My friend got me an embroidery kit of Starry Night for my birthday from a shop on Etsy. I really liked how it turned out and I had a lot of fun working on it, so I thought I would share a bit of the making of it. A big part of the fun is how much you can change these patterns to make them your own. I was so pleased I already went to the fabric store and bought supplies to start a new one, this time a jellyfish from my own design!
It took me a full week of working late into the night to get it done, but it was a fun thing to occupy me as I was resting after a bunch of dental work. If you make something like this know it’ll be a ton of hours, but it’s worth it! Tip: pliers to pull the needle through when using 6 strands of thread make the job a lot easier on the fingers!
The pattern and thread the kit came with was a really good start for me. With these things alone you could make a really cool piece, I just had a ton of embroidery thread already so decided to expand the colors I used. I did opt to use a larger embroidery hoop to give me more room to work, and after the project was done it was stretched to where it wouldn’t fit the hoop it came with. That’s fine though, they are cheap enough!
After a short while I pulled up the original painting on my iPad and used it as a reference to work from. I love the movement in Van Gogh’s paintings and tried to work that into my project.
Where the pattern called for a straight stitch over pretty much the whole image, I figured with a picture that has as much texture as one of Van Gogh’s paintings I could really have some fun with some funky stitches. I did a rosette where the Moon hugs a yellow circle and I chain-stitched the glow around the moon and some of the “paint streaks” around the design. I varied the thread from 6 strands to 3 throughout to really up the texture and visual interest. I love how it turned out!
My piece and the sample pic with the instructions.
If you are looking at this and thinking about starting your own embroidery project, I encourage it. I hadn’t worked on any embroidery since college (more than a decade ago) and being entirely out of practice I am ready to claim it as a new (old) hobby. You can do it! I believe in you!