Family Tree Embroidery Project

For Christmas this year, I decided to make my father-in-law an embroidered handkerchief. He uses them all the time and he is so hard to buy for Christmas (yes, we like to prepare throughout the year so that it is not one big splurge in the end). He is a huge family-man, so it did not take me long to decide that I wanted to do something that had to do with the family, that is when I decided on a family tree.

I searched for awhile to find an image that would work with the embroidery that I wanted to do and came across a quilt that gave me an idea. I grabbed my ruler, protractor, pen and paper and began drawing images on a sheet of paper and moved things around until I came to something similar to the image I had seen and that worked for what I wanted.

Next, over a course of a few days, I stitched diligently until I came to my final project similar to the image below. I used an s-stitch for the bark, grass and birds and I used a fishbone stitch for the leaves.

 

The final project also had some tufts of grass on the ground and a couple of simple birds flying in the air. I was quite proud of the final result and I can not wait until he sees it. I tried to make it simple, since it was for a guy and men are simplistic creatures, but as a creative person, simple is so boring!

Each of the leaves represent his three sons and their four wives (one of my husband's brothers has been married twice) and all of their children. The main part of the tree, I put the family's last name and it represents my mother-in-law and father-in-law.

Comment below and tell me what you think and tell me some of your simple embroidery projects.