zakka life: Mother's Day Embroidery Brooch

If you've been following this blog, then these brooches might look familiar to you. They were inspired by this post I wrote a while back. Only this time I decided to skip a step making them easy to whip up for a last minute Mother's Day Gift. Instead of creating the embroidery myself, I salvaged pieces from worn out tea towels. So really, all you're doing is sewing a tiny pillow. Here's the how-to:

Supplies:
Tea towel already embroidered - look for these at the thrift store. Since you'll be cutting it up, it doesn't matter if it's stained. You should pay no more than a couple dollars for the piece.

Matching Embroidery Thread

Sewing Needle

Scissors

Pollyfill

Pin Back that you can sew on

1. Cut out embroidery piece. Place on another piece of solid fabric from your tea towel. Pin together and cut out in the shape you choose. Make sure to leave extra room for stitching. You can always trim back the edges after.

2. Using a back stitch, sew all around the image leaving about a one inch opening.

3. Lightly stuff with pollyfill and continue to stitch all the way around the embroidered piece. Knot and sew in loose threads. Trim edges if necessary. If you're concerned your fabric will fray, add the tiniest amount of glue to the edges.

4. Sew on your pin back. Test out the pin back to make sure it works well. Usually these kind of pins come in packs of 50 and I've found there are always a couple duds in the pack.

Experiment with different shapes. The heart in the back came from the corner of a hankie. There was no one image to outline so I cut it into a heart shape. I also used a running stitch for the heart.