Easy Embroidered Pumpkins – Preparing the Fabric
If you love crunching leaves, cozy sweaters and pumpkin spice lattes, you will love this quick and easy embroidery project. It’s a great way to practice or learn embroidery stitches.
This basic design can be adapted to any shape you like. Why not have a flower or umbrella for spring and a tree or stocking for Christmas?
Supplies
You only need a few basic embroidery supplies for the project.
- 7″ embroidery hoop
- fabric (any medium weight fabric is fine)
- medium sized crewel embroidery needle (sharp point and long eye)
- six strand embroidery floss or size 8 or 12 perle cotton
Outline the shape
Cut out a template in your desired shape. Centre on the fabric and trace with a water soluble marker or chalk. Be sure to test the marker first to ensure that the lines will come out of the fabric.
Do not use pencil or permanent marker because these lines will not be covered by stitches.
Mark the stitching lines
Mark a straight vertical line in the centre of the pumpkin shape.
Don’t worry about having the exact centre point. A close estimate is good enough.
Once the centre line is marked, draw parallel lines at half inch intervals on both sides of the pumpkin.
If you have a quilting ruler, it is easy to measure the half inch spaces.
The marked lines will be for the foundation embroidery lines, and filling stitches will be added in between.
Hoop
Once the fabric has been marked, put it into the embroidery hoop.
The design should be centred in the hoop as much as possible.
For the sample project, I used a 7″ plastic hoop for stitching and a 6″ wooden hoop for framing. You can use the same hoop for both stitching and framing.
Now you are ready to begin stitching the foundation lines.