Embroidery

6 November, 2025

New Cow and Highland Cow Embroidered Felt Ornament Patterns!

beckarahn2025-11-13T22:00:32-06:00Embroidery, Everything Else|Comments Off on New Cow and Highland Cow Embroidered Felt Ornament Patterns!

Today the blog has been invaded by a herd of cows! Cows and Highland Cows have been some of my most requested animal ornament designs. My grandparents had a dairy farm in upstate NY and I have a lot of fond memories of cows and visiting the farm when I was a kid. I decided that the shapes would be so similar that it would be easy to put both a holstein cow and a highland cow in the same pattern so you can make whichever version you love.

I started this design with a sketch. You can see I decided to draw both versions kind of on top of the other so I could see how the pattern could share pieces. I scanned this and took it into Adobe Illustrator to draw the pieces.

I wanted to coordinate it with my other patterns so it’s in the same style and size as the sheep, dog and cat designs.

One of the variations I did was a purple cow. Growing up, we had a family favorite ornament on the Christmas tree that is a purple cow. My grandma sent it to us when I was a little kid and it was a handmade felt ornament probably from a local church craft fair. The thing I remember is that it had rhinestone eyes that were bright red, which made it look a little devilish. There’s a poem by Gelett Burgess (later quoted by Ogden Nash) that my dad recites all the time:

The Purple Cow
(Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who’s Quite Remarkable, at Least.)

I NEVER saw a Purple Cow;
I never hope to See One;
But I can Tell you, Anyhow,
I’d rather See than Be One.

It always makes me chuckle and someone in my family would always recite the poem when we hung the ornament on the tree. Maybe your tree needs a purple version too.

19 April, 2025

Embroidering a Koala in 3 Minutes

beckarahn2025-04-19T13:08:04-05:00An Artist's Life, Embroidery, Videos|Comments Off on Embroidering a Koala in 3 Minutes

I’ve been having a lot of fun embroidering an entire zoo full of animals. Here is a koala from start to finish. This took about 33 minutes to stitch and I have reduced it down to just under 3 minutes. It’s wool felt, embroidered with perle cotton onto a wool felt eyeglasses case. I drew the koala in Illustrator first and printed a pattern on freezer paper. This is easier for me than doing a pencil sketch because I can adjust the size to fit in exactly the space I need and I can reuse those pattern pieces again and again.

20 March, 2025

How do I Start to Learn Hand Embroidery?

beckarahn2025-03-20T17:19:48-05:00Embroidery, Everything Else|1 Comment

I had a great email question a few days ago from a person who wanted to know how to get started learning to do hand embroidery. A friend of hers had taken several of my classes and said “Talk to Becka!” but she didn’t know what to choose. So I thought it would be helpful to write a post to help everyone find the right place for you to get started learning to embroider with me. I teach in a whole bunch of different formats so it can be hard to know where to start. Whether you like to learn in-person, online, from a book, from a pattern, or one-on-one, I’ve got everything broken down so you can find the right fit for you.

Beginners start here.

Check my Classes & Events page for upcoming Zoom and in-person classes. These class projects usually feature 1-3 different stitches so you can get an idea if you like to embroider and all of the materials are included so you don’t have to go out and buy a bunch of tools and materials.
If you like to work from written instructions, then check out the patterns in my Etsy shop. The Sheep, Cat and Dog are especially great for beginners. These patterns need just basic materials like scissors, needle, thread, and some felt and they have a QR code link to demo videos of each stitch.
If you like to work from videos, then look on my Online Classes page. The Tropical Fish Bag or Sashiko Inspired Squares are great beginner classes. These each have a printed fabric panel with guidelines on it to help you make your stitches. You can order these from my Spoonflower shop and use any embroidery threads you have already.

Then try…

In my Etsy shop, the patterns for the Toad, Owl and Elephant are great for adventurous beginners. They make a great second project.
On my classes page, try out the Cactus Garden or Strawberry Needlebooks classes for a little more challenge. They are slightly more complex stitches that incorporate sequins and layered pieces. The Cactus Garden also has a printed panel to follow where the Strawberry Needlebooks class uses a washaway stabilizer that you can stitch through.
If you have a Skillshare membership, you can find my Candy Canes Two Ways class, Ice Cream Cones, and some bookbinding classes that also incorporate embroidery with paper.
I also offer private lessons booked through Skillshare. You can choose a specific stitch or project that you are trying to do and I will customize a lesson just for you. Just check out my Skillshare profile to see the details.

Ready for a challenge…

Try the Parakeet and Dinosaur in a Sweater patterns in my Etsy shop. They have more kinds of stitches and pieces to assemble.
Sparkling Snowflakes on my classes page is the most complex design to stitch. It only uses one color of thread, but many many more stitches since you repeat the rays of the snowflake 6 times. It has a printed panel to help you keep the snowflake symmetrical.
On Skillshare, I have three Advanced Embroidery classes that focus on a single complex stitch. You can check out Oyster Stitch, Lattice Stitch and Buttonhole Cable Chain.
If you like to learn from books instead, here are a couple of my favorites:
- Creative Stitches for Contemporary Embroidery by Sharon Boggon Sharon includes photos for both right and left handed stitchers, which is so great!
- The Embroiderer’s Handbook by Margie Bauer
- Beaded Embroidery Stitching by Christen Brown (I have a slightly different edition, but this looks similar)

19 February, 2025

Preventing and Untying Knots in your Embroidery

beckarahn2025-02-19T11:37:22-06:00Embroidery, Tutorials|Comments Off on Preventing and Untying Knots in your Embroidery

One of the most frustrating things about hand embroidery is when your thread ties itself in knots while you are stitching. I thought I would write a couple of tips to help prevent knots and how to untie them when they happen.

Preventing Knots

After you have threaded your needle, take a few seconds to “condition the thread”. That means pinching the eye of the needle so that it doesn’t come unthreaded and then running the length of the thread through your fingers a few times while you pull on it gently. What does conditioning do? It helps to push some extra twist out of your thread. Less twist means fewer knots.

As you stitch, some stitch movements can build up extra twist in your thread, especially with stitches that wrap around themselves, like french knots or twisted chain. Keep an eye on the extra thread as you stitch. If you see it start to twist back on itself, that is a knot waiting to happen. You can let go of extra twist by picking up your work and dropping the needle, allowing the extra twist to spin the needle around and fall out of the thread. Then you can go back to stitching.

Untying Knots

The most common kind of knot to get while you are stitching is a slip knot. They happen when the thread starts to twist up and a loop slips through another one. When you see a knot starting, the best thing to do is stop stitching and don’t pull it tighter.

A slip knot looks like a loop with a knot at the base of it and you will see two “legs” coming out of the bottom. If you pull on one side, the knot will tighten up, but if you pull on the other side, the knot will unravel easily. It’s hard to tell which side is which by just looking at it because it’s all based on how your thread twisted, but a gentle tug on each leg will usually show you how to loosen it. If you accidentally pull it too tight and nothing is slipping loose, you can sometimes unravel it by slipping your needle into the knot part and wiggling it around a little to loosen it up and allow the threads to slip.

16 February, 2024

Wooly Whales: A sparkling review of Joe’s Toes Slipper Kit

beckarahn2024-02-16T17:57:34-06:00Embroidery, Weaving, Felting & FIbers|2 Comments

Sometimes the random things that pop up in your Instagram feed turn out to be something awesome. I spotted this slipper kit from Joe’s Toes while I was randomly scrolling a few evenings ago. I had been looking for a new pair of slippers after some sheepskin ones I ordered last fall turned out to be really uncomfortable. A kit sounded like fun!

I picked out the turquoise and teal kit and the description said I could customize it, so I requested the dark teal color for the uppers and green thread instead of rainbow. I knew I wanted to embroider or add something to the tops of them, but I didn’t have a plan when I picked out the kit.

The kit comes with pre-punched wool felt pieces for the upper, three layers for the soles, and the thread for stitching them together. You can choose from several options for the bottom layer or outsole. I picked the felt with latex, which is great on my hardwood floors and so far it’s not slippery at all.

I decided that I needed to stitch something fun on the uppers and after a little brainstorm my mom suggested humpback whales, which sounded really fun! So I dug through my stash of wool/rayon felt scraps and picked out a turquoise and blue-grey (peacock and pewter from Benzie Design) and some size 8 perle cotton. Even though the felt slipper pieces are about 3/16th inch thick, they are super easy to stitch into. I drew the whales onto some freezer paper so I could cut out all the little details easily. I basted them onto the uppers with a little glue stick. Once I had stitched around the whales, I added a few transparent sequins to add some sparkly bubbles.

I read through all of the instructions to assemble the slipper pieces and they offer a video, but I didn’t feel like I needed it. They have a couple of clever little notches that help you line up everything. Although they suggest using a backstitch to put everything together, which I’m sure works great, I decided to go with a double running stitch because I thought it would be a little neater on both the top and bottom.

These were so much fun to stitch! The pre-punched holes make it really easy even though you are stitching through four thick layers. I couldn’t wait to try them on.

Overall, the kit was packaged nicely, the instructions are great, the materials are super nice, and it shipped fast. I loved that I could customize it to the colors I wanted. I am just delighted with the results!

26 June, 2023

My Favorite Hand-Embroidery Threads: Eleganza Perle Cotton & Kreinik Very Fine Braid

beckarahn2023-06-26T18:42:27-05:00Classes & Teaching, Embroidery|2 Comments

I’ve been teaching a weekly online embroidery class for more than a year now and although my regular students know my favorite threads, I thought it would be great to talk a little more about them outside of class. I do a LOT of hand embroidery on both paper and fabric so I use threads nearly every day. I just finished a large project using all 6-stranded DMC floss, which is probably the kind of thread that most people are familiar with, but it turns out that it’s not my favorite one. So, let me tell you about the ones that are my favorites.

Eleganza Perle Cotton

The threads shown on the left side above are all #8 Eleganza Perle Cotton made by Wonderfil. They have had artist Sue Spargo design a line of colors for them and these are my absolute favorite threads to stitch with. Perle cotton is a little different than 6-stranded embroidery floss. Instead of 6 strands, perle cotton has only 2 and they are meant to stay twisted together; you don’t separate them like you can with floss. The threads are incredibly smooth and shiny and I don’t think they knot up as easily when you stitch them. The variegated colors are particularly nice because the color changes are pretty close together, so when you stitch the color changes often and you don’t get long stretches of the same color. There are also some unusual color combos in the variegated threads, like this one called “Conga Line” which I like when I am stitching.

Pictured are Welsh Poppy EZ16 (orange), Paradise Blue EZ10 (blue), Conga Line EZM47 (variegated), Mounted Trousers EZ57 (deep green).

Kreinik #4 Very Fine Braid

I have tried so many different metallic threads over the years and they are always stiff, rough and fray easily. They are difficult to stitch with and some stitches just look ugly because of the stiffness of the threads. The Kreinik braids are completely different. They are still a little more challenging than perle cotton, but the #4 Very Fine Braid is much smoother and easier to stitch with. They are sturdy and they don’t leave your piece feeling rough and scratchy. The threads are very sparkly and come in so many colors. It’s not just silver, gold, red and green! I usually get mine on Etsy because Kreinik doesn’t sell directly from their website, but it’s pretty easy to find.

Pictured above are Gold 002, Vintage Burgundy 153V and Aquamarine 684. “Golden” Mrs. Santa shown below is from a pattern by mmmcrafts, stitched by me.