Strawberry Scissor Fob

I tried my hand at designing a counted thread embroidery pattern for a strawberry shape.

At my EGA Chapter our program for the year is "Finishing Smalls".  We've made scissor fobs, pin drums, pin pillows and scissor cases.  Coming up in November we are making strawberries.  I found a lot of how-to instructions on line about assembling the shape.  There aren't a lot of free patterns to embroider one out there if you want to try this with a small investment.  I also found that searching for them was tough because I found many patterns for pictures of strawberries (the fruit).   I decided to see what you needed for a strawberry and try my hand at making my own pattern.  I had made one before - it's large and pointy.  the pattern shape was kind of a wedge.

 

I started looking at the pictures of strawberries that others had made and saw some had stripes, and some had a central motif with smaller ones flanking it (like above).  I thought I'd try one of each.  I still wasn't sure of the shape I wanted, or how to see if the design worked when the item was in it's finished shape.

I had some others (not embroidered and took a look at them as well.  I liked the shape of this red one.

I thought I'd try three different shapes to start. I thought I'd try a quarter circle (like the wedge I'd done before) a half circle and a three-quarters circle.

I took some flannel and cut out circles so I could try out the shapes to see how I would start my pattern.

Here are the shapes (wrong side of hte fabric).  I left a little seam allowance so I could sew them up.

I ran a quick running stitch along the seams and turn them right side out

After stuffing them and cinching up the top here's what I had. first is upside down, and second is right side up.

I found I liked the middle one best, and that was made from a half circle shape.  I attempted two patterns from that.   The first one is a set of stripes with the idea of a Christmas Ornament.  The second is a central motif with my initials on either side.

To try out the pattern and see how the design held up as a three dimensional shape I printed the pattern out and cut out the half circle.  Then I took a little tape and made a cone from it.  For the striped one I noticed that the diagonal lines didn't meet up at the seem, and I could have adjusted the space between them to make that happen, but I wasn't in the mood to fuss with it.   

A few things I did learn along the way.  Since the strawberry form is based off a circle, you want to make sure the radius of your circle is consistent the whole way. Determine how long you want your back seam to be.  That's the radius of the circle you will use as your base.  For my half-circle design, then the long bottom edge was 2 times that radius (remember geometry class - that's the diameter)  You also want to make sure that your design isn't more than that radius tall. 

One easy way to do this on a piece of graph paper is once you know your radius, then use a drawing compass to draw a curve from one end of the left radius to the end of the right radius.  You could also make a string the right length and attach it to a pencil to draw that curve.

I stitched up the first pattern this week.

And here's the finished product:

You can download the Christmas Strawberry stitch pattern here.