embroidered handwriting

hello everyone!  i would like to share a recent project i made for my little man, dominic.  he learned to write his name recently, and i wanted to immortalize it somehow. 

so, since i`ve been doing a bit of stuff to prepare for solana`s first birthday (she`s having a rainbow party), i wanted to make something special for dom - the rainbow, embroidered, handwritten name tag came to fruition!

since, he was practicing his letters, i got dom to write his name on a piece of scrap paper.  btw, you can also use a tear-away stabilizer.  to come to think of it, i should`ve used one.  but that`s the beauty of doing things impromptu, you learn to make it better the next time around.

then, i tore (you can cut with scissors - lol) the paper to separate each letter.  placed it on a piece of felt.  a color for each letter.

i decided to use white thread as a guideline (but, if you are using the tear-away stabilizer, you can skip this step entirely).  then, tear away the paper. 

he was painting & used a lot of paper - we recycled ;)

after, i used embroidery thread (6 threads) to go over the initial guideline.  it doesn`t need to be perfect, because you are going over this with the satin stitch.  i did theback stitch to give the satin stitch some volume.  when using felt, the embroidery tends to sink into the felt a little bit.  if you use the tear-away stabilizer, you don`t need the stabilizer i used below...

follow the shape of the hand-written letters with satin stitches, until you are done! 

stitch the rainbow pieces by using blanket stitches (i used the same color of thread as the felt - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet) to secure each piece of felt to the next.

i also used some pins to secure each piece to the next (sorry, no photos for the next steps).  do the same to the back piece. 

i finished securing the embroidered piece first.  after, i used the embroidered side as a guide to stitch the back piece together. 

align the finished pieces together, cut to the shape you desire (i rounded the ends on mine), then blanket stitch them using the same color of thread to the felt.

btw, you can also use this as a bookmark.  you can also stitch the handwriting to cardstock, printed paper, or a piece of beautiful vintage fabric and frame it!  here is the finished name tag:

one happy customer!

i used embroidery thread to create a string for the name tag.  you can braid different colored embroidery floss to create a fancier string.

hope you enjoyed my tutorial!  have fun stitching!!!
xo, carla