Tutorial: Embroidery Hand prints – awesome personal gift!

This Father’s Day was my husband’s second. For Mother’s Day we took our daughter to a paint your own pottery studio to make gifts for her Grandmothers. She painted two pieces, then at the end put her hand prints over her masterpieces. My husband loved it! So, when Father’s Day came around, I wanted to do something similar. I remembered that my mom had come across a little blurb in a magazine about embroidering your child’s hand as a gift idea. There it was, the perfect gift for him! (oh and Grandfather got one too!)

Here is a quick step-by-step tutorial of what I did: (Not claiming to be the first in any way shape or form – there are other tutorials out there on this topic!)

What you need:
-Paper
-Pen
-Child’s Hand
-Embroidery Transfer Pencil
-cotton fabric (in my case I used organic cotton cut from a tote bag I ruined with another embroidery iron-on *don’t ask*. Good thing is, I never throw anything away!)
-Embroidery Needle
-Embroidery Floss
-Hoop
-Scissors

Step 1:
Corral the kid, get her to put her hand on a piece of paper and stand still long enough for you to trace her hand

Step 2:
Turn the paper over and trace around the hand with the embroidery transfer pencil

Step 3:
Flip paper back over, place where you want it on your fabric.
Using a hot dry iron, iron the paper onto your fabric. The line you traced on the back on the paper with the embroidery transfer pencil will appear in light red on your fabric.

Step 4:
Place your fabric in the hoop.

Step 5:
Sew along the outline using a stem or straight stitch. I used a stem stitch as I think it works better around the curves.

Step 6:
Stitch your child’s name and date somewhere on the piece. I did mine freehand, but you could certainly type whatever saying you want, print it off and trace with the embroidery transfer pencil and repeat the steps above.

Step 7:
Trim off the edges of your fabric and PRESTO – you have a wonderful personal custom keepsake!

If you are thinking, wow this is great, but I’ll never do it. Then stop by my etsy shop, and let me do it for you!