{Embroidery Hoop Art}

Hey, y'all!  Beth of Through the Eyes of the Mrs. has been working on creating an embroidery hoop art gallery in her home.  I saw her post about it on Facebook, so I offered to make her a couple of hoops.  She accepted my offer and requested one with the word hello and one with a pennant banner.  Last week on her blog, I shared the tutorial for the two embroidered hoops I created.  Today I want to share them with you lovely folks.

To begin, you need a few inexpensive materials.

You need embroidery hoops, fabric, embroidery floss, and a needle.  First, stretch fabric over your embroidery hoop.

To do that, loosen the screw on the outer layer of the hoop and remove.  Place fabric over the inner layer of the hoop and then replace the outer layer of the hoop.  Tighten the screw on the outer layer of the hoop, but make sure you pull the fabric taught over the frame as you do so.  Then it's time to decide what you want on your fabric.

For Beth's hello hoop, I printed that word on paper in a size I thought would look nice on the hoop.

I taped the word on the back of my hoop and held the hoop over a lamp.  I traced the word with a pencil.  (It is a bit awkward trying to figure out how to do all this at one time, but I promise it's not too hard.)

Then I simply backstitched the word with my needle and embroidery floss.  (If you don't know how to do a backstitch or other embroidery stitches, check out this post from Flamingo Toes.)

When I finished all the stitching, I hot glued the extra fabric on the edges to the back edge of the hoop.

Then just to add a little something-something to the hoop, I hot glued ric-rac around the outside.

I think the hello hoop turned out really cute.  I also created the pennant banner hoop Beth requested, as you can see in the photo.  (I covered the outside hoop of the pennant banner one with strips of fabric.)

For a very small amount of money and a little time spent stitching, you too can have cute embroidery hoop art.  Or you can make a few to send to a friend like I did.