“Groovy Monstera” by Ellie Pavlichek

We are so excited to celebrate our new Monstera print with a fun collaboration! Ellie from @Ellie__Makes is kind of an embroidery master around Savannah. We love the textured florals she creates with simple embroidery floss. Ellie designed this beautiful pattern inspired by our Monstera print. Today she is going to walk us through the steps so you can make this gorgeous piece on your own! If you want to skip the craft store shopping, you can purchase a pre-made “Groovy Monstera” kit from Ellie that comes with everything you need plus video tutorials!

Materials Needed:

• 5 inch hoop

• Ash grey fabric

• Needle

• 5 skeins of embroidery floss

• Water soluble marker or frixon pen

• Scissors

• Glue (to back the hoop when finished)

• Purchase Ellie’s pattern here. Or feel free to draw your own.

Step One – setting up your hoop

Start by opening the top of the embroidery hoop so that the inner hoop comes loose. Don’t take the screw all the way out, just loosen it. Lay the fabric over the inner hoop. There will be enough to fully cover the hoop with some hanging off the sides. Push the outer hoop on to the fabric covered inner hoop. Pull gently to get any folds out of the fabric. Tighten the screw at the top of the outer hoop. Begin to gently pull the fabric around the whole hoop so that the fabric you have caught between the two circles is taunt and tight. You don’t want to pull so hard that you warp the fabric, just tight enough so you can tap your finger on the top without it coming loose. You will need to repeat this step after tracing your pattern to flip it to the outside of the hoop.

Step Two – tracing on your pattern

Find or draw a the motif you would like to embroider. Take your water-soluble maker, frixon pen, or a pencil (use this LIGHTLY and find a good eraser if this is all you have) and lay your hoop with the fabric touching the paper on top of the pattern. Trace the pattern onto your hoop with your marker or pen of choice. Pull it up when you are finished and make sure you didn’t miss any small parts that do not show through the fabric. Take the fabric out and repeat Step One so that the picture is now on the top and no longer on the back inside of the hoop.

Step Three – starting the stitch

This embroidery will use the jade green thread in 3 strands. Each DMC floss comes as 6 strands wrapped together. In order to separate the strands, you need to cut the length of the piece you want to use. Then at one of the ends, roll the thread between your fingers until you can see the 6 separate strands. Then take 3 strands in one hand, and 3 in the other. Gently begin to pull them apart from each other. If you pull too fast they can get tangled because they have been wrapped together. Pulling them slowly apart from each other will help them not get tangled. You will only need to do this for the green floss to stitch the monstera leaf. The other stitches use all 6 strands of floss. You will need to thread your needle. This can be one of the most challenging parts of embroidery.

Step Four – time to stitch

You will be learning these stitches for the following part of this embroidery.

• Back stitch to outline the monstera leaf

• Satin stitch to fill in the monstera leaf

• Lazy daisy stitch to fill in the rest of the fabric

These are common stitches that are used in most embroidery pieces. If you purchase the complete embroidery kit, you will get video tutorials on each stitch.

Back stitch

Outline the monstera leaf To back stitch, start anywhere on the outline of the monstera leaf. Make a stitch about a centimeter long, following the outline you drew. To do the next stitch, go a centimeter up from the last stitch you completed, and push the needle up though the fabric. There should be a centimeter gap between the last stitch you did and where you poke the needle back up. Go back and fill in the gap by putting the needle in the last hole of the first stitch. This is the back stitch. Repeat this until you have outlined the entire monstera leaf.

Satin stitch

Fill in the monstera leaf To fill in the leaf, you will be doing long stitches to cover the fabric. You will start by putting your needle up through the fabric next to one of the outline stitches you did. I started in the stem of the leaf. Then go all the way across and push the needle back down next to the other side of the outline. The stitch should cover the whole length of fabric between your outline. I find that stitching at an angle helps me fill in the leaf easier, but you do what feels best for you. Remember, if you don’t like how the stitches are looking you can always cut them out and start again.

Lazy daisy stitch

Fill in the remaining fabric In order to do a lazy daisy stitch, you will need to start my putting your needle up through the middle of the outer flowers drawn on your pattern. Then, push the needle back through the same hole, but do NOT pull the thread back through. Leave it long on the top. You have created a really big loop by doing this. Gently, push the needle up through the top of one of the outlined petals. You do not want to pull the loop you created through. Once you push the needle up at the top of the petal, catch the loop with the needle. Now you can pull the thread so that it goes back through the fabric. The loop should still be caught on the needle. To finish the stitch up, put the needle back through the same hole on the top of the petal so that you have the loop sew in place on the fabric. Repeat this stitch again and again to create all the petals of the flowers. (Swipe through the photos above for the tutorial)

Step Five – finish the piece

When you are happy with your piece and ready to finish it off, you will want to take a wet washcloth and push it where you can still see blue lines from when you traced the pattern. Another option is to take it out of the hoop, rinse the piece off to get the blue off, and hang it to dry before putting it back into the embroidery hoop. Once you have done this, make sure that you have the fabric pulled very taunt, and the top screwed as tightly down as you can get it. I like to hot glue the excess fabric to the inner hoop, and then trim off anything that is left. You can hot glue a card stock circle to the inner circle as well over the fabric to cover the back. Remember to sign and date it so you can always remember when you finished this embroidery piece! 😊

Make sure you follow Ellie on Instagram so you can catch all her latest pieces and kits. How amazing is this one!?