Tutorial: decor your baby dresses with embroidery

Some time ago I got a knitted dress for Ada, which is really cute, but a bit dull. So I decided to make it more special. Here it goes the result:

**A little monster embroidered on a baby dress **

Why did I choosed such a motive? It is because we use to lovingly call Ada: monstruito! (little monster in spanish)

So here it goes the tutorial to make this kind of embroidery:

{Necesary material}

- A knitted dress
- A needle and a thread on the desired color
- Squared paper
- An embroidery ring (optional)

{Procedure}

**The dress before decorating **

- Step 1) Draw the motive on a squared papar. If you do not feel confortable drawing, find a draw you like, print it and calc it into a squared paper. You can also use the motive I made! Click here to download it.

**El Monstruito!!**

(Comment: to have the motive into a squared paper is good to make it easier to traspass the motive into the embroidery)

- Step 2: Unlike cross-stitching, when embroidering knitted fabric, we should check the proportion that has every stitch. On cross-stitching, every stitch is a perfect square, so if we assimilate one stitch equals one square from the draw, the embroidery results completely proportioned. But, when embroidering knitted fabrics, the stitches not always are squared. So we have to know which is the proportion between the x-axis and y-axis.

How to know which is the proportion between my axis:

Put the dress completely flat. Count how many stitches are on 1 inch in horizontal and how many stitches in 1 inch in vertical. You can distinguish the stitch because it has an inverted V shape.

You can have 2 possibilities:

• Case A) there are more stitches on the horizontal direction than on the vertical: then make the following operation:
  P_hor / P_ver
  Where:
  P_hor = horizontal stitches
  P_ver = vertical stitches
  




• Case B) there are more stitches on the vertical direction than on the horizontal: then make the following operation:
  P_ver / P_hor
  Where:
  P_hor = horizontal stitches
  P_ver = vertical stitches
  

**How to count the stitches **

On my case I have 8 stitches on the horizontal and 12 stitches in vertical, I am on theB case. The result of the division 12/8 = 1.5. What does it mean? It means I have 3 vertical stitches for every 2 horizontal.

Back to the draw, every square equals, on my case, to 1 horizontal stich and to 1.5 vertical stitches. It is really important to take this conversion factor into account so you will get the embroidery proportionated! -> Embroider into knitted fabric is not the same as cross stitching, where the base is completely squared!.

This calculus will be also useful to know which would be the embroidery final size, and to decide where to put it. To calculate its final size:

• If you where on case A:

  H = N_h / n

  V = N_v / n
  Where:
  H = Horizontal size (in inches).
  V = Vertical size (in inches).
  N_h = number of squares your draw has in horizontal.
  N_v = number of squares your draw has vertical.
  n = number of stitches P_ver in a 1 inches sample.

• If you where on case B:

  H = N_h / n

  V = N_v / n
  Where:
  H = Horizontal size (in inches).
  V = Vertical size (in inches).
  N_h = number of squares your draw has in horizontal.
  N_v = number of squares your draw has vertical.
  n = number of stitches P_hor in a 1 inches sample.

- Step 3: Now we have solved the “difficult” part. Now you are ready to start stitching.

How to make a stitch? Observe the image:

** How to make a stitch **

• 1) Pass the needle from back to front trough the vertice of the stitch ( remember that the stitch has an inverted V shape ).
• 2) Pass the needle from front to back trough one of the extrems of the inverted V.
• 3) Pass the needle from back to front trough the other extrem of the inverted V.
• 1) Pass the needle from front to back again trough the vertice of the stitch.
• 4) Pass the needle from back to front trough the vertice of the next stitch.

With all this information you are now ready to traspass the draw into embroidery.

This is the result I’ve obtained:

** The result **

** A detail of the result **

** No relation at all, but I love this hanger! And the worst part is that I have no idea where did I got it! Any idea???**

Hope you liked the tutorial and it could be useful to make great embroideries! If any question, don’t hesitate to contact me!

Have a nice day! And cheer up week-end is almost here! (that is for me….Ada is teething and she is hardly sleeping..and I am dying..)

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