First-ever Reddit post, to share my first-ever embroidery project! I started with a stitch book kit to try it out and really loved it, and have been so inspired by the posts I see on this sub. I made this as a gift for my inbound baby niece! 🚼

**Process:**

I adapted the mouse from a clipart image, the marigolds from an online embroidery sample, and I used a font generator to make the name. I photoshopped them all together to get the shape I wanted, then traced it from my iPad to the fabric using a heat-removable pen. I have a background in drawing and dabble in digital art, so that was the easy part. 

I was constantly checking tips and tutorials suggested on this sub to decide on stitches! (Except for the marigolds, the stitch pattern for which I copied from a YouTube video by @MIssAnjiaraBegum.) The marigolds use cast-on stitch (mainly 6 threads, 3-4 threads for some smaller petals), fly stitch on the leaves (1-2 threads), chain stitch for stems (2 threads), and bullion knots for the green buds (4/5 threads, I think). 

The mouse uses split stitch for fur, stem stitch for tail, chain stitch for belly, turkey rug for fluff, long and short stitch for ears, and satin stitch for pink details. The ears and pinks were all single thread, and the rest used 2. I basically just made up what worked for the eyes and whiskers! 

The name uses a color variations DMC thread in 2-thread stem+chain stitch (chain for thicker parts). And lazy daisy stitches for the leafy embellishments. The silver outline is a 1-thread whipped backstitch. 

I got (most of) the wrinkles out with wet blocking and steaming, and I glued the excess fabric to the inner frame to keep it neat and taught. I might add a layer of felt to the back for extra security and polish.

**Learning notes:**

\- You can see the learning process by how messy the top marigolds are versus how neat and even the bottom ones are — I learned more with each flower.

\- Metallic thread is crazy hard to work with! Using short strands and thread wax helped.

\- I tried to use a darker and lighter color for shading on the mouse, but it turns out DMC 001 and 002 are *way* too close to make a difference! Paying attention to the direction of my stitching to create texture was most important for giving the mouse dimension. 

\- I didn’t understand how to create the gradient with color variations thread until I saw someone do it here and realized I had to line up the colors when I threaded/knotted the needle. 

\- Still improving long and short — I completely removed one ear to redo it after learning some tips, and there’s still more to learn. 

First project