Hats and Tomatoes in Brazilian Dimensional Embroidery

OK, it's not exactly painted, but it is a painted background. I'll tell you what I did in a minute, but first I wanted to point you all to the Yahoo group, BDEIG_Online_Chapter, that is introducing more and more stitch artists to Brazilian embroidery. Click that link to join and learn more. Sherry Johnson is the group's listmom, as I mentioned before, and she and members are posting lots of hints and tips for stitchers.


I'm writing this information on my web log here because when I'm finished you will see how long it is and will be glad it isn't loading up the Yahoo group. Currently there is a discussion about painted backgrounds for our embroidery -- I'll let you mosey on over there to read all the hints and tips.


I'm just going to show you here what I did. See the Brazilian embroidery above? --and, of course, all the cats and flower buttons, and that hat!


First of all, I found this picture somewhere online.

Pretty, isn't it? Well, too pretty to not embellish anyway! So I went over to the quilt store or JoAnn's (which is a wannabe quilt store) and purchased a package of inkjet printer sheets. This finished piece is approximately 5" x 7". I copy pasted the graphic onto a Word file, sized it as I wanted, and then popped in a paper-backed fabric sheet, and clicked "print".

By the way, you can also use freezer paper. Iron it onto the fabric you like, nip a tiny bit off the leading corners (so they don't jam your printer) and print your picture. I think the crazy quilters do that all the time.


Freezer paper you can peel off. The paper didn't come off the commercial fabric sheets as nicely, so I just stitched through the fabric, paper and all. Worked great!


Now you are probably wondering about the embroidery. I've had the request for the hat before, so I'm going to publish it here. If you can't get this link to open for the tutorial, just send me a note at the bottom of this post and I'll get it to you.


The flowers are called S.A.M. (Simply A-Mazing) and the instructions are in my book, Take A Stitch by Rosalie Wakefield (me). You make these flowers OFF the fabric and then pop them in wherever you want, stitching SAM's in green or flower colors. The basket is made with Boucle -- and all of the other flowers and the kitty are buttons from the craft store.

Now I'll tell you about the hat. The original inspiration for this idea comes from one of my fellow B.E. designers, Jinx Shearer, who made a much nicer one with a nice even brim several years ago. I liked the ruffle. Jinx's hat was all on fabric. The only fabric on this hat is a quarter-sized piece of fabric that I did the orignal weaving upon. The rest of the hat is all detached buttonhole stitch, either even (to keep the sides of the hat uniform) and increasing to widen out the brim.


I stitched some tiny roses on the brim and used a piece of Lola to tie on a ribbon streamer. Here's another picture of the hat I made on my tomato!

It's a tomato pincushion! Turned upside down (so the hard green part is on the bottom). I drew a line around the center of the tomato and tied floss tails all around. I took a tiny stitch with the floss tail and just tied a square knot. You can see this makes a nice display for the hat and the sunglasses. (The tomato is sitting on a wine glass turned upside down.)



So, see? What was I saying -- who needs fabric!  You can add Brazilian dimensional embroidery to ANY thing

Rosalie