Hi Dana and fellow skillshare members:

So I "met" Dana at a few webinars by Peggy Dean all the way back in February where I just loved her humor! At that webinar she was kind enough to share her website with me and I thought her work was so cool and unlike anything I had done before. Then fast forward to the beginning of april where I received my first embroidery kit where I attempted to learn to embroider. It was a real struggle, but I "finished" that piece and despite its many flaws I really fell in love with the process of embroidering and wanted to learn more. That was when I remembered Dana's website and recalling that she offered some skillshare classes. Much to my delight I come on here and see that she has several I can take, but since I am not very "skilled" yet I thought it would be good to start with the beginning. Anyways sorry for the long explanation as to why I took this course, but it was really cool to take from someone I had kind of met beforehand. So shout out to Dana, this was an amazing class thanks for making it available!

Anyways on to the real reason for this post and that is to share some of my wonky attempts at embroidery... lol! I have made two so far because I adore the design and thought it would be fun to eventually make into gifts.

So here is my First attempt (used the letter F for First oddly... lol), I used most the colors used by Dana except my local craft stores had a very small selection of the variations floss.
Learning to Embroider with Floral Monograms - image 1 - student project

Then here is a second one I did with my initial S which makes a little more sense. The thing I loved about this one (although I ended up ruining it) was my color selection. I discovered the light effects floss and fell in love with those immediately. What I had no clue about was how incredibly difficult they were going to be to work with, but I was determined and eventually finished the piece... yay! Another unique thing about the colors besides the difficult sparkly floss use was the palette is suppose to represent one of my fave disney movies... Beauty and the Beast. I thought if it looked good I would then do the same thing for family and friends. What do you think?
Learning to Embroider with Floral Monograms - image 2 - student project

Then here are them both together completely finished! I tried a different technique on backing because I didn't have the right tools for the one in the tutorial. I had read in my kit you could glue, but not knowing what I was doing you can see I ruined my S one by getting glue stains sadly. I tried again and was able to make it work with the F.

Learning to Embroider with Floral Monograms - image 3 - student project

And that's the end of this really long project post! They're not perfect but I think with more practice I can really begin to get the hang of it and hopefully create some cute little gifts out of them! Thanks again Dana for the class, I loved how clear and understandable everything was.
Learning to Embroider with Floral Monograms - image 4 - student project

Stephanie Marie Herriman

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