Hi there, it’s Vero from @verobujo on Instagram and YouTube, and today, we are doing something really exciting! We are embroidering on paper! Embroidery can be such a fun activity to do, and when you mix it with journaling it creates a whole new world of creative possibilities. 

A foreword before we get started though, I’m no expert in embroidery, so pardon my lack of embroidery terminology. 

We will be making this beautiful piece below:

Things you need

• 160gsm paper, I recommend either notepad paper from Archer & Olive, or a journal from Archer & Olive. I’d further suggest the former, as it is easier to handle a sheet of paper when embroidering rather than a whole journal. 
• A pencil
• A sewing needle
• Embroidery thread, I am using several different colours, but you could use just one colour, or as many as you’d like

The stitches

To start off, you’ll want to pencil out your flowers onto the paper, now you don’t want the details to be too small here, because paper doesn’t shrink when you poke a hole through it. You also don’t want to aim for perfection when drawing, because the outline is only a rough guide for your embroidery. 

If you don’t feel up to drawing the flowers, you can print off this free printable that I’ve included, I’d suggest printing it on normal paper then taping it to your desired embroidery paper. Remember to resize the printout to the size you want! Then following the dots on the printable, pierce the paper creating your design.  

If you aren’t using the printable, your next step is to poke the holes where you want to be stitching. You don’t want the holes to be too far apart, nor too close. If they’re too far, you have less detail to your design, but if they are too close, you risk ripping the paper creating a cutout line in the paper. 

We are going to be using the 5 following stitches

The blue leaves

For the first stem design, we are using the classic back-stitch, which you can see in the photos below. 

Then you go back through hole number 2

And repeat the process

For the leaves pick a single hole to bring all the stitches back to them and continue up the stem. When poking the holes for the leaves, poke them at the extremities of each leaf. You want between 3-5 holes at the tip of the leaf.

Lavender

For this flower, we have two types of stitches, we are using the whipped running stitch for the stem, and the lazy daisy for the petals. 

Follow the images for the whipped running tutorial and stem creation

For the whipped running you'll go the length of the stem going in and out of each hole. Then from the top you're going to pass the thread through the top side stitches as follows

At the end it should look like this:

For the lazy daisy follow these steps

Contrary to the leaves from the previous design, we are only going to poke one hole at the extremity of the petal. 

Remember the stitches for the lavender petals should all start in the same hole!

Sunflower

For the sunflower, we are using 4 different stitches

The stem is using the chain stitch 

Similar to the lazy daisy but you're going to go back through hole number 3 on the inside of the thread from stitch 1 and 2

You finish the chain stitch off like a lazy daisy. 

The flower is using the lazy daisy, which you should be familiar with from our lavender flower. Before stitching this one I recommend poking holes in a circle and poke a large hole in the middle of the flower. The reason for the large hole is because your thread will be going in and out of that hole many times. 

For the leaves we are using the side-feather stitch and ending it with the back stitch. 

In the side-feather, the needle comes up through holes 3 and 5

Your finished piece should look like this:

Don’t forget to watch my YouTube video where I show you how to execute each of these stitches. You can watch here: 

Now you don't have to use the exact same stitches I did for the project, feel free to mix and match the stitches to create your own piece!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this project, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with! Don’t forget to tag me @verobujo on Instagram if you decide to recreate this project!