Embroidery on Hand Printed Fabric

I received a happy and unexpected surprise from the blogosphere a few weeks ago!

I have been wanting to introduce my stamps to people who do embroidery work for some time now. I think a "dialog" between needlework and hand printed motifs would be a really fun way to work. However, I don't do embroidery myself so it would be close to impossible for me, at this point, to provide examples. So, a couple of months ago I did an online search, hoping to find examples that would help to illuminate the possibilities. I typed "embroidery on printed fabric" onto my google page, and it brought up a Pinterest page with exactly the same title. Sometimes a google search is just that efficient! I scrolled through and explored all the featured samples but was really attracted to this one (also seen in photo above) because of the simplicity of the pattern and the size of the flowers. I clicked on the photo, which took me to another page, curated by Kate and Rose Patterns. I followed that on to Kate and Rose's website and blog. Seeing that this embroiderer could be easily contacted and had a well-established online presence, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce myself and ask permission before I used her photo here on my own blog.

And that is how I met Kati Lovasz, owner and designer of Kate & Rose Patterns. She was happy to allow me to feature her embroidery sample and seemed intrigued with my stamp sets along with the idea of using them with embroidery. Then, to my pleasant surprise, she very generously offered to make more samples if I would send her a few hand printed swatches. I sent her most of the swatches that I used in this blog post, when I was introducing the different color choices in my paint sets.

Here we see how Kati chose to embroider within the stamped motifs from my Garden Party stamp set.

A closer look shows the different stitching treatments she applied to each flower.

Here Kati has stitched in the "empty"spaces around the motifs from my Wild Flowers stamp set.

A closer look at Kati's elaborate and varied stitching!

So beautiful!

Definitely check out Kati's online shop, she has both sewing patterns and embroidery patterns. Her designs, which are inspired by Central and Eastern European folkwear, are so very fresh and charming.

Kati sent me two of her embroidery pattern kits and it they so beautifully packaged! Each kit includes several iron-on transfer images which can be used many times, along with a color guide for your thread choices and a stitch "dictionary" to get you started with some basic stitches. Very helpful to me since I don't know the first thing about embroidery! I can visualize the possibilities, but that is as far as I can go - but I hope to change that!

Which reminds me, I recently saw these two beginner embroidery tutorials (tutorial 1 and tutorial 2) at The Thread, a blog presented by one of my favorite fabric sources.

We will all be stitching in no time! 

I think the way I would go about it would be to stitch first and then use that as a guide to place my stamp motifs......then add a few more embroidery stitches...more printing....and on and on.

Could be great fun!