Diane wrote a "guest" tutorial for making Japanese Inspired Ornaments during the very first holiday season on Gingerbread Snowflakes; and three years later, it still remains one of the top ten posts, so I thought I would share a few simple techniques for making similar Thread Wrapped Easter Eggs!
In my opinion, a beautiful way to combine and honor age old traditions from East and West.
You will want to refer to her post for the techniques for thread winding, beginning and ending embroidery threads, simple embellishment like applique or adding beads or sequins, and links to several simple embroidery stitches.
As Diane points out, Japanese Thread Balls or Temari, are usually very complicated involving lots of measuring and marking and complicated stitches.
For example - these lovely eggs which Diane made for me long ago.
Refer to the first photo of this post and you will see that the egg designs I am sharing are much simpler!
Once again a great big thank you to Meg over at Mega Crafty for providing the styrofoam eggs for this project! I won them as part of her ginormous crafty giveaway last month!
All you really need to make the Japanese thread ball eggs are styrofoam eggs, sewing thread or serger thread, perle cotton embroidery floss, needle, ball head pins, and scissors.
With Diane's instructions, a few styrofoam eggs, some serger thread and a little time spent watching reruns of Mr. Monk, before you know it those styrofoam eggs will transform into beautiful thread wrapped eggs.
In my opinion, a bunch of these wound in Easter colors and pilled into a basket would be gorgeous even without adding designs or embellishments.
So both you and I can avoid one of my famous 30 picture tutorials, I am breaking the instructions for adding design into three posts.
Today I am featuring the purple and green eggs! Tomorrow the pink egg and finally the third post will feature the white egg with the zigzag pattern.
The surface of the thread wrapped eggs is perfect for embroidery. Some of our outstanding embroidery talents like Rachel and Carina could transform these eggs into wonderous and beautiful creations.
But the whole purpose of this series of tutorials is to keep it simple! So - lazy daisy flowers it is!
Begin by making French Knots placed randomly over the egg surface. I found that winding the thread around the needle three times instead of two times helped to keep the knot from sinking into the thread base.
Once all the French Knots are in place, simply revisit each one and using the Lazy Daisy Stitch, embroider petals, making as many and any size you like. Again, I kept this very simple by adding only four petals, but six or eight petals would be even prettier.
You could embroider flowers in many different colors on a white or cream egg, or embroider your flowers in a floss that matches the egg thread for an interesting textural effect. Beads could be used for the centers. Let your imagination go wild.
More Video tutorials for hand embroidery stitches from Needle n' Thread.
This little guy is my "tester" so there are a few less than perfect things going on here! But I wanted you to see that beads can easily be attached using needle and thread; and that had I not been so hasty in removing the guide threads, I could have repeated several rows of pattern and beads to create a very cute little egg design. Something you might want to keep in mind when we get to post 3!
You will find tutorials for the other eggs in the basket above here and here.
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