Stitching a Grumpy Wren - An Embroidery Guide

Now, I’m just going to say it and address the elephant in the room…. my little Wren has turned out a bit grumpy! It’s how I’ve stitched his little eye. It’s so interesting, isn’t it? The eyes are the key to giving such a character and a tweak could give him a completely different personality. My initial reaction was to unpick and re-stitch to give him a happier appearance. But after I had slept on it, I’ve decided to leave him as he is…… a cute grumpy little Wren embroidery.

So now that I’ve finished this little bird embroidery, I’ll tell you exactly how I stitched it, including the threads I’ve used, the number of strands I used, the types of stitches and even the needle size. You can follow this step-by-step guide for stitching your Wren, but the beauty of these projects is you can change as much or as little as you like and create your own.

1. What materials you need

A hand printed embroidery square, an embroidery hoop, needles, threads and scissors. I’ll delve into each of these below……

• An Embroidery Square

To start, you’re going to need one of my Wren embroidery squares. They are hand printed onto natural calico squares ready for you to colour in using whichever stitches and thread colours you like! You can get your wren embroidery square here………

• An Embroidery Hoop

I stitched my wren in a 5” hoop, this sized hoop fits really well with all of my embroidery squares. But once I’d finished stitching this one, I decided to change into a 4” hoop for displaying.

• Embroidery Needles

Embroidery needles are made specifically for embroidery. They have a sharp point and a long eye, which makes it easier to thread multiple strands of thread. These needles come in different sizes. The bigger the needle, the bigger the hole it makes in your fabric when you push it through. If you use a big needle but only a few strands of thread, your stitches might move around in that hole. On the flip side, if you use tiny holes but try to stitch with 6 strands, you’ll struggle to pull the thread through.

I sell sets of needles in my shop, they are packs of 6 needles in three different sizes (a large needle for stitching 6 strands, 2 middle sized needles for stitching with 3 or 4 strands and 3 small needles for stitching with 1 or 2 strands). The needle sizes that I’ll be referring to throughout this tutorial corresponds to these packs.

You can buy these needle packs here……

• Threads

I used Anchor 6 stranded cotton threads for this project. These threads are my ‘go to’ favourite threads, they’re an excellent high quality and I love their choice of colours.

Picking the thread colours is one of my favourite steps. But where do you start with so many options? I usually start by picking just one colour that I love. This colour is always changing for me with the seasons and my mood (and with my ever growing thread stash it’s not easy), but this one colour that I’m drawn to is going to be the main colour of my project. So, for this project I was feeling a light orange. Now that I’ve picked this one main thread colour, a large number of other thread options that just won’t work nicely with this orange, or will give a vibe that I’m not feeling for this project can be eliminated (this time).

For picking the next colour, I went with a complementary light blue green. Orange and blue are opposite each other on the colour wheel so will always be a great colour combo.

With these two colours pinned down, picking out the rest of the palette is much easier, especially for a smaller project like this one where I didn’t want to add in too many colours (this time around).

These are the 6 colours I picked out:

Anchor 375 - Dark Desert Brown

Anchor 328 - Light Melon

Anchor 886 - Sand Stone

Anchor 185 - Light Sea Green

Anchor 2 - White

Anchor 235 - Medium Charcoal Grey

• Scissors

Any scissors will do, but sharp pointed embroidery scissors are best for trimming threads.

2. The stitches I used

• Seed Stitch

• Split Stitch

• Satin Stitch

• Couch Stitch

• Straight Stitch

But just remember, these are the stitches that I’ve used but you absolutely don’t need use the same stitches for your lovely Wren. Playing with different stitches can give your Wren a completely different look.

3. Time to start stitching

Pop your embroidery square into your hoop. I always like to pull my fabric so that my hoop feels like a drum. This tightness really helps to make neater stitches and prevent the fabric wrinkling. To make your ‘drum’, pull the edges of the fabric outside the hoop smoothing out any bumps or extra fabric. Then, tighten the screw mechanism at the top of the hoop until you can no longer twist it. Pull the edge of the fabric outside of the hoop for a second time to increase your drum tension a little more. Your fabric should now feel like a drum ready to stitch.

You’ll need to keep an eye on your drum tension as you stitch because it might loosen up a bit.

4. Step-by-Step Stitching Guide

The Belly

Seed stitch has quickly become my new favourite filling stitch. I just love the texture that it makes and its really fun to play around with different strand numbers and stitch lengths to give different textures. The trickiest bit for me is not making a pattern with my stitches. You want these seed stitches to be random. My best tips, come up close to where you went down, make your next stitch in a different direction and just don’t think about it too much. Starting one stitch very close to where you finished the last one will really reduce the amount of thread that’s on the back of the embroidery and make stitching much easier.

Stitch – Seed Stitch

Thread colour – Anchor 328

Number of strands – 2

Needle size – Small

The Body

Another of my favourite filling stitches, the split stitch. I stitched this section with one strand from two colours, combined them and stitched with them together. I just love the effect this gives.

I started my stitches at the tail and stitched in curved lines along the wing and to the Wrens head. I chose to stitch around the wing markings, but you could stitch straight over them and then stitch the markings over the top.

Stitch – Split Stitch

Thread colours – Anchor 886 & 328

Number of strands – 2 (1 strand from each colour combined and stitched together)

Needle size – Small

The Tail Markings

I stitched these little markings with single rows of stitches going down the tail.

Stitch – Split Stitch

Thread colour – Anchor 185

Number of strands – 3

Needle size – Medium

The Wing Markings

I stitched these in the same way as the tail markings.

Stitch – Split Stitch

Thread colour – Anchor 185

Number of strands – 3

Needle size – Medium

The Eye Marking

I stitched this area with small vertical satin stitches. I chose to stitch around the eye.

Stitch – Satin Stitch

Thread colour – Anchor 185

Number of strands – 3

Needle size – Medium

The Eye

Now, initially I stitched this bit with a padded statin stitch. I wanted to give it a little 3d appearance……but the problem was the eye was then too thick for me to put the little pupil in (and he looks a bit possessed without it!). I just couldn’t get my needle through! So, I cut it out and replaced it with just Satin stitch.

I stitched these tiny satin stitches vertically.

Stitch – Satin Stitch

Thread colour – Anchor 2

Number of strands – 3

Needle size – Medium

The Pupil

I just stitched 2 little couching stitches that straddle the eye stitches underneath. The placement of this little pupil and also the size will really give character to your Wren. But don’t worry, the best bit about embroidery is that if you don’t like it, you can cut it out and re do it. For such a small detail, you can really have fun with this bit.

Stitch – Couch Stitch

Thread colour – Anchor 235

Number of strands – 2

Needle size – Small

The Beak

I stitched a few vertical satin stitches for the tiny beak. I found it easier to start at the face and stitch out to the pointed end of the beak.

Stitch – Satin Stitch

Thread colour – Anchor 375

Number of strands – 2

Needle size – Small

The Cute Little Legs

And to finish off, I stitched just 4 straight stitches for each leg. I stitched the middle toe last so that it could go over the top of where I went down for the other 3 straight stitches, I thought this made them look neater.

Stitch – Straight Stitch

Thread colour – Anchor 375

Number of strands – 3

Needle size – Medium

And that’s it! He’s finished!

I was tempted to add some text around the outside of my wren (like I have with some of my other embroidery squares), but in the end decided to leave him as he is. But I did change him into a smaller 4” hoop, so there wasn’t as much space around him.

5. Finishing and displaying your Embroidery

You can frame your finished piece in the very hoop you stitched it in. This is my favourite way of displaying my embroidery projects.

Trim away excess fabric from the edges of the hoop, leaving a ring about 4cm all the way around. Stitch a running stitch about 1cm in from the fabric edge, leaving an unknotted tail at the start and finish. Pull these two tails to gather in the fabric. Tie a knot to hold in place.

The best bit about this method is, it is not permanent. So, if I do decide at a later date to add a cheeky bit of text about my grumpy wren, I can remove the running stitches and continue to work on my wren until I’m happy.

Step back and admire your beautiful work!

I hope you loved this one. You might want to check out my other embroidery blog posts, some of them have links to live stitching videos that you can stitch along with. I also currently have 12 other embroidery square designs in my shop that you’ll love relaxing and getting creative stitching.

You can find them all here……

And don’t forget to tag me in your social media when you show off your beautiful work – I’d really love to see it.

Enjoy your stitching!

Until next time,

Liz x