Doily Embroideries

Today I have another embroidery post to share. I mentioned before, in the Create embroidery post, that I have been trying to come up with some things to use to decorate my sewing area. This little collection of embroideries was made for that purpose. It was one of those ideas that popped into my head and I thought "that should be pretty simple to do". Well, it turned out to be quite a bit more difficult than I thought it would be. Drawing the designs was a little more challenging than I had anticipated. I sketched out some designs after looking at lots of pictures of doilies. I knew I wanted them to be relatively open designs so I didn't have as much stitching to do, I drew lots of little doodles before deciding which ones I wanted to use. Then came the hard part. Trying to turn a rough sketch into something that looked even was not easy. The scallops around the outside and the designs in the middle are definitely not perfect but I tried to get them as close to even as I could. Once I finally got my patterns made it really wasn't that hard. It took a while to make them because it is a lot of stitching but I just worked on it a little at a time. It was a nice, easy evening project.

The first one that I made was the biggest. It fits in an 8 inch diameter hoop, the stitching is about 7 inches in diameter. I used a combination of backstitch, chain stitch, and lazy daisy. I thought the chain stitch looked similar to a crocheted chain so I thought that it worked well with the doily design. It takes me a lot longer to do than the backstitch but I thought it was worth it to get the look that I wanted. 

You might notice in the pictures that there is one section that has a slightly more yellowish look to it. Unfortunately that is not just the picture or the lighting. This takes a lot of embroidery floss, I had a partially used skein of white so it wasn't long before I ran out. I had to get a few things from Walmart so I decided to just pick up a couple of skeins of white embroidery floss. Not paying too close of attention, I hurried to the aisle that had the floss, reached in the little compartment that had white, grabbed two and threw them in my cart. The next time I worked on it I grabbed one of the skeins and started working, the room I was in does not have great lighting so I didn't notice anything different. Later I worked on it some more in another room and noticed that the whites were not the same. I looked at the two skeins I just bought and noticed that they were two slightly different whites. I really didn't want to redo everything I had just left it and continued with the right white. I knew I wasn't making it for someone else so I wasn't worried about it being perfect. So, the point is that you should always double check the colors before you buy them, not just assume that if you grab them out of the same spot and at first glance they look the same that they are the same.

The two smaller ones I made to fit in a couple of old hoops that were my husband's grandma's and they were handed down to me after she passed away. There was one small wooden hoop that is just two wooden rings, not adjustable in any way. The other is a metal hoop that I have a few of in a a couple different sizes. The metal one is a little bit bigger than the wooden one. 

In the metal frame I made a doily on a light green striped fabric. I made this one using chain stitch and backstitch. This design is about 3 1/2 inches in diameter, the hoop is a 5 inch hoop.

The last one is the smallest one. I used a light pink fabric for the background and like the first one I used a combination of backstitch, chain stitch and lazy daisies. I used backstitch for the spoke type part, chain stitch for the circles and the outside scalloped edge. The scalloped, loopy round is lazy daisy stitches and backstitch. This little hoop is 4 inches in diameter and the stitching is about 3 inches across.

I am including links to PDF's of the patterns but I am not going to go in to detail on how to make them If you know backstitch, chain stitch, and lazy daisy stitch, then you can make them. You can follow the pictures to see where I used each stitch. The color is easy since they are all done in only one color, though you could easily make them multicolored if you want. I used three strands of floss for all of my stitching. Click on these links to get the patterns.

Large Doily Embroidery Pattern

Small Doilies Embroidery Pattern