Embroidered Bag and Pincushion

I was a guest poster over at Jane's Fabrics and Quilts on September 16 where I showed these items that I hand embroidered and I wanted to also post this on my blog in case some of you missed that posting at Jane's blog. I found this design that I had wanted to embroider and I colored it first using crayons and then did the embroidery. Then I made the embroidery into a zippered bag.

Some things that I do when I embroider by hand is to iron a fusible interfacing to the wrong side of the fabric before I start the embroidery. Whisper Weft is a good one to use, but if I don't have any on hand I will use any light weight fusible interfacing. This helps to both stabilize the fabric while stitching and helps to hide the threads. I personally do not use an embroidery hoop.

Here is my embroidered zippered bag~

I actually chose the border and backing fabric for this bag after I did the embroidery. I found a small piece of this fabric in my pile of pink fabrics and it was just the perfect choice not only because of the colors, but the flowers in the embroidery look a lot like the flowers in the print fabric. 

I quilted the bag too.

Back of the bag. I love how this fabric goes so well with the embroidery.

Closer look.

I had leftover Presencia thread, so I decided to embroider the stacking teacups design. Instead of coloring with crayons, this time I used watercolor pencils to color the teacups before I did the embroidery. I used a little water on a paintbrush and then dabbed the paintbrush on the pencil and painted it on the fabric. I added a fabric border and then decided to turn this into a large pincushion. I filled the pincushion with crushed walnut shells to weigh it down and keep it in place. 

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