During lockdown, I felt like I had to keep my hands busy and distract from all of the craziness that’s been 2020. You know that feeling where your hands for just ‘itching’ for something to do? I can’t be the only one who has had this feeling, right? Raise your hand if you found yourself baking all bread and cookies you could. Or cleaning for the sake of cleaning. Yup, me too!
Usually, when I feel that ‘itch’ to keep myself preoccupied, I turn to crafts. This time, I wanted to get back into embroidery. It felt like the perfect challenge, since I haven’t done a lot of embroidery in the last few years. The best part of it was that I had all of the materials I needed! I had the floss, the hoop, the needles, and a dress that was begging for some personality.
The Potato Sack Dress
Last year, I made a dress from the McCalls M7948 pattern. It’s a cute dress pattern, with a tiered or pleated skirt and some sleeve variations. It’s a pullover style dress, so there’s a lot of ease in this pattern. I went down a size and made several adjustments to the fit. The dress still ended up looking like a potato sack. Maybe it’s because I used a beige, linen-blend fabric that has been sitting in my stash. Whoops! It was the wrong fabric to use with this style of dress. Sadly, the dress sat in my closet, unworn.
I immediately thought of this dress once I decided to get back into embroidery. The dress has simple lines and plain fabric, so it would be a good, blank canvas for my design. Before I got started, I did a few more adjustments to improve the fit. I added some elastic at the back of the waist and I made a tie belt so that it would look more polished. Much better!
The Design
Next, I drew some designs in my sketchbook. I knew that I wanted to do something floral. I drew a few floral elements first, and then I sketched them all together to make one large bouquet. Once I was happy with my final design, I used a washable marker to draw the design onto my dress.
Since I couldn’t go out shopping during the lockdown, I picked out my color scheme based on the flosses I had on hand. I’m a bit of a craft hoarder, so I already had a few colors, to say the least! I chose a few shades of yellows and greens that were leftover from a previous project. I had a lot of blue flosses, so shades of blue were used for the large flowers. The color of the smaller flower buds was decided last. Originally, I planned to use a red on these flowers, but none of my reds looked quite right. So, I ended up picking three shades of purple instead.
Stitch Away!
I had so much fun relearning the stitches I’ve used in the past, like the backstitch and the French knot. I also got to learn some new ones, like the fishbone stitch. With all of the resources online, I easily found new stitches to learn and other ones to re-learn. I loved seeing my design came to life with each stitch!
Embroidery has been such a relaxing craft to rediscover! I feel it helped me stay calm and in the present. Every night, I looked forward to doing some more. In fact, it became a bit addictive! I love how the embroidery has added character and texture to this dress. No more sad, potato sack dress! Now, this dress feels completely transformed, and I can’t wait to wear it out on a date night… someday. Until then, I’m excited to keep practicing my stitches, so I can add more embroidery to my sewing projects!
Did you do any crafts or projects to get through lockdown? Do you have any sewing projects that could be spruced up with embroidery? Please share in the comments below!
If you would like to use this embroidery design for one of your own projects, you can purchase the pattern here.
