I’m especially pleased with the little heart between the two birds – its made with a bit of the green thread and a bit of the blue thread wrapped together.


Along with the embroidery hoop, I made a little zipper pouch to send my partner as well. Its a ribbon surrounded by a zipper so that it zips up into this tetrahedron pouch. I used this tutorial (found via pinterest, of course) to make this pouch out of a 20 inch zipper and a 20 inch piece of ribbon. Even with the great instructions, it was still a bit difficult to figure out how to wrap up the ends of the zipper, but I’m very pleased with how it turned out. I happened to get a 10 gallon bag full of a variety of colorful zippers for about $10 this summer from a craigslist listing, so I had plenty of zippers to choose from 🙂


Here’s the full embroidery hoop (with some information that would give away my partner’s identity conveniently hidden by the zipper pouch). I painted the outside hoop brown to match the branch with acrylic paint. I also used a pretty green floral print to finish of the back of the hoop.

I had a surprisingly great time whipping this embroidery hoop up. Now I just need to send these guys off to my partner 🙂 And I can’t wait to get my surprise package in the mail!