Botanical Embroidery Design: an Exciting New Direction For My Art

Sometimes the universe nudges you forward when you’re not quite ready. This happened a few weeks ago when I checked Spoonflower’s list of upcoming design challenges and saw one featuring embroidery.

Do you embroider? I’d love to hear about it. Do you usually purchase kits? Digital patterns? Do you create your own designs?

Although I am not very good at stitching, I LOVE the look of embroidery and have long dreamed of creating my own designs. I admitted it publicly last fall in an interview with Laura Bray (which is sadly, no longer online) and over the winter began working on creating some designs. Some integrate painted watercolor imagery with simple lines for stitching and I planned to print them with Spoonflower.

When I saw the Spoonflower Embroidery Template Design Challenge (thanks for the nudge, universe), I quickly got to work creating a design to fit the parameters.

a mock-up of my Clematis Embroidery Design in a 6” embroidery hoop

This embroidery design is meant to be printed on an 8” x 8” swatch and fit within a 6” embroidery hoop. It coordinates with my Watercolor Clematis Vines design (available in large-scale and small-scale versions on fabric, homewares and wallpaper).

I can imagine combining the fabrics and embroidery in so many fun ways.

All of the designs were inspired by my clematis paintings from last spring, including this one:

(I’m framing the original painting for an upcoming show, but it’s also available as a fine art print).

One of the beautiful things about being an artist today is that it’s so easy to use digitized* versions of your paintings in many different ways. The possibilities are limitless, which is an inspiration in itself.

My new embroidery design is the first of a series combining watercolor imagery and simple lines. I especially love the fact that each person who stitches the design will choose how and what to stitch, making each stitched piece unique.

Another great thing is that as an 8” swatch it’s very affordable, only $5. Perfect for those of you who already have embroidery floss, needles and hoops. If I get enough votes in the contest, my pattern will be available right away.

I would love to have your vote!** Voting is now over.

I’m still working on putting together my first kits and digital patterns (with Laura Bray’s expert help) and hope to release them in the next month or two. Until then, here’s a sneak peek of the process:

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be bringing this creative dream into reality.

What projects have you been working on lately? What creative dreams do you have that might need a little nudging along?

*If you’re an artist curious about digitizing your own art, I teach a class on Skillshare that walks you through the process using Photoshop. This skill, more than any other, has opened up infinite possibilities for my work. I’m grateful to be able to share it with you.

**I truly appreciate each and every vote. Because I often get questions from people who have trouble voting, I thought I’d explain it a bit here. Spoonflower contests are determined by popular vote. Everyone is allowed to vote whether they have a Spoonflower account or not. You can vote only once, but you can choose as many designs as you want. This contest has 718 entries and they are arranged randomly for each voter. It does take a while to scroll through all of the designs and only a few load at a time, but I always enjoy seeing what people have created. If you’ve come to the bottom of the page and haven’t seen my design, you can search for “mygiantstrawberry” by clicking on the page and hitting Command+f on a Mac or Control+f on a PC. Thanks so much!