Tula Pink

Photo courtesy of The Quilting Company

Late last year, I was excited to work on a stitching project based on a pattern by Tula Pink that was going to be included in her new embroidery book, Coloring with Thread: Stitching a Whimsical World with Hand Embroidery.

Check out that center Octopus hoop in the picture up there (maybe, just maybe, it was stitched by yours truly!)

If you love Tula Pink’s fabric, then, no doubt, you will be excited to get your hands on a book full of her embroidery patterns!

When I was asked to stitch up another pattern from her book as part of the Coloring with Thread blog tour, I couldn’t wait to try Boho-ing up one of her designs: the Double Bunny.

I feel like I need to add this disclaimer before going any further: for my sanity (and yours!), I highly recommend enlarging your chosen patterns before you try this method for yourself. Seriously. Tula Pink designs are gorgeously intricate but cutting so many teeny, tiny fabric pieces might just be enough to push the most patient of fussy cutters to the brink of frustration!

I began with enlarging the Double Bunny pattern.

Enlarging a pattern is incredibly easy if you have an office supply store nearby. Take your pattern in and ask them to make an engineering print in whatever size you need. I enlarged the Double Bunny pattern to 14″ and it fits perfectly in a 14″ hoop.

Once I had my copy of the pattern, I used the techniques outlined in my book, Boho Embroidery to transfer the pattern to a selection of my favorite Tula Pink fabrics.

Here’s what I ended up with once I ironed all of the fabric pieces in place.

Using Madeline Tosh Unicorn Tails yarns and the Stem Stitch, I outlined all of the pieces. You can see what a difference it makes when each piece has been outlined:

And then I just kept on embroidering! I added sequins and beads and finished it up just in the nick of time so that I could share it with all of you! Here’s how it looks all stitched up:

And how about some up close and personal detail shots, because it’s all about the details!

The sequins make these feel like Disco Bunnies, don’t they?!

And there you have it!

If you want to try your hand at an embroidery project like this, here are the specialty Threads and beads that I used:

This yarn is really fun to embroider with….I mean, check out those colors! You can find these “Unicorn Tails” at Mad Tosh.

If you’ve been following along for awhile now, you already know how much I love the Eleganza Perle Cotton from Sue Spargo and Wonderfil Specialty Threads! I used the size #8 and in some cases doubled it up so that my stitches stood out next to the Unicorn Tails. I could have just used a size #5 or #3, which are both thicker, except I was gifted this box of threads and the colors matched perfectly!

Another one of my favorite threads (especially to use when working with beads and sequins) is Sulky Petites. These threads are approximately the weight of 2-strands of a floss like DMC that gets separated, except you can use these right off the spool without separating strands.

And speaking of beads, my favorite seed bead source is Fusion Beads. (How about that neon pink?!) I used size 8 seed beads for this project.

And if all of this seems completely overwhelming and you just want to stitch a pattern, look how completely different this project can be if it is simply embroidered using the Tula Pink color guides and her pattern from the book!

photo courtesy of The Quilting Company and stitched by Elise Baek

Please be sure to check out all of the other amazing embroidery projects on this Book Showcase!

Here’s the full schedule:

Monday, November 27th — The Quilting Company

Tuesday, November 28th — Minki Kim, Minki’s Worktable

Wednesday, November 29th — Nichole Vogelsinger, Wildboho

Thursday, November 30th — Amanda Carestio, Sew Daily

Friday, December 1st — Nydia Kehnle, Nydia Kehnle Design

Monday, December 4th — Sharon Burgess, Lilabelle Lane Creations

Tuesday, December 5th — Cindy Guch, Raspberry Sunshine

Wednesday, December 6th — Sandi Sawa Hazlewood, Crafty Planner

Thursday, December 7th — Wynn Tann, zakkaArt

Friday, December 8th — Elise Baek, Elise & Emelie

Monday, December 11th — Ann Blalock, Coats & Clark Sewing Secrets

Tuesday, December 12th — Sara Lawson, Sew Sweetness * Watch the Facebook Live video at 7pm CST

Wednesday, December 13th — Nancy Jewell, Free Spirit Fabrics

Thursday, December 14th —Annette Allison Millard, The Sewful Life

Friday, December 15th — Brenna Riley Gates, The Quilting Company

Welcome back for Week no. 16! If you are just beginning a piece for the #BohoSAL, check out my previous posts here. And if you are new to embroidery and want to learn the basics, check out my embroidery book, Boho Embroidery for everything you need to get started!

Well, the stomach bug has hit our house hard this week, which means I did a whole lot of cleaning and disinfecting and then some more cleaning and disinfecting and not as much stitching as I had hoped!!!

I did have wits enough to put together this Tula Pink piece that is slightly larger than I normally work with, though, and I am considering it my Boho Stitch Along piece for the week!

This citron color is from Tula Pink’s Prince Charming line, which might just be one of my all-time favorites…I still have decent cuts of all of the color ways from this one! I also added elements from Acacia, Bumble and Slow and Steady.

I found this lap embroidery hoop for a whopping $2.50 at the thrift store and picked it up even though I wasn’t sure if I would like using it. Let me tell you….I definitely like this hoop! For large pieces of embroidery, it is so handy to not have to hold the hoop while i’m stitching. I feel like I can stitch faster than if I were wrangling a large 14″ hoop while trying to stitch!

In non-Boho Stitch Along related posts, I want to tell you about a new (to me) thread that I have been using for the past week or so. Sulky sent me a few things to try out and these Cotton Petites were among the samples.

I am always game to try a new thread and I discovered that these threads work really great when I am adding beads to my embroidery. In the past, whenever I added beads, I just used sewing machine thread because I wanted something thin that wouldn’t take away from the embroidery. I would inevitably have to deal with tangles and it just never worked great. So when Sulky sent me this, a lightbulb went off and I was excited to use it with beads.

Each spool has about 50 yards and is the thickness of about 2 strands of floss, but you don’t have to separate it…you heard me right! You can use it directly from the spool!!! I love when I can use a thread that doesn’t need to be separated because it lets me stitch more and work less!!

I haven’t seen these in any craft stores that are local to me, but you can check them out at Sulky and they come in both solid and variegated (or bendable) colors.

Have a great week stitching!!

-nichole