Personalized gifts make the best gifts, especially when it comes to little ones. We'll be embroidering a monogrammed bib with the iconic alphabet blocks. It's a great project for anyone who has a baby shower coming up.
What You'll Need
- Iron-on transfer pencil or pen
- Alphabet printout
- Iron
- Embroidery needle
- Embroidery floss
- Scissors
1. Decide on Your Letters
Step 1
Print out the alphabet (linked in the sidebar). The letters are reversed to make transferring them to the bib even easier.
Step 2
Decide whether you'll do two letters or three. Will you spell out the child's name? Or just use their initials? For my bib, I'm using two letters to spell out the initials of my friend's little one.
2. Transfer the Letters to Your Bib
Step 1
Cut out the letters that you've decided to use. Leave a nice white space around them to make ironing easier.
Step 2
Using your iron-on pencil or pen, outline the block letters that you chose in the last step. Trace over the outside square, the top and bottom of every stripe, and the outline of the letter.
Step 3
Set your iron to its highest setting (usually cotton) and let it heat up.
Step 4
Arrange your letters on the bib with the iron-on pencil side down. Make sure they are arranged to read correctly left to right.
Step 5
Carefully iron the small letter blocks for 10 to 20 seconds. Be careful, the iron is hot.
Step 6
Set your iron aside and carefully pull back the paper. You should now have light outlines of the letters on your bib.
3. Pick Your Colors
Step 1
Decide whether you'll do two colors, three colors, or four. Will you keep the colors with each block to mirror them or flip them?
Step 2
Thread your embroidery floss into your needle. It will depend on how textured your fabric is how many strands you want to use. Some people like to use the whole six strands and others prefer to use three. The more textured your fabric (or the faster you want to fill things in), the more strands you will use.
4. Stitch the Outside of the Block
Step 1
Start on an inside corner. This way there's less pressure since it's not the outside of the square. I'm using the back stitch for the outline. If you would prefer to use thesplit stitch, that will work perfectly too.
Step 2
Continue around the inside of the box.
Step 3
Once you have the inside of the box stitched, start on the outside of the box using the same stitch. After this, you will have the outline for the box.
5. Fill in the Block
Step 1
Here's where you get to pick your stitch again. You could do a satin stitch like me. You could go around twice with back stitches again to fill in the area. Or you could use the seed stitch. Since the bib is made of an absorbent material, it will be harder to fill in the space than it would be on cotton fabric.
Step 2
Fill in the box using the stitch of your choice.
6. Stitch the Letter
Step 1
Now we get to do the fun part! Using the split stitch, start to work your way around the outline of the letter, starting in a corner.
Step 2
Slowly work your way around the entire letter until you have it outlined.
Step 3
Once you have the outline of the letter, you can start to fill it using the stitch of your choice, whether that's the satin stitch or the seed stitch. I'm using the satin stitch. Since the fabric is so textured, I like to go back between my stitches for a second pass to make it darker.
Step 4
Stitch in the entire letter.
7. Stitch the Letter
Step 1
Start again in a corner and work your way across the block using the same stitch that you did for the outline of the box, whether that's a back stitch or the split stitch.
Step 2
Once you have the outlines of the stripes, you can go in with the same stitch you used to fill the box, whether that's the back stitch, the satin stitch, or the seed stitch, and work to fill in the alternating stripes.
Step 3
Work your way through all of the stripes and fill them in to your liking.
8. Stitch the Second Letter
Step 1
Now that you have one block finished, it's time to move on to the second block! Simply repeat the process you used for the first one.
You've Just Embroidered an Adorable Baby Bib!
There's no telling how long this bib will stay clean, but it will definitely make a wonderful gift for friends and family. The printout of the alphabet can be used to embroider just about anything from clothes to tea towels, so have fun!
