Blog Post

A Rainbow Heart

For all those that need a little love right now and need something to do.

This is an easy project and you can make it as large or as small as you would like.

Make something for your hero in these difficult times.

Bring a smile to someone.

Hi Everyone, I have been inspired this month by all the key workers across the world who have been helping all the sick and vulnerable with Covid 19. The NHS rainbows that I have seen on peoples windows are a wonderful way to say thank you. So using this as my influence I embroidered a rainbow heart. The idea is for you to use this design and embroider onto a garment that needs a little love and care and by wearing it you will remember all those that have helped and suffered during the current times of lockdown in a positive way. You can use this idea to make a card or a cushion to give to someone who perhaps needs a little love right now or just to give to your hero during the Covid crisis.

I took the same idea and made a personalised lavender pillow for someone.

The first thing you need to do is to decide what you are going to embroider. The beauty about this design is that you can work any size you like. Draw a heart shape out and play around with the size on your printer. I also think a small heart on the back of a jumper would be great, or on a cuff.

Pin the shape in place, if you are using an embroidery frame make sure the size fits. Use a small running stitch around the motifs edges. You are now ready to start your embroidery.

Divide the shape into seven equal sizes. We are using seven rows as there are seven colours in the rainbow.

Run the guide lines across the whole piece.

I used DMC six stranded floss and used the following colours, red 817, orange 740, yellow 726, green 701, blue 798, indigo 158, purple 550. I also used a few strands of DMC colour variations, red 4200, orange 4124, yellow 4075, green 4045 and indigo 4240.

I generally split the thread into two, so worked with three strands. You can vary this. Occasionally I used only one thread. For french knots I wound the thread three times around the needle.

At the very end I also added just a few threads from the DMC Etoile range to add a tiny bit of sparkle. Feel free to add whatever you feel that might add further interest and depth. You might have a few odd ends of thread you might want to use up. But make sure whatever threads you use they are machine washable.

The DMC Etoile Mouline range used just for small highlights at the end, it just adds a hint of sparkle. I used five DMC colour variations as shown and listed above.

Now you can start embroidering. Try and work from the top down but sometimes it is nice to see how the colour balance is working out, so feel free to do other sections at the same time. Work the flower shapes (made up from lazy daisy stitches) first. I think it is important to get a central purple flower at the bottom of the point. Once you have some flower shapes embroidered work other stitches around them. I have used cross stitch, cross stitch with a small straight stitch, ermine filling stitch, seeding, french knots and straight stitch which is used to fill the lazy daisy stitches and sometimes added between the flower shapes.

When starting and finishing the thread embroider into the stitches at the back. If you are starting right at the beginning work a small double stitch into the back of the fabric with a waste knot i.e. place a knot through the right side of the work someway from where you are going to embroider. When you have secured the thread with a double stitch on the back of the fabric, or under an area that embroidery stitching will hide the double stitch, cut the waste knot off.

Keep going.

When you are happy with the stitching remove the white lines. Have one last check just in case you would like to add some further stitches in any gaps that might have opened up.

Stitches Used

Below are all the stitches I have used to create this piece.

Please note with the straight stitch illustrated is inside the loop of the lazy daisy stitch, you can also add the straight stitches in between the lazy daisy stitch. The fly stitch can be used in a row not just randomly stitched as shown.

The Ermine stitch shown makes an equal circle but you can vary the length of the crosses.

If you want to make the item more personalised then add some writing using stem stitch as shown here.

When you go around curves work a smaller stitch. Always keep the thread to the left and start/finish with a half stitch so the first and last stitch have support and do not collapse.