Here’s my confession: I live vicariously through the artistic abilities of my child. I believe she has a fantastic sense of color, line, and style (not that the state of her room is any indication of her design talents).

Being the stage mother of a single child I intend to exploit her vision for this year’s holiday gifts. To put it simply, her artwork will serve as an embroidery pattern to give a humble flour sack tea towel some extraordinary flourish. Since your child is obviously equally as talented, why not give this idea a try:

Materials

Copy of the artwork
Fabric
Transfer paper
Embroidery floss
Embroidery hoop

Select the Artwork and Make a Copy
I like simple line drawings because you don’t have to fill in planes of color with your embroidery. You can copy the drawing either with a copy machine, or scan it into your computer. If you have a scanned copy, you can use a graphics program and further expand on the original art by adding other elements like lettering.

Trace the Design onto the Fabric
I’m using a dish towel, but you could also embellish a whole line of linens such as pillow cases, napkins, aprons; or clothing like a t-shirt or jeans jacket. Place the transfer paper on top of the fabric where you want your design to appear and the copy of the artwork on top of the paper. Trace the design.

Start Embroidering
Take a look at Candace’s embroidery lessons to give you some ideas of what type of stitches might work well for your design. For this towel I used satin stitch for the letters, stem stitch for the outline, seed stitch for the butterfly’s body, a rosette stem stitch combination for the butterfly’s wings,and feather stitch for the bee’s body.

Tata
That’s it.