Embroidered Handkerchiefs

One of the (many, many) things I find endearing about my boyfriend is that he carries a handkerchief.  To me, a handkerchief is symbolic of a civilized gentleman and of general preparedness.  So, when Valentine's Day rolled around this year, I decided to embroider him a few handkerchiefs.

I ordered a set of colorful handkerchiefs on Amazon, and was a little disappointed with their quality; they weren't very evenly cut.  I used some creative folding and ironing techniques to mask the irregularities, but would have been happier with some straight lines!

For each handkerchief, I did a lot of searching on Pinterest and Google Images to look at examples of the ideas I had in my head.  For some of them, I just stitched without a pattern, but for others, I held the handkerchief up to my computer monitor and traced a little pattern in pencil directly onto the handkerchief using the image shining through.

My first embroidery attempt was a classic monogram inspired by this photo on Pinterest, using some fun variegated embroidery floss.  I think if I were to do it again, I'd stitch the horizontal line of the "A" using a vertical stitch so it's a little more solid.

Next, because Alan is a bibliophile, I stitched him a little book based on this.  I like the way the pages look, all fanned out, and the green is a fun contrast to the purple.

Then, because he is an avid biker, I stitched a bicycle.  Initially, I thought I was going to stitch a thicker bike frame, but I ended up changing my mind, so one part of the frame is a little funky--or, as I like to think of it, has character.

Finally, and my personal favorite, I stitched our initials carved into a tree (inspired by this).

Continuing the theme of creative, thoughtful, homemade Valentine's Day gifts, Alan baked me some delicious and adorable chocolate hazelnut "Scrabble tiles" that spelled out my name:

All in all, I was pretty happy with how this project turned out.  It was nice to branch out from cross-stitch, which can be a little more labor-intensive and less varied in style.  I look forward to expanding my repertoire of stitches; for this project, I relied primarily on the back stitch (this link goes to a blog with excellent tutorials).