An Embroidery Blog

laraloop's embroidery blog No commissions- this is just a hobby of mine.

[laraneedlework]

I finished my Christmas gift! A three month piece of work based on Gustav Klimt's The Kiss - pictured below the cut. This is an 8 inch hoop and it's done with mostly DMC embroidery floss - it was very fun to do all the beads on this one - it's the most beads I've worked with so far.

[laraneedlework]

Tried my hand out at patching and sashiko embroidery- pretty fun but I was itching to get back to my more artistic piece. I am glad that I recovered some pants too.

[laraneedlework]

(WIP) Onto the clothing, I also tried my hand at cast on stitch for the frilly ruffle, was extremely hard to do with all of the other stitches in the way - I have learned my lesson to do it first 😊

[laraneedlework]

(WIP) Back in the saddle again! This time with a lies of p embroidery 😁 my plan for it is below under the cut! I've not planned out the stitches much but I do have most of the colors down 😤

[laraneedlework]

My latest embroidery - a piece I did for a fanart exchange and based of the last panel I did within said comic (here). I wanted to try out a simpler style (for the sake of time), using a friction pen to do outlines, and using a machine to do the border (the leaf border stitching). Otherwise everything is hand embroidered.

I have learned a few things since then - mainly not to use friction pen on a darker fabric....(you can see the lines here after I ironed it) and that this fabric is almost impossible to capture the nice maroon in a picture. Due to this I don't think I'm ever going to use that kind of pen on anything other than white or very light fabrics. And I'll probably keep this fabric color to sewing projects rather than embroidery projects hahaha

[laraneedlework]

I promise I'm working on something! It's just for an exchange thing that I'm supposed to be anonymous for so no WIPs 👀 It's a simpler piece but I'm loving how it's looking and so excited to show~

Popping in with some embroidery advice - if you get annoyed by your thread tangling while doing embroidery DON'T USE BOBBINS FOR ORGANIZING 😭 They make the floss look like this by the end:

Alas, they are soooooo tempting for organizing and I did use them for some of my floss but I highly recommend keeping floss as it is in the skein and learning how to pull thread from it - pull from the numbered side on DMC floss and you can pull as much as you want without it tangling (if you pull from the other side it will get messed up).

[laraneedlework]

tumblr/internet engagement is so funny - my wip for the klimt piece for one of my posts got more attention than the finished work 🤣

[laraneedlework]

Happy New Year!! I've made this small summary - a sort of seasonal one with when each came out. I feel like I really hit my stride this year and learned soooooooo much by pushing myself to do complex projects like the Henry piece. Do I wish I did more? Sorta, but I love doing elaborate pieces, the more pizazz the better! Additionally, this is the most I've done artistically in around 10 years - I'm super proud of what I've achieved!

Thank you to everyone who has ever posted a nice comment on my embroidery or encouraged me to continue - I really do appreciate you all. Next year I'm hoping to do some sewing ontop of embroidery so I'm going to be learning lots more!

[laraneedlework]

Probably the last WIP I'll post here before I finish this piece on Gustav Klimt's El Beso. It's coming along well and I'll definitely finish before Christmas!

Next I'll do the yellow then fill in the remaining of the green then bead time for all the triangles on the golden thread(vines?)! 🔺️I don't have triangle beads but I think my substitute will work.

[laraneedlework]

(WIP) Sooooooo cloose I can almost taste it. I would fill the rest tonight but its already late enough. I still have the grass/flowers then the beads but we are getting there!!

[laraneedlework]

This is definitely turning out to be my most complex piece. And this is my most complex section I've done! Heavy chain with interspersed satin circle stitches, circles of backstiches and couched flowers. Little white French knots on top of the heavy chain with backstitch black borders (last part for me to finish) - phew!

Shooting to finish the dress tomorrow. Here's a reference photo of this part for comparison! I definitely didn't do an exact copy but it was fun seeing how I could do a similar style 😁

[laraneedlework]

Dancing and immediately going to bed because I got done what I wanted to get done this weekend - the patterns of flowers on the dress!!! Tomorrow and maybe next day will be filling in the dress then another one or two days on filling the spots with satin stitches and detail work and then I can work on the last two major sections- the golden background (its going to be all couched gold thread) and the grass/flowers

[laraneedlework]

(WIP) Had a small break over the weekend but I'm back at it! It's really coming together 😊

[laraneedlework]

(WIP) I've got a deadline but I'm truckiiiin. The spirals in gold were not well planned (aka i didn't do a sample of it first) but its interesting to me how some looks really can only be done with alot of work in embroidery. I could have done it much faster but would it look like that? Absolutely not.

[laraneedlework]

(WIP) My next project, an xmas gift 😊

[laraneedlework]

Just wanted to say your erik embroidery is GORGEOUS!!! i love the design and kudos for all that hard work 👏👏👏

Thank you so much! ☺️ It's feedback like this that keeps me going!

[laraneedlework]

Shame about that dog.

The Erik piece is done! This one I have been working on for about two months but I'm glad I got it done during isterik week <3 (I'm not going to tag though cause it's not really applicable to any of the prompts) Erik is a fascinating character/antagonist to me and I loved making this with references to parts of the game/events that are discussed but not shown.

I have explanations on the little illustrations and comparisons to my Henry piece below.

The top illustration is of course the dog that Erik killed when finding out that Istvan was killed. The left flowers are carnations which mean love, distinction, and motherly affection. The flowers were common in medieval manuscripts. I have them blooming healthily on the left and the right they are withered - aka Erik's mental state after Istvan's death.

Then I have Erik on his horse during the horse race with Godwin - I thought about putting Godwin too but decided not to. Then on the right I have when Istvan gave Erik the message for Sigismund since that's the last scene they had together.

Bottom left I had a house burning and a small Erik standing in front of it and mirroring it to the right we have a fully grown Erik standing in front of the burned remains of a house he's burned no doubt with Istvan. Bottom picture of course is Istvan's grave. The yellow all around is Ivy, a very common plant in manuscript work as well.

I hope that a KCD fan can see that Henry is on the left in his outfit stolen from a guard that he's in when he kills Istvan and on the right is Istvan - his face in shadow of course because he died. The green bit above Istvan is a bloody footprint in grass - it doesn't quite come across but I kept it in cause it was fun.

This is a 6in hoop rather than an 8in so this is smaller than my previous piece. I wanted to do a small quick tribute to Erik but it got away from me. Here is a picture comparison to the previous Henry embroidery is below (no matter what I did I couldn't get the lighting right whoops). You can see how he's a nice foil to Henry - blue background and yellow filigree to Henry's yellow background and blue filigree.