Ebroidered Baby Bag

This summer I made an embroidered baby bag for a dear friend who was pregnant with her 4th child.  I was new to the idea of embroidering, so this is not perfect, but I had fun and it was a nice personal gift to give.

To make a similar bag, you will need the following supplies:
 

• a canvas bag 

• If you are lucky, you can find them occasionally at the dollar store
• Another Option is to find them online.  I found some at http://cheaptotes.com/canvas_teachers_tote.html 
• Design Template - *See below
• Embroidery Floss (You select the colors based on your design)
• Embroidery Needle
• Scissors
• Fabric Disappearing Ink Pen (optional)

 
* You can either free hand your design on the bag, draw it in advance with a pencil or disappearing ink pen, or copy it with a printout of a picture and some carbon paper.

Once you've settled on a design, you will want to mark it out on your bag and select the correct floss colors for the project.

I have used pencil in the past for outlining, however this time I had a pen with disappearing ink so I used it instead.  (A hint if you use the pen, work in small sections because if you take too long to finish embroidering, your pen mark may have already disappeared.)

Because the bag in this photo did come from the dollar store, it was thin.  If I had to do it over again, I would have used stabilizer and I also would have used darker floss on the name (it is hard to tell but the name on the bag is Atticus...for my good friends new baby boy!).

In case you wondered, the design above was done mostly with a back stitch, but the heart was done with the satin stitch.  


Here is a link to a site with video tutorials for several different embroidery stitches, the site is called Mary Corbet's Needle 'N Thread. http://www.needlenthread.com/videos


Enjoy!