Embroidery Hoop Decor

Hello friends! This is Suzanne, Rebecca's Momma, and I'm happy to be back with you this week as a guest blogger. You may remember Rebecca mentioning last week that she and her husband are moving. Rebecca's dad and I are also moving soon, so I’ve already begun packing up much of my crafting stash. When it was time to put something together for this week's post, I had to see what was still available and came up with a simple decoration that would be great on a door or inside your home and is changeable for any season. 
 
Let's get started! What I have is a 12 inch embroidery hoop, some muslin cloth, burlap ribbon, a paint color which coordinates with the ribbon and a foam brush. I'm also going to use my glue gun and some scissors, and later I added some lace ribbon and flowers from my stash. 

To start I painted a light coat of paint over the entire embroidery hoop. I didn't want too heavy saturation of color because I wanted the wood grain of the hoop to show through the paint.

While that was drying, I ironed my muslin cloth to make sure there were no fold lines in it and added a row of burlap ribbon across the salvage edge (that’s the bound edge of fabric that does not fray). 

To finish off the top of the burlap edge, I also added a layer of lace and I pulled out a couple of rows of the burlap ribbon to make a little fringe across the bottom. 

Next I laid a double layer of the muslin fabric over the inside ring of the embroidery hoop, about half way down the hoop, and attempted to add the outside hoop over the whole thing. Here's where I ran into a little issue. The two layers of muslin together with the layer of burlap and lace ribbon was too thick for the embroidery hoop, so I pivoted and removed the underneath layer of muslin, switching it out for a thinner fabric. With the thinner fabric in place, I was able to push the outside hoop down over the layers and the inner hoop capturing everything within the embroidery hoop. I tightened up the screw in the top of the embroidery hoop (which I had made sure was centered over the top of my fabric) and gave everything a tug from the back to be sure it was nice and taut across the front. ​

I cut away both layers of fabric and began to glue them in place on the backside of the embroidery hoop.

I added a layer of burlap ribbon across the backside as well, to give the top of the back pocket some body and cover the less than neat fold over from the layers of ribbon. I used the strands of burlap I’d pulled out to make the fringe to tie through the screw in the top of the embroidery hoop and made a simple hanging loop and that was it! 

I raided my stash of silk florals and first filled the pouch with greenery and flowers tinged in pink. I then tried a more monochromatic look of cream colored daisies with yellow and brown centers.  I wish I had a pothos-like plant, because I think something trailing down out of the pouch would be pretty.
 
These are silk flowers, but you could absolutely put real flowers, well secured in a plastic bag, in the pouch. If you used a more neutral burlap ribbon and stain (rather than paint) on the hoop, I can see this filled with greenery at Christmas time.  If the Cricut wasn’t already packed away, it would also have been sweet to add “Welcome” or our last name to the bottom of the pouch.

I’ve been spending so much time purging and packing in preparation of our move, it was great to spend a few minutes doing something crafty!

Rebecca here. Thanks for reading everyone. And Happy Father's Day!!