Embroidered Children’s Art Canvas

This year I am beyond thrilled to introduce you to a revamped series here at LWSL called Handmade Holidays!  In past years I have shared my own holiday gift ideas, but this year I thought it would be fun to get some inspiration elsewhere. I asked eight of my favorite up-and-coming bloggers to share a simple and frugal handmade gift idea. I was so blown away by all the amazing ideas they came up with, and I think you will be too. Each Monday, from now until Christmas, one of these talented women will be sharing their gift idea. Please be sure to welcome them here to LWSL, and to take the time to check out their blogs. You will be so glad you did!

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This is a guest post is from Jenn of Endlessly Inspired

When my oldest son was in Kindergarten, I saved everything he brought home. I mean, EVERYTHING. I just could not bear to throw out anything, especially his sweet little drawings that always featured people’s arms coming directly out of their heads. But now that he’s in 3rd grade and my middle son is now in Kindergarten and bringing home his own arms-growing-from-ear-hole masterpieces, we are being buried in papers and may or may not end up on Hoarders.

So I decided to try to find a way to create more permanent art from their masterpieces by embroidering their drawings onto a canvas. I love this idea, because it is a perfect gift for parents, grandparents, teachers, or anyone in your life who gets that squooshy feeling in their belly when they look at a painstakingly created drawing of people with chicken feet, giant round tummies and monkey ears.

Don’t be intimidated if you’ve never done embroidery before; I only used two extremely basic stitches {besides, you’re recreating a kid’s drawing — it’s not supposed to be perfect!}. And even better, you can find canvases so inexpensively nowadays at any craft store. The one I used was a 12″x12″ and came in a 2-pack that was on sale for about $5.

Here is what you need:

A child’s drawing
A plain canvas
Pencil
Needle
Embroidery floss

Step 1: Either choose an existing drawing or put your little artist to work.

The easiest kind of drawing to embroider is one that has clean, simple lines. As you can see, the picture Connor drew was filled in, but that’s ok. When we transfer it to the canvas, we can just trace the outlines. {Connor also decided which colors he wanted to use for each part of the picture, since I wasn’t too keen on an all-black picture.}

Step 2: Once you have a drawing, it’s time to transfer it to the canvas. There are a few ways to do this, so you can choose the method that you think is the easiest. I just taped the picture to the back of the canvas, held it up to a window and very lightly traced the design onto a canvas with a pencil.

You could also use a light box {here’s a great tutorial on how to create your own light box}, or the “carbon paper” transfer method I used in my Peace on Earth Globe tutorial.

Step 3: Now it’s time to embroider! Like I said, please don’t be nervous if you’ve never embroidered before. It’s way easier than it looks. You can find a great post on how to do basic embroidery stitches here. For the vast majority of this canvas, I used a back stitch.

If you’ve never used embroidery floss before, it is actually 6 strands twisted together. For stitching on a canvas, you only want to use 3 strands, so separate the floss in half before threading your needle. Make a knot in one end of your thread, and at whatever starting point you choose, come up through the canvas from the back, and go back down to make your first stitch. {Most of my stitches were about 1/4″ long.} To make your second stitch, come up from the back about 1/4″ away from your first stitch and then go back down right next to it.

Step 4: When you are finished with one color, you’ll need to tie off your stitch in the back.

Step 5: Continue backstitching your entire drawing, changing colors when needed.

Step 6: To do the eyes, I used a stitch called a french knot, which is very similar to the technique you use to tie off the thread in the back. {Please try not to be too disturbed by the giant-needle-through-the-eyeball in Photo #1.}

Step 7: For the grass, I used long stitches, placed randomly along the bottom. There was no rhyme or reason to them, I just slapped them on there, criss-crossing them back and forth until I was happy with how they looked.

Step 8: That’s it! While it looks like a ton of stitching, I completed the entire thing in about an hour and a half. Just park yourself in front of the TV and stitch your heart out. Or, if you have older kids, you could even have them do the stitching themselves.

What I love most about this project is that, not only will these make great, inexpensive gifts for family and friends, but my kids love seeing their art up on the wall. David, my 8-year-old who wanted no part of this project when I first mentioned it to him, saw Connor’s final canvas and immediately grabbed some paper and drew his own picture for me to embroider, complete with notes on which colors I was to use and which parts he wanted filled in with stitches.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I hope I’ve inspired you to turn your own kids’ drawings into permanent works of art!!

 

Hi, I’m Jenn from Endlessly Inspired! I’m a freelance writer and editor who lives in central Pennsylvania with my husband and three boys. Yeah. That’s a lot of testosterone in one house. I love, love, love decorating, DIYing, crafting, baking, and cooking, and I’m constantly scouring everything I see for inspiration. My ideas can come from anywhere: Pinterest, books, magazines, Pinterest, catalogs, stores, TV shows, websites, other blogs, Pinterest, other people’s homes, nature {did I happen to mention Pinterest?}. You name it, and I’ve gotten an idea from it. {Literally. I selected the color scheme for our family room from a pocket pack of tissues. Totally not making that up.} I hope to teach others that, if you really pay attention to the world around you, you can get inspiration from anything!

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Do you have trouble throwing away your kids’ drawings and schoolwork? What do you do with them?