3D Embroidery Inspiration: Creating a Whimsical Garden with Garden-Themed Buttons 🌺🧵 | Step-by-Step Tutorial
Today, I want to share a delightful embroidery design with you, inspired by a colorful summer garden!
Close your eyes and let your imagination take over: Picture a garden filled with lush greenery, and in charming terracotta pots, vibrant gerbera daisies are blooming with joy.
The pink, yellow, red, and orange hues embrace the energy of the summer season! This embroidery design is sure to bring a sweet smile to your face. As you follow the magical dance of the needle and thread, you'll feel as if you can actually touch those colorful daisies. With every stitch, we will infuse the essence of summer into the fabric.
For my embroidery project, I plan to use four charming pot-shaped buttons and two tiny butterfly buttons. Additionally, I will demonstrate how I include a plaque with the inscription "Home Sweet Home" in my design.
As you can see in the pictures, these adorable buttons have holes around their edges. It will be possible to sew these buttons onto the fabric using a needle and thread.
This way, they will add a magnificent texture and depth to our embroidery.
In my project, I will arrange the gerbera daisies to appear as if they are lushly blooming inside these adorable pot-shaped buttons, while the playful butterflies gracefully flutter around the flowers. Together, we'll create a delightful scene where the vibrancy of the gerbera daisies and the playfulness of the butterflies come to life through embroidery.
I love to create my designs mostly through improvisation. This method gives me the freedom to explore and push the boundaries of creativity. The progression of embroidery is a magical experience for me; it brings sudden bursts of inspiration that guide my path. Sometimes, I end up with a result completely different from what I initially planned, but these unexpected changes add richness and depth to the project.
I have complete freedom in choosing the threads, and I prefer to use cotton amigurumi yarns. With their unique texture, I can easily achieve the thinness and layers I desire. Although they may have a slightly matte appearance, what matters most to me is the outcome and the opportunity to push the boundaries of creativity.
Come, let's begin our creative embroidery journey together! Let's pick up our needles and start stitching
I begin by lightly sketching my design on the fabric with a pencil.
Gerbera flowers consist of long and narrow petals. Since this is a small-scale project and the flowers are quite tiny, using picot stitch might be too challenging. Instead, I find woven bar stitch more suitable for creating the long, linear petals, as it allows me to achieve the desired form. However, like picot stitch, I also want the upper ends of the petals to remain free.
Here, I've devised my own method to address this. Now, let me show you how I create the "detached woven bar stitch petals."
Let me walk you through the process step by step. First, I cut a 30 cm thread and thread both ends through separate needles.
With these two needles, I bring the threads to the front of the fabric, maintaining a delicate 3mm gap between them. Holding one needle in my right hand and the other in my left hand, I align the midpoint of the threads meticulously.
Now comes the exciting part! Similar to the picot stitch technique, I mark a distance equal to the length of the petal and secure it in place by inserting a straight pin at that point.
This straight pin will act as an anchor, guiding me while I work with the threads and helping me weave them together evenly.
This straight pin will act as an anchor, guiding me while I work with the threads and helping me weave them together evenly.
I hold the left thread in place and wrap the other needle around it once before pulling both threads. I continue pulling the threads until they snugly fit against the head of the pin. Now, the two threads brought to the front of the fabric are secured at the head of the pin. To reinforce the hold, I wrap the threads around each other once more.
With the setup complete, I begin weaving between the two warp threads. First, I take the first needle and pass it under the right warp thread, then pull it up between the two warp threads to the left side. I do the same with the left needle, passing it under the left warp thread and pulling it up between the two warp threads to the right side. This cross-over maneuver effectively switches the positions of the needles.
Now, I repeat these movements, continuing the weaving down to the base between the two warp threads.
Now that you've learned how the "detached woven bar stitch" works, you can begin creating the flowers. Gerberas are similar to daisies, and I weave my petals by placing them in a circular arrangement along the base.
I stack the petal rows one on top of the other, maintaining the circular shape to form layered petals.
As you can see, I leave some space in the center of the flowers. This part will allow me to bring out the characteristic feature of gerberas, their different colored flower centers.
To give you a better understanding of this technique, I've prepared two short YouTube video links that demonstrate how these leaves are skillfully created. You can watch them by clicking on the images below and find step-by-step demonstrations of the process
After creating a large French knot at the center of the flower using a thick black thread ,I surround it with a ring of tiny French knots made with a brown thread.
Then, I embroider a second ring of French knots using a pink thread around this first ring.
I follow the same techniques to complete the rest of the flowers. As for the stems of the flowers, I left them for later. In improvisational work, I often struggle to position the flowers correctly on top of the stems.
That's why I prefer to embroider the stems after completing the flowers. This way, I can perfectly align the stems with the finished flowers, achieving a more balanced and visually pleasing composition.
I have used the Whipped Back Stitch to create the stems. This stitching technique adds a neat and defined look to my embroidery project. The whipped effect enhances the regular backstitch, resulting in beautiful and sturdy stems for my flowers.
"It's time to add the leaves, and as you can see in the pictures, I'm attaching these delicately woven small leaves to my composition using needle and thread.
I'm excited to introduce my new 3D embroidery technique, which I call 'Standalone Woven Picot Stitch.'
This innovative method involves securing weft threads to the fabric solely through pins, eliminating the need for stitching with a needle.
This allows me to create a woven leaf that stands independently and can be stitched anywhere on my desired embroidery composition.
Usually, two leftover thread tails from the weaving process remain at the base of the leaf. These thread tails come in handy when I attach the leaf to the background fabric using a needle.
It's a truly practical approach.
As I mentioned before, the terracotta flower pot buttons can be easily stitched onto the background fabric using a needle and thread.
Now, with a coffee-colored thread on my needle, I start sewing the first flower pot.
Carefully positioning the pot's opening to cover the bottom ends of the flower stems, I create a lovely arrangement.
The leaves gracefully extend outward from the edges of the pot, completing the look.
There you have it!
My gerbera flowers have now found their perfect spots inside the pots, thanks to the convenient
terracotta buttons that can be easily attached to the fabric.
Once all the flower pots are stitched in place,
it's time to work on the ground of my garden and the surrounding vegetation.
I almost forgot to mention the adorable miniature stone-like buttons that I can add next to the flower pots. These little buttons are incredibly handy pieces. Now, they will help me bring life to the natural greenery of my garden's ground.
After stitching the flower pots and placing the stones beside them, they all lined up perfectly along the fabric, creating a delightful arrangement. Now, to create the appearance of soil beneath them, I carefully sew a multitude of French knots along the bottom edges of the pot bases.
The French knots proved to be effective. They formed a textured ground that complements the overall design, giving the impression of pots resting on a natural surface.
As I progress, I'm working on creating a lush and vibrant garden scene. To add depth and realism, I'm stitching vertical straight stitches along the fabric, mimicking the appearance of grass.
The garden is coming to life with its greenery.
Now, I'm creating vertical straight stitches along the fabric to give the appearance of grass.
My garden is starting to turn green. Both the stones and the flower pots have a thickness of about 4-5 mm.
To achieve harmony and cohesion between the embroidery and the buttons, I am now crafting leaves that match their height
As seen in the pictures, I am using different shades of green and incorporating picot stitch and woven bar stitch to embroider the grass and foliage, adding depth and dimension to the overall design.
This meticulous effort brings life and vibrancy to the garden scene, making it truly captivating.
Suddenly, the idea of adding a label with the name "Ankaila" to the corner of my design struck me. It could be a delightful touch, integrating your name into the artwork.
As you can see from the pictures, I first stitched the label with needle and thread to the edge of a group of picot stitch leaves.
Then, I added more leaves around it.
I quite like this part. "However, there is still a large empty area in the center of my garden. So, I've decided to fill it with daisies using simple stitches.
First, I create a French knot at the center using yellow thread. Then, I form loop stitches around the knot in a circular manner to give it a petal-like feeling. Unfortunately, I haven't included pictures showing the process.
Instead, I can describe it like this: I bring my needle and thread up from the back of the fabric.
About 1-2 mm ahead, I insert the needle again to the back of the fabric. I continue pulling the thread downwards on the front of the fabric until I have a tiny loop.
To keep the loop at the desired height, I use a knitting needle with a 3mm thickness. I insert the needle inside the loop and pull the thread downward, tightly securing it until I have a loop on the fabric. Then, I make a securing stitch on the fabric to hold the loop in place and remove the needle from within the loop.
And there it is—a tiny loop made of thread formed on my fabric. I can now go back to the front of the fabric to start making the second loop for the petal. I continue this process to create a sufficient number of petals that will encircle the yellow French knot.
I hope I've explained it well.
I really adore my tiny daisies. I've decided to fill all the gaps in my garden with them. I'm also adding some picot stitch leaves around them.
My garden is now quite lush with greenery...
The upper half is completely empty at the moment.
I'm now transitioning to the upper part of my embroidery project. I'm attaching my 'home sweet home' sign to the top and embroidering colorful gerbera daisies on both sides of it.
I'm also adding small picot stitch leaves around the flowers. The sign blends beautifully with the flowers, creating a lovely look."
And there you have it, my completed embroidered garden!
Currently, I'm focusing on the central part of my embroidery project, where I'm adding charming butterfly buttons to the fabric using a needle and thread.
My goal is to give the impression that the butterflies are gracefully flying towards each other.
To achieve this visual effect, I'm creating flowing and curvy running stitches, mimicking the paths left behind by the butterflies as they take flight.
This technique infuses a sense of motion and liveliness into my artwork, making it seem as though the butterflies are in mid-air, soaring from the edges of the hoop towards the captivating center.
This artistic approach draws inspiration from the dynamic lines often employed in cartoons or caricature drawings, symbolizing the movement of swift objects.
My intention is to create a similar captivating effect in my embroidery, bringing a delightful touch to the overall composition
I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, and I hope you've enjoyed this journey as well.
May my little garden of stitches inspire you with fresh ideas for your own creations.
If you're interested in more embroidery tutorials and delightful projects, feel free to explore my YouTube channel: "Inventive ideas by Ankaila" 🌸
Happy stitching and happy creating!"
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