Needlepainting for the Altenew Challenge

Embroidery project for Altenew Challenge 

This past August Altenew hosted a challenge in which they encouraged all “fabric crafters” to create a project using Altenew products. At first I got really excited because as you know I love embroidery just as much as card making and I immediately started to think about what I’d do. I finished my project the day before the due date, and I was hesitant to share it after seeing the amazing projects that were being uploaded, but since I had gone that far I said to myself, why not? 

I chose to embroider a small bouquet from the Grateful Heart stamp set on a plain white t-shirt and leave the floss palette traditional with pinks and greens. The most challenging thing was transferring the image onto the fabric, I tried everything but the fabric wasn’t the most friendly to trace, it would’ve been ideal to work with a light box, but I don’t have one, so I ended up actually stamping on the fabric with a water based ink and embroidered right on top.

I worked with one strand of floss for all the stitching. I used stem stitch for all the stems in two different shades of green (one row in medium and one in light green), long and short stitch (shading) for the petals and leaves, also in two different shades of pink and green respectively,  and I filled the centre of each flower with french knot stitch using a golden yellow floss. Once it was all done, I thought it still needed a bit extra, something that would resemble the embellishments on a card, so I stitched a few white and golden beads all around the bouquet which also added a bit of sparkle. 

Different stitches I used for this project.

I also thought it would be a good idea to make an actual card with the same stamp and colour it in similar colours as the ones I used for the embroidery and left the background plain white. I even sprinkled some gold watercolour paint to resemble golden beads and added a few small pearls.  

Handmade card using Alenew Grateful Heart

I did not win the challenge, I wasn’t expecting to, but in my opinion these are not always about winning but to inspire, to share and spread creativity among crafters and I am really looking forward to participating in more challenges like this.

“You can’t use up creativity the more you use, the more you have”_Maya Angelou