Owl Embroidery

Of course it's beautiful and sunny out today!! We did not get lucky this weekend as far as weather is concerned. Our entire weekend camping was spent under a tarp, freezing!! Fortunately, we were able to make the most of it [unfortunately, I don't have a single picture to show for it due to the constant down pour].

Knowing it was going to be cold this past weekend, I thought it would be nice to have an extra layer to wrap around me while sitting by the fire. I didn't have much time to throw something together so I decided to buy a blanket from the store and embroider it with a fun looking owl. A girl can't just use a plain green blanket!! I had to make it unique somehow!!

Seeing how it was so simple I thought I'd share how I made it with you. Sorry ahead of time... I did most of this while at my bowling league so I don't have many pictures to show!

To start...

1. Buy a blanket and find an image you'd like to use. I just googled a couple key words... originally I wanted to do a tent of a fire but couldn't find anything that I really loved so I scratched that and searched "owl embroidery image." Once I found it I printed it out. Gather the other supplies you'll need: embroider floss in various colors, an embroidery ring [I think that's what it's called], and an embroidery needle.

2. [The next two steps could have probably been done in a much better way... so if you know of a better method please share!! Like I said I was on a time crunch!!] Iron medium weight interfacing [stabilizer] to the back of the blanket on the area where you plan to embroider your image.

3. Put your blanket into the embroidery ring and trace your image onto the blanket. To do this I place the paper print out onto the blanket and traced over it with a pen until the pen broke through to the paper. [Like I said there has to be a better way to do this!!]

4. Decide what colors you're going to use for which areas of the image along with which stitches you'll use. I decided to outline the owl in brown using the back stitch and filled in the eyes and wings using the satin stitch.

5. Now get to work!!!

If anyone has done their own embroidery, leave me a comment. I'd love to see your work!!

Enjoy, Amanda