Hand Painted Embroidered Leaves

These leaves are part embroidery, part painting and even have an element of nature. If you've never done embroidery before, this is an inexpensive introduction to the art form. Leaves are free, easy to come by and come in a variety of shapes and sizes so you're bound to find something that will suit your project.

Embroidery floss comes in a rainbow of colors and is less than $1 a skein. You can pick up a whole pack of embroidery needles for about $2 and embroidering on a leaf means you don't even need fabric or an embroidery hoop. With just a little bit of iron on stabilizer and a picture frame (both optional!), you could do this whole project (plus more) for less than $5 making this a great budget friendly craft!

With just a few supplies and some basic embroidery stitches, you can make a fun and unexpected piece of artwork. If you're not familiar with embroidery stitches, you may find this Instructable really helpful: https://www.instructables.com/Embroidery-101/

You will need:

•leaf (dried & pressed flat)

•heavy book (if you need to press your leaves, not necessary if your leaves are already pressed)

•embroidery floss

•embroidery needle

•acrylic paint & paint brush

•Wonder Under iron on stabilizer (optional)

•iron

•picture frame (for display, optional)

For this project, you'll need a leaf. Dried, pressed leaves work best, but if you don't have any on hand, go on a leaf hunt around your yard or neighborhood and see what you can find. The best leaves to use are thicker, woody type leaves. I collected several varieties including catalpa, ginkgo, magnolia, oak, maple and even milkweed. There are lots of options are out there to try so you can experiment and see what works best for you.

I decided to use the huge catalpa leaf from my neighbors tree. Catalpa trees have huge leaves, long brown seed pods and white flowers in the late spring. With such a large leaf, I thought it would work perfect for my octopus design!

I prepped the leaves by gently cleaning them with a damp paper towel, patting them dry then pressing them in a heavy book. The longer you can press your leaves, the better! If you are impatient and can't allow your leaves to fully dry, which could take several weeks, you can press them for at least a few days and still have a successful project. The ironing process will help dry the leaf out and the stabilizer will help keep the leaf from being too brittle to stitch on more delicate leaves.

Once the leaves are pressed, I used Wonder Under Iron On Stabilizer on the back to give the leaf some support. The Wonder Under served as a template I could follow for my design as well. I found that when I drew directly on the back of the fresher leaves, you could see the drawing on the front of the leaf no matter how gentle I was. Dry leaves are really fragile so the extra Wonder Under layer on the back of the leaf is helpful in doing some embroidery stitches too, but you can do this project without stabilizer if you have a fully dry leaf that is a little thicker (oak or magnolia leaves work well without stabilizer).

Wonder Under is typically used to attach one piece of fabric to another. There is a paper side and a rough side that has glue exposed. To use it, cut a piece of Wonder Under that is slightly larger than the leaf. Trace the leaf and cut the Wonder Under so it ends up slightly smaller than the leaf. The Wonder Under should not go all the way to the edge of the leaf as you could potentially see it around the edges.

Before attaching the Wonder Under to the leaf, I decided to draw my design on the paper side of the Wonder Under. I placed the Wonder Under, paper side up, on my iPad and drew my design using a pencil. Taping the shape in place was really helpful to keep it from sliding around while drawing. Once the design was finished, I placed the Wonder Under so the rough side against the leaf then covered the leaf with a teflon sheet (or thin tea towel) and ironed the Wonder Under for 5-8 seconds with a hot, dry iron. Let cool completely.

If you were using the Wonder Under to attach two pieces together, you would peel off the paper backing and iron again to melt the glue and attach the pieces but in this case I thought the paper backing would be helpful so I didn't peel it off.

From the front of the leaf, you couldn't even tell there was Wonder Under on the back!

Now it's time to get stitching! You can use whatever type of embroidery stitches you want to make your design, but I recommend splitting your thread to 3 strands at most. Typical embroidery thread comes with 6 strands. Using all 6 threads at a time makes a pretty big hole in the leaf so I recommend using 3 strands at most.

Now you can work on stitching out your design. For my project, I used a back stitch to outline the octopus. To do a backstitch, tie a knot at the end of your thread and feed the thread from the back of the leaf to the front. Go back through the front of the leaf a little past where you initially came up, making a straight stitch. Skip a stitch length along the design and then go back down where the last stitch you made ends. Continue to repeat the stitch along the entire design using the drawing on the back as a template.

Using a back stitch around the design works relatively well until you hit a spot that doesn't allow you to go backwards on the top of the design. If you run into a spot that you need to find the design from the top of the leaf, you can turn the leaf to the back and poke a hole from the back where your needle needs to go next. Once you have a hole in the spot you want to go to, turn the leaf over and find the hole and continue stitching. This will help keep stitching on the design and prevent you from putting any unwanted holes in the leaf.

Once the design outline was complete, I decided to fill in the octopus with paint. Typically with embroidery you would fill in the design with thread, but I wanted to try painting it in because it is cheaper, easier and unexpected than using embroidery thread. Plus I don't know if the leaf would have held up to that much stitching.

I used regular acrylic paint to paint in the different shades of blue for the octopus. An added bonus of paint is that it allowed me to add dimension and help separate one tentacle from the other.

Once the paint dried, I went back and added in the suckers on the bottom of each octopus tentacle.

I split the embroidery floss and used 2 strands of purple and 2 strands of light blue. I thought the combination would give a visually appealing effect on the suckers and make a larger french knot than using less thread.

To make the suckers on the bottom of the tentacles, I used french knots. This was tricky on the leaf, but not terrible with a little practice. To make a french knot, thread the embroidery floss from the back to the front of the leaf. Point the needle towards the hole it came up from and then wind the floss around the needle three times starting at the top and working towards the leaf. Pull the floss tight with one hand then feed the needle back through the original hole. The thread should tie into a knot on the front. French knots are tricky, you may want to practice on fabric before attempting to try it out on a leaf. I added in enough french knots to give the effect without putting in too many as to end up with a big hole in the leaf.

The last step in finishing the octopus was to add the eyes. First I stitched the outline of eyes out with 3 strands of white embroidery floss. Next, I painted them in with white acrylic paint. It took a few coats to fully cover the eyes.

Once the paint was dry, I added French knots for pupils and tied off the threads on the back.

Speaking of the back, I always love looking at the back of embroidery, it is such a crazy mess!

Now that the leaf was done, I did one final step and decided to mount the leaf in a picture frame to preserve and display it. Since this was such a large leaf, I ended up needing a rather large picture frame. I happened to have one on hand that worked great and saved me some money! I cut a thick piece of paper the same size as opening in the frame. Next I lined up the leaf where I wanted it to be in the frame and poked a hole through the paper on either side of the stem with the embroidery needle. I used a bit of black embroidery thread around the stem and tied it behind the paper to hold the leaf in place. I am not sure if this step was completely necessary, but I liked the effect either way. Next, I put the paper into the frame and secured the piece back in place. This was a simple yet effective way to display the leaf and I really liked the end result.

There were a few other leaves I had and I wanted to experiment with different stitches and techniques. I made a monarch caterpillar on a milkweed leaf using similar techniques to the octopus. I painted the white part of the caterpillar with paint and used yellow and black embroidery thread to fill in the caterpillars details. This was a challenge but also really fun end result.

I also had a few oak leaves that I didn't add Wonder Under to and just stitched on for practice. This taught me a lot about what you can and cannot do on a leaf. It turns out you can do just about any embroidery stitch, you just have to be careful and maybe not use too many strands of thread at once!

I really love using leaves for the background of these projects. They're unexpected and free! Plus they come in so many shapes you can really challenge yourself to make something fit the leaf you have on hand.

This whole project didn't cost me a dime as I had everything on hand, but if you were starting from scratch you could easily get everything you need very inexpensively, even from a big box store. Plus once you have a little embroidery equipment, you will find you have plenty of supplies to make more than one leaf.

I hope this gives you some inspiration to try this project out and maybe look at natural materials around you in a new way!