Family Portrait Embroidery Hoop

As simple and quick as this project was, Gracen and I had so much fun with it today!  It only required 5 materials and took us around 20 minutes from start to finish, but gosh I love our new family portrait embroidery hoop.  I may be a little bit biased, but I think it’s just adorable and it makes for a fun way to display some of Miss G’s never-ending artwork, which I love.

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Here’s what we used for the project… A pencil, a pair of sharp scissors, a Crayola fabric marker, a 10-inch embroidery hoop, and a TEA TOWEL!  Of course you could just use a small piece of white fabric, but I didn’t have anything suitable on hand and we found really inexpensive all-cotton tea towels on sale at Ikea this weekend, which saved us from having to buy a metre of fabric. ☺

To start with, I cut a square of fabric that was slightly larger than our embroidery hoop.  Then I positioned the hoop in the centre of the fabric and lightly traced around the outside of the hoop {tracing on the inside may make your lines visible in the final product}.

Then I used some washi tape to hold down the corners of the fabric and Miss G got started on her drawing of our family.

While I do think the tape helped keep everything in place, I also placed a hand on each side of the tea towel piece in order to help keep the fabric taut while she drew.

It’s a little bit hard to see on our wrinkly tea towel, but here’s what her drawing looked like when done.

Next, she agreed to let me trace her drawing using a black fabric marker.  While I’m sure she could have done this part on her own, I find that drawing on light, loose-woven fabric with marker can be tricky as it requires just the right about of pressure, so I offered to help out.

In order to set most fabric markers, heat is required.  You can check your markers’ package for specific instructions, but ours call for ironing, so that’s what we did {well, as you can see, what Gracen did – the girl LOVES being able to use the iron and because she’s cautious by nature, I’ve never had an issue with letting her – even at 3 years old }.

Here’s how we looked when she was done with us…  Pretty cute, right?

Next, I loosened the embroidery hoop’s screw just a little bit and took the two rings apart.  With the smaller ring on the table, I placed Miss G’s family portrait on top {making sure that the circle I’d drawn in the beginning wouldn’t be visible} and then pressed the larger ring down on top before re-tightening the screw.

Then I simply flipped the hoop over and trimmed off the excess fabric while Grae held the loose end up and out of the way.

The edges won’t look perfect when you’re done, but no one will seem them once the piece is hung on the wall, so it really doesn’t matter.

Though w could easily hang Miss G’s family portrait embroidery hoop up without, we added a small loop of black and white baker’s twine just for fun.

And that was it!  Our family portrait is ready to be hung!

 

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