Embroidered Eiffel Tower

A bit ago I completed an embroidered Eiffel Tower

It was part of my spring mantel

If you have read my blog for any length of time, or if you follow me on Pinterest, you already know I am kind of obsessed with embroidery.

Actually, any kind of hand work – embroidery, needlepoint, crewel, oh how I love crewel.

So, I decided it was time to stop just pinning and try my hand at it.

I am not exactly sure why I decided such a large project would be the way to go, but I was feeling the need for an Eiffel Tower.

I know, that makes no sense.

If you are a talented and experienced embroidery pro, please stop reading.

If you really want to know how to do this the proper way, please stop reading.

I had it in my mind that I was making this on this particular day and would make it work with what I had on hand.

Now that my disclaimers are out of the way, I will share my process.

I actually started with the frame that was the right size for where I wanted to it to go on the mantel

I traced the opening onto a piece of poster board and then sketched my Eiffel Tower in pencil and then went over it with Sharpie.

I made some changes from this version, and I know in both versions the top is a little wonky and I would do it differently in the future.

I used this tutorial, actually for cupcakes as a guide.

Then I laid my fabric over the drawing and traced it lightly with a good old fashioned pencil. I do now own an embroidery tracing pencil, but this is what I had available to me at the time. Actually, it worked quite fine on this fabric, which is like a chambray and didn’t really show up once I was finished.

I started with a hoop but found it very awkward, probably because of the size of what I was working with.

So, I am not going to give you a tutorial on stitches, I will leave that to the pros. This is what I used to get myself started.

You have to choose how many threads you are going to use, I used three except on the clouds – there I used all six for it to be “fluffy”.

The picture above show why you should use a hoop – so that the fabric stays in place and you don’t get bunching like I did.

And yes, my stitches are not straight or even.

I did very basic stitches except I decided to get a little fancy with the “amour”.

When it was complete, I used a staple gun to attach the fabric to the back of the frame.

In the end, I was happy with it despite the flaws.

It gave my mantel the kitchy edge I was looking for and I finally did it instead of just pinning it.

I am hoping to take the lessons learned here and try again, probably on a smaller scale so and not in such a rush.

How about you, have you tried your hand at embroidery?

Thanks for reading!