When will I learn to take my time? How many embroidery projects can I screw up when I’m in a rush?

I’m beginning to realize that whenever I execute the project in a rush I always make some type of stupid mistake. Case in point: the belt that I embroidered last week for my husband that I stitched upside down. But bless his heart – he’s wearing it in the opposite direction – so I won’t be tearing it out. I think the reason why I screwed it up was because I was rushing to get it done on the morning of his actual birthday.

This week – once again – I was in a rush to try to complete different project and royally messed it up. I was trying to appliqué a little t-shirt for my cousin’s daughter who turned one. The design that I was stitching out was the birthday crown appliqué I made a couple of months ago. My intention was to digitize all of the different letter possibilities and put the design on my Etsy store. So I considered this project to not only be a gift, but also a another test stitching of this particular design.

Unfortunately because it turned out so crooked, that is all this particular project is going to be: a test stitch out of this particular design. I mean it’s not even a little bit crooked. It looks horrible.

The design, on the other hand, does not look bad. I want to go back and rework the circles on the points of the crown. I think I need to add more overlap between the inner and outer circles. So I guess it’s a good thing that this particular project did not turn out the way I wanted it to. Because I still need to make this gift, I have another opportunity to stitch it out again.

This is not the only mistake I’ve made.  Check out some of the most common embroidery mistakes and how to avoid them.