I've always wanted to be good at embroidery. It's sewing that's portable. How appealing! I've tried many times over the years, but I was never really sure how to transfer the patterns to my fabric. Am I supposed to trace this with a pencil or a pen or what? And then once I started, my imperfect stitches always got me down.
Recently I learned about a neat product that promised to help with both problems. It has a kinda terrible name, Sticky Fabri-Solvy, but it's pretty miraculous. It's a printable, water-soluable stabilizer. You run it through your printer, stick it to your fabric, stitch over the design, and then soak it in water for a minute. The stabilizer dissolves and your perfect stitching is left behind. Reading Mollie's tutorial won me over and I ordered some.
Right at the same time I got a copy of Stitched Blooms, the new embroidery motif book by Carina Envoldsen-Harris. Perfect!
I'm a fan of Carina's blog and I love the look of her Polka and Bloom embroidery patterns. Now she's written a full book of them, with over 300 of her signature floral motifs.
Carina has a wonderful color and design aesthetic. Her embroidery is bright, modern, and fresh and this book is filled with all of that wonderfulness. You'll want to cover everything you make in beautiful flowers.
One of the big questions with embroidery is, "What do you do with it?". To help answer that question Stitched Blooms includes 20 projects to embellish. Some projects use store-bought objects as blank slates for embroidery, like mittens and tote bags, and others are very simple to sew, like this pretty horse.
I like that we get to see the motifs in use.
I've been saving this thrifted milk glass custard dish to make into a pincushion and decided the Pincushion Petit Four would be the perfect project.
I chose to stick with the motif Carina used for the pincushion in the book. The book comes with a handy CD which I used to print my motif on the Fabri-Solvy.
I used the one at the top and decided to save the bottom one for another project. I cut it out and pressed the motif onto some Kona cotton and started stitching.
The design is very pretty and easy to stitch, and the stabilizer totally solved all of my embroidery issues! It's so much easier to be neat when you can just follow printed lines.
After a quick soak in some water the stabilizer came right off, leaving a very pretty embroidery behind. I'm so proud!
Following the pattern in the book, I sewed it up and made this pretty pincushion.
I'm much more likely to embroider now, armed with this great stabilizer and all of these pretty florals!
You can pre-order Stitched Blooms now and have it in time to stitch some projects for the holidays. It's a lot of fun!
Disclaimer: I was sent a review copy of this book. Links in this post are Amazon affiliate links.
jess says
Sulky has so many great products. I haven’t tried this one, but it looks great!
Thanks for the book review
Jeifner says
The pin cushion looks great and the embroideries look so colorful and easy to do.
Nicky says
That little custard dish was beautiful, but I love it as an embroidered pincushion! Embroidery has been one of my favorite crafts since my mom taught me as a teenager. The stabilizer sounds great. Have you tried using an embroidery hoop too? The wooden ones are really cheap and they hold the fabric really taut while you stitch.
Abby Glassenberg says
Hi Nicky,
I do have a bunch of embroidery hoops, but I never think to use them! I’ll give it a try for my next Stitched Blooms project.
Abby
Abby Glassenberg says
Thank you, and yes they are super easy. I love that you can get really pretty results from very easy instructions with this book.
Abby Glassenberg says
Hmmm..I’ll have to take a look at what other products Sulky makes. This one is pretty impressive.
Miriam Prantner says
This book looks really wonderful, I love the little pin cushion/pillow you made!