Embroidered Quotes and Vintage Frames

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It's Pinterest Challenge Time! (Updated link takes you to link party, where you can see highly superior Pinterest Challenge projects!)

As I mentioned, say, YESTERDAY, I've been working on new window coverings for the living room. And because I love embroidery, and because of pins like this one, I decided embroidering a new window treatment (gag, I hate that term) would be, like, totes awesome guys!

EPIC FAIL.

Not because of the embroidery (thanks to my grandmother, this is one area where I have something resembling skills). I'll share my insane failure (due mostly to basic math) and how I think I might salvage the whole thing tomorrow.

Right now I'm going to cheat with a Pinterest inspired project I actually whipped up a little while ago. I loved this picture of an Audrey Hepburn quote in a vintage frame.

Picture from Etsy: http://tinyurl.com/8dmtxhk

There's also a plethora of embroidered quotes floating around Pinterest, many of them based on the Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes quote "Home Is Wherever I'm With You."

Also originally from Etsy: http://tinyurl.com/8c9f5bh

At a neighbor's yard sale I found a great vintage plaster frame for $.50 (the kind of deal I'm always into!). Since there are so many "Home Is..." projects floating around I decided to be a little different and did the "Home Is Wherever We Are Together" meme instead. I smashed together the "quote in a vintage frame" and "embroidered quote about home/love/couplestuff" into one little project.

Creating a quote based embroidery project is super simple. Open up your word processing software, and type away! Even basic fonts can be fun. This project was done in Bauhaus and Bauhaus italicized because I'm all crazy fancy like that. Make it big enough that it will be easy to stitch (bigger is much easier. Tiny letters will make you scream!). I did a combo of split, back, and modified satin stitches (I could explain them to you, but Jenny does it better. And with pretty diagrams!). 

This is how I do it: after printing out the quote I tape it to a glass table and place a thin fabric (this is a leftover bit of muslin, but old sheets work really well) and trace with a very thin marker directly onto the fabric. Yes, this is not an accepted technique (transfers!), but it is simple and requires nothing you don't already own. Monochromatic embroidery projects always look awesome, and I raided my stash of vintage floss, where I had some blue ombre thread, for a monochromatic+ look.

It looked a little boring, so I ironed on small transfers from Sublime Stitching's Labyrinth patterns (yes, I'm a little obsessed with Jenny/Sublime Stitching. No, I'm not paid or promo'ed in anyway for mentioning her every post.) and stitched them out using a split stitch. 

Then I just taped the fabric into my vintage frame, and voila!

And then tragedy struck! As I was taking a picture for this post, the frame fell off the wall. Where it's been hanging for the last couple of weeks. Old glass flew EVERYWHERE around the living room, including into my shoe. Amazingly I didn't get cut. One piece of glass survived the frame's unfortunate fall. It survived it so well I can't  get it out! I'm going to have to take the whole frame apart, but that's going to involve goggles, and I just didn't have it in me quite so early in the morning.

All of this happened, by the way, at about 5:30am. When the picture fell J started yelling in the bedroom "Oh my god, TRACIE!!!! ARE THERE BURGLARS OR DID YOU BREAK SOMETHING?!?!?!?!?!" After I told him about the poor frame's leap from the wall, his next statement was "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TAKING PICTURES AT 5:30 IN THE MORNING?"

Some people. I swear.

Also, a better blogger would've taken pictures of the disaster, but I was to busy trying not to injure myself, and keep two dogs and a cat away from the glass.

Total cost of this project, $.50 (for the frame). It probably took me about two hours. Very easy. You can check out other things I'm dying to embroider on my Pinterest board devoted to the subject.

Can't wait to see everyone else's Pinterest projects! Tomorrow I'll be back with the epic fail of my first project/maybe salvaged first project!


[Along with the Pinterest Challenge hosted by Young House Love, Bower Power, and the Ugly Duckling House, this post was also featured on the Ginger Jamboree. Also featured on Liz Marie's link-up]