I thought that I would show you a little behind-the-scenes tour of my etsy shop and the creation of my embroidery hoop art. This past week I received a custom order for 3 hoops.

The client wanted to buy this red and blue striped balloon hoop shown above that I had listed in my shop and asked if I could make 2 more hoops in varying sizes to coordinate with her nursery colors. She sent me a picture of her fabric swatches for the nursery.

fabric swatches

We communicated back and forth about hoop sizes and design and settled on a 8″ and 10″ hoop. The 8″ hoop would have one balloon with grass and clouds, and the 10″ hoop would have a group of balloons in the clouds- with at least one balloon far back in the picture. I sketched out a quick picture of each on a sheet of paper placed under each hoop for sizing guide.

After determining what type of hoops I would design, my next step was to decide on fabrics. I needed to coordinate her swatches with the hoop she had already bought. I pulled to some coordinating fabrics to see which would work best.

I struggled a bit on my final fabric choices. I thought my hoop was a bit off in color from her fabric swatches (red instead of burgundy) so I needed to make all three mesh nicely while not clashing with her colors. After some trial and error, I picked out some stripes and chevrons that I thought would mirror her theme well. Then came the cutting out of the balloons, grass, and clouds (using templates I had made previously); applying the fusible webbing to the fabric and felt; and ironing the web-backed fabric to the background fabric. My last step in this process was to machine stitch around all the designs in order to ensure their durability.

Now to back the hoop with a second piece of background fabric for a nice clean-looking back and, voila, a finished set of 3 hoops, custom designed for a little boy’s nursery. I hope he and his mommy are very happy with their new art!