poisons in the herb plots, bones among the flowers

Kingfisher, 1871, John Ruskin

Sculptures by Bennett Klein, an artist from Toronto, Canada

Textile and Embroidery Art

Art Prints by beccastadtlander

x / x / x / x / x

Needle Felted Griffins

Pan’s Labyrinth / Hannibal

Hi there! Hopefully I can share some helpful insights - I started cross stitch and then branched out into embroidery myself so I can relate to the dauntingness of freehand work!

A large part of my journey was realising that I didn’t have to be super artistic, and that if I didn’t like what I stitched, I could just pick the stitches out! It helped me to stop being such a perfectionist (sort of! 😅)

So generally there’s two ways i approach freehand work - I’ll describe it and try and add some pictures to help & hopefully it will be useful ☺️

So if I have a clear idea - e.g. I want to stitch a flower bouquet 💐 I look at actual bouquets and the layers involved and try to stitch out a vague shape

So you can see there’s some stems and a vague idea of width? And then I’ll use different stitches to add some details

And I layer stitches until I feel it’s full enough (or I just get bored of it 😅)

Another thing I’ve found really helpful is to have a hoop that isn’t a ‘piece’ as such, but just a place to practice different stitches and see what you like stitching or if it looks good

But there are also times where I have a both vague and specific idea - so at the moment I’m working on another under the sea 🌊 inspired hoop - and I don’t have a ‘pattern’ strictly; but I do have some squiggles for the vague ideas I’m going for like this

So in my head I know roughly what type of stitches I want and the overall composition and then I start gradually building the piece up like so

Another way to get used to free handing is to pick one stitch and fill a hoop with it - e.g French knots

I found this useful for just being a bit more free with stitch placements and seeing how the hoop filled up!

Ultimately, freehand work can be as creative as you want - you could use a pattern as a guide but not use the specific stitches or colours, or do little sketches on paper for what you want the end piece to look like, or you can just grab a hoop and fill it however you want!

Don’t let feelings of not being creative enough stop you and remember things can always be picked out - no stitch is permanent until you say it is!!