Little Yellow Cat

Hand Dyed Australian Yarn

How to embroider roses onto a knitted fabric

· In: Tutorial

Last week I taught a class on finishing techniques for knitwear. We practiced different techniques for seams, setting in sleeves and weaving in ends.

One of the swatches I brought for seam practice had a little rose embroidered on it. Everyone loved the little rose and at the end of the class I took a few minutes to demonstrate how to do these. They are so quick and easy I thought I’d write up a tutorial post as well.

You will need

  • A wool needle or tapestry needle
  • About 20cm of coloured yarn for the rose. I find 8ply/DK the best weight for this, but if you are embroidering on finer work you should use something finer like 4ply.
  • About 20cm of green yarn for the leaves
  • A knitted fabric- a swatch or garment. You can embroider these roses onto a purchased, machine knit garment too. A great way to jazz up a cardi from the op-shop orTarget.
embroider roses onto knitting
1 – Thread up your needle with the yarn for the rose and stitch a “wheel” with five spokes. Make sure all the spokes of the wheel meet in the middle.
embroidered roses on knitting
2 – Your work should look like this. Don’t worry if the spokes of the wheel are not perfectly spaced but you should get them to be all the same length.
embroidered roses on knitting
3 – Bring the yarn to the front through the centre of the wheel. When you are embroidering, don’t pull the yarn too tight or it will distort the fabric.
embroider roses onto knitting
4 – Weave the yarn under the spokes of the wheel, missing every second one. You have five spokes, so you need to go under spoke 1, skip spoke 2, under spoke 3, skip spoke 4, under spoke 5. Because there are an odd number of spokes you’ll be going under different spokes each round – so if you go under spoke 1 on this round, you’ll skip it in the next round.
embroider roses onto knitting
5 – Keep going around the spokes, weaving under and over as you go – I tend to go around counter-clockwise because I’m right handed but the direction doesn’t matter. Don’t pull the yarn too tight or you’ll just form a knot – but don’t let it get sloppy either. Keep going around until you are happy with your rose and it extends out to the ends of the spokes. Take the yarn to the back of the work once you are happy with the rose. Go underneath the edge of the rose when you do this.
embroider roses onto knitting
6 – Now it’s time to make the leaves using a lazy daisy stitch. Take the green yarn through the work from the back to the front. Then go back through the same spot so your needle and yarn are at the back of your work. You will have a little loop peeking through the front of your work.
embroider roses onto knitting
7 – Next, bring the needle back to the front, coming up in the middle of the loop at the spot you want the end of the leaf to be. Finish off the stitch by taking the needle and yarn to the back again, going through the same spot you just came out of – but this time you need to be outside of the loop – you are basically just stitching down the end of the leaf.
embroider roses onto knitting
8 – All done! Add more leaves if you like – I usually add three or four. Secure the ends at the back of your work.

See how simple it is?

Experiment with different yarns. I find that smoother, highly twisted yarns create a rose with more detail but slightly fuzzy yarns can be lovely too. Try a variegated yarn for both the rose and the leaves for a lovely effect.

embroidered roses on knitting

Its a good idea to add the embroidery after the knitted item has been washed and blocked. Also, if there is a chance that the colour from the roses could run then wash and dry that yarn too. You don’t want the colour bleeding onto the background fabric.

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Comments

  1. Judith says

    Brilliant Jen. Thanks. I’m going to share this on Morris facebook page now.

    • Jen says

      I’m glad you enjoyed it – and thanks for letting me use the gorgeous kangaroo print fabric from the shop as my background.

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