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I’m so excited to offer one of your favorite monogram e-patterns as a printed canvas! I wanted to give you some ideas and inspiration on how to stitch your own personalized piece. While these instructions are directed at the Wildflower Monogram Canvas, I hope this post inspires any sweet little needlepoint canvas you’re working on.
Before you begin stitching, you'll need to put a boundary around your design and chose a background shape for your monogram! Drawing a circle, oval, or square around your monogram is pretty simple…
Begin by choosing and downloading a background template. For a 4 inch square click HERE. For a 4 inch round click HERE.
You will need:
1. Print the template at 100%. Do not scale or fit to page as this will change the dimensions. Tape the template down to a hard surface.
2. Tape you canvas on top - centering the design within the template shape.
3. Make sure that the horizontal and vertical threads of the canvas are running parallel to the horizontal and vertical marker on the templates. (Note: every once in a while the canvas will be slightly distorted so if you can’t get your threads to match up perfectly with the horizontal and vertical markers that is ok - just do your best!).
4. Using the template underneath, very lightly draw your chosen shape onto your canvas.
You will need:
1. Decide how much background you want to add between the charted design and border. I suggest between 1/2 - 1 inch for an ornament. If you want to create a pillow or picture you’ll probably want to add more background depending on the size of your frame and pillow form.
2. Measure 1/2 to 1 inch from the charted design’s edge on all sides and mark with a hard pencil.
3. Use the measurements to create a circle oval or square using a hard pencil...
4. Go over your pencil markings witha light grey or light blue fine tip sharpie. Erase all pencil markings (pencil can smudge onto your threads).
I love to stitch the monogram in a combination of Slanted Satin Stitch and Tent Stitch. I personally like to slant the Slanted Satin Stitch to the right (the stitch runs from bottom left to top right). Where the monogram is only a single intersection wide I use Tent Stitch. You’ll want to consider the angle of the Satin and Tent Stitch depending on the letter you’re stitching. Your particular monogram may look better with the stitches angled in the opposite direction - the Slanted Satin Stitch angled from bottom right to top left and a Reverse Tent Stitch used instead. Play around with this!
While the vertical thick trunk on many of the monograms is a great place to stitch Slanted Satin Stitch, some letters will look better in a simple Tent Stitch. Letters like O and Q are good examples.
There are so many lovely stitches you could use but I personally like to keep it on the simple side by using a combination of Tent Stitch for flowers and stems, Slanted Satin Stitch for leaves (angled the direction of the leaf I'm stitching), Rhodes stitch for larger circles and berries, Cross Stitch for medium size dots/berries, and French Knots for tiny dots and flower centers. If you’d like to get fancy, ribbon work looks especially gorgeous on this style canvas.
There are several different styles to chose from when stitching your background!
If you stitch the entire monogram in simple stitches (maybe you’ve stitched the whole design in Tent Stitch) then it can be gorgeous to stitch a more complex decorative stitch in the background. Woven Stitch, Parisian Stitch, Reverse Basketweave, Brick Stitch - strong stitches with pretty basket like textures such as these are all lovely! (See the photo of the floral A monogram below for an example of a Parisian Stitch background).
The second style is to stitch a subtler background. One of my favorite background stitches is Skipped Tent Stitch. It’s lightweight (covering only half the canvas), has a lovely delicate texture, and is a pretty fast stitch. You could also go for the classic Basketweave.
NOTE: the stitched wildflower canvas below is in a different colorway than the Wildflower Monogram Canvas (the colorway pictured is from our charted e-pattern available here) .
There are so many possibilities! I’ve been amazed by the gorgeous ideas and pieces you've all create. I’ve seen many monograms decorating canvas totes, attached to purses, made into jewelry boxes, gifted as ornaments, coasters, framed…you can even finish into a sweet pillow.
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