Making your own nursery wall art - can you put embroidery/ applique on canvas blocks?

[rosie77]

Hi girls,

I thought it would be fun (and hopefully cheaper) to make some cute wall art for the nursery. I'm thinking of some simple applique or embroidery designs of an owl, a bird, a whale etc. Once I've made them, can I put them on a canvas block? I'd rather do this than frame them, but I can't find any instructions for how to do this (only how to paint onto canvas blocks).

Any ideas?

[deletedit]

I'd imagine you'd need enough working cloth (embroidered or plain nice cloth) to wrap right to the back of the canvas and then you could staple onto the same backing frame the canvas is stuck to, the same way the canvas is done, using a staplegun.

You stretch canvases onto frames from opposite edges so it stretches evenly, I'd be googling for a canvas stretching tutorial.

Honestly, if I was going to do this I'd get cheap canvases, take the canvas OFF the frame, stretch the unused embroidery cloth over the frame in replacement and do the embroidery directly onto the stretched cloth, assuming you're using nice cloth and not doing an edge-to-edge design and there's going to be whitespace around the design because you won't be able to embroider where the frame is. Saves using a temporary embroidery stretcher.

Disclaimer: its been 15 years since I did canvas stretching at art in high school, and not much less time since I was last doing cross stitches and embroideries

[rosie77]

Thanks RE, I'll have to have a look for the canvas stretching tutes. I'd like to sew it before I add it though, as I might do some on the machine. Cheers,
Rosie