embroidered covered buttons

October 11th, 2007

buttons

These little babies are for the embroidered button swap that Ms. Greetingarts is hosting. This was my first idea and I’m very happy with how they turned out. I’m fairly new to the whole embroidery thing and I wanted to try something that was a little more detailed–something closer to drawing. I used the backstitch for the hands and the split stitch for the chopsticks. It sure as hell wasn’t easy. I pulled out a lot of stitches, but by the time I got to the fourth button I was on a roll. For the smaller buttons, which are a little under an inch across, I traced the design and for the bigger ones, which are just over an inch, I simply looked at the picture and embroidered freehand. This second method really worked well for me, though by the time I got to the last button (in last row on the left) I got cocky and thought I didn’t even have to look at the picture–bad idea. It’s pretty wonky, but oh well; I was hoping the little egg I embroidered would make up for it, but then it didn’t really turn out looking like an egg–more like a strange yellow piece of food, so I just put my needle down at that point. There are a couple of more picture of the buttons on my flickr account, if you’d like to see. This will be my first swap and I am ridiculously excited. We were only supposed to make 5, but that would mean making an incomplete set. Then you wouldn’t know how to use your chopsticks and we can’t have that.

Posted in craft, swaps.

11 Responses to embroidered covered buttons

  1. Kelly says:

    WOW! These are amazing! I am so impressed, I am just learing about embroidery, I think I’ve got a long way to go before I can ever do anything like this! -kb

  2. leslie says:

    these are so amazing!! very, very clever and man, can you embroider!

  3. These are so beautiful! I came here via your comment on my blog about the running stitch I used on my monkey, and now feel quite ashamed at my poor embroidery technique.
    Anyway, I’m glad to have found your delightful blog.
    Cheers,
    Heather

  4. amandajean says:

    those are some amazing buttons!!! nice job.

  5. Debi van Zyl says:

    these are incredible! i love them…

  6. Kate says:

    Amazing embroidery! Great work.

  7. Cristina says:

    These are fantastic. Of course a chopstick tutorial should be embroidered on buttons!

  8. Anne M. says:

    Amazing buttons! Let me know next time there is a button excgange. I’m in!

  9. Alix says:

    chopstick instruction embroidered buttons…where do you get your ideas from? Whichever cupboard it is, it’s wonderfully stocked. Really enjoying my visit. Will be coming back for tea regularly. please put the kettle on.

  10. amy says:

    Those are kick ass!!!! Ilove em- yr such a talent!

  11. […] October 11, 2007 I moved to a new site and you can now find this post at http://www.elsiemarley.com/buttons.html […]