We have finally started our first Harry Potter embroidery project! I recently mentioned how I was surprised I hadn’t made a Harry Potter themed embroidery yet, since I’m such a fan. This actually got me thinking that I should start on one soon, so I started gathering inspiration for this new project.
Inspiration
I made the decision early on to do an embroidery project instead of a cross stitch project. This decision was easily made, because I have yet to come across a cross stitch pattern that I really really love. There are tons of beautiful patterns on Etsy, but the patterns that are somewhat interesting to me are huge patterns with lots of colors. To finish these type of patterns, you really need to be committed to the project. I only start cross stitching such patterns if I am absolutely in love with the pattern. But who knows, I might still come a cross ‘the one’ Harry Potter cross stitch project and I’d gladly start stitching.
Embroidery it is
But for now, I wanted to focus on embroidery. With embroidery comes lots of freedom in terms of design. Which makes it more fun, but also more challenging. Because where do you begin? I did know straight away that I wanted to do either a quote or a spell, since I really do enojoy embroidering letters. So that was my starting off point.
But what to embroider?
Because I also enjoy handlettering, I love playing with ideas and designs. I first searched for Harry Potter quotes. As fellow fans will know, Dumbledore in particular has some wise and beautiful quotes. But although there were plenty of quotes I liked, I realized soon that they would be too long for the embroidery hoop I had in mind. Because even though I love to embroider letters, I wanted the words to compliment other elements of the embroidery hoops, rather than it just being about the words.
So then, I decided to focus on spells. That helped speed the design process along. Year ago (and I mean yeaaars ago), when the first Harry Potter movie came out, they had also released a video game. And as a 13-year-old, I was pretty obsessed. I remember really enjoying to perform the ‘Alohomora’ spell in the game. So I decided to embroider this spell.
And of course, with ‘Alohomora’, comes a wand, a key and a lock. Looking at Pinterest handelettering designs helped me in getting inspired but do try to limit my time searching for inspiration when I’m designing an embroidery hoop. Just because I want the inspiration to come from myself as much as possible.
In the end, I came up with this design:
I copied the design onto fabric using the Pilot Frixion Pen. I have since also made a start on the actual embroidery.
What do you think of our first Harry Potter embroidery design? Let me know in the comments below!
