Happy Canada Day!
Hmm perhaps I should have entitled this post ‘with glowing hearts’ embroidery…
I’ve been meaning to post about my very first embroidery attempt for quite a while now, but maybe I was just subconsciously waiting for the right time. And I personally can’t imagine a more fitting day to post about this embroidered map of Canada than on our nation’s birthday.
As I have mentioned before, this year I decided to only make presents for people. It’s turned out to be a lot tricker than I originally thought, but luckily I started this one in February before life got super hectic. I made this for a dear friend who was moving away to Australia for the year. Even though I’ve been cross-stitching for years, this was my first attempt at embroidering. I’m not sure if I chose the best thing to embroider for my first time – Canada is a very rugged (i.e. jagged and intricate) country! – nor the best method for something that required so many small stitches close together.
For this project I printed off a map outline I found online, I traced it on to transfer paper and then pinned the transfer to the fabric. I then just did a basic runner stitch along the traced outline. Then ripped away the transfer paper when I was done – using tweezers for the tiny spots.
I don’t think this method was perhaps the best choice. For the size I wanted it to be, it made everything really tiny and close together, so the transfer paper started to rip and made it really hard to continue – Nunavut nearly did me in. Needless to say, this is not a 100% geographically accurate representation of Canada… there’s probably a few bays and islands missing here and there.
