I love to go thrifting and hunt for certain things I really love. I have a slight fondness for Liz Claiborne garments and really don’t mind buying second hand pieces in the thrift stores, especially when they still have the price tags hanging on them from the department store. I was lucky to pick up one such piece a few weeks ago, a nice cotton blend short cardigan for a staggering $2.00 !
The cardigan is a very basic piece with no fuss but looks a bit “plain Jane” in my book and I kept looking at it trying to think of something I could do to dress it up a bit. At first I thought about adding vintage crochet pieces to it for a “retro look” but didn’t really like how it would end up looking. After going through my collection of books, I pulled out Doodle Stitching by Aimee Ray and realized that I could add just a little embroidery to change the look of the cardigan and give it a bit more “pizzazz”.
Like my yarn, I also have a stash of embroidery floss, cotton and wool, that I keep in my lovely vintage crystal vase next to my desk. Just like my yarn, I tend to gravitate to very earthy colors in embroidery floss too, and when I see a great sale or colors I must have, I pick up a few to add to my growing collection.
I found a very simple embroidery design on page 65 of Doodle Stitching that only requires two colors. I have chosen to use DMC Pearl Cotton in a gold for the stem and a lavender for the dots. I will be lightly drawing this design onto my sweater using a non-permanent fabric marking pen or pencil.
Note: Be sure to do a test on your garment in a spot that will not be seen before tracing to insure that the non-permanent fabric marking pen or pencil is “non-permanent”.
Before starting, made two copies of the design and placed them on opposite sides of the buttons to see how it would look to have mirrored embroidery. I decided that was a little too much, so with my non-permanent marking pencil, I hand drew the design onto the sweater.
I decided to use to strands of floss for this project and a small darning needle to make it easier to work with the knitted fabric of the sweater. Using a simple stem stitch, I embroidered the stems using the gold and then using a satin stitch, embroidered the berries in lavender. I decided to free hand my initials on the opposite and add a couple of lazy daisies. I’m quite pleased on how my project turned out and look forward to wearing my cardigan this fall.
You can find easy stitch diagrams for embroidery online at Stitch, the magazine for the Embroiderers’ Guild and great How to Videos, patterns and monograms online at Needle’n Thread.
Until next time, happy knitting, crocheting, spinning and crafting!
