What a fun idea! Embroider-along with this whimsical calendar pattern. Kelly from Craft Your Style offered a hand drawn design for a January calendar page, complete with a tutorial for the three basic embroidery stitches used — the running stitch, the french knot, and the backstitch.
The Running Stitch: this is basically making dashes along your paper board or fabric, going under and over the fabric, making stitches that are about 1/3 inch or 1 cm long. Easy peasy.
The French Knot: tauted as the most beautiful embroidery stitch ever, this embroidery stitch is made in 3-4 steps: a) Poke up through the spot you want to create a french knot. In one hand, pull the thread coming though the paper taught and in the other hand, hold the needle. b) Wrap the needle around the thread 2-3x. c). Close to where the thread came out, poke the needle back through the paper/fabric.
d) Pulling the needle/thread through until a little knot is emerges! So cool. It’s easy but it requires you to practice a couple of times. Tip: if you can’t get this stitch right, just make little x’s instead. Anyone can do this.
The Backstitch: this embroidery stitch makes a solid line an is created as follows: a) Make a little knot at the back and pinch the needle up through the paper and go over, under, and come up again. b) To fill in the gap created, go back to the last stitch made, and poke the needle through it about 1/4 way though. Repeat this process by coming up to make a stitch again and then filling in the gap. I learned this in Kindergarten, I think, so I’m sure you can figure it out!
Tip: Use this idea and design your own calendar for the coming year. I would make the calendar modular and re-usable. So I’d embroider a top section, with the bottom section to be added fresh, month by month. Alternatively, you can make it a perpetual calendar by just giving the Weekdays rather than the days of the month.
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Embroidery Patterns
Calendars (free templates, downloads & ideas)
