I love my big embroidered appliques. I can get such great detail and texture out of that technique. But it has a downside. It’s days and days of embroidery.

Not that I mind that. I find that fascinating! It builds color and if it’s color, well, I can be lost for days. But it’s terribly disappointing if I find after I’ve embroidered something that my pattern just wasn’t what I needed. If I ignore the fact that it’s off, I can spend 30-40 hours only to have an embroidery that disappoints me.

I draw my own patterns. Tracing someone else’s art leads to very flat imagery, legal issues, and huge size limits, so I always draw. But I don’t always get what I want at first. And I don’t always know what is wrong with it.

So every drawing sits on the photo wall for a while. I may not know why it’s off, but after 20 minutes I know that it’s off. It sits until I know. Then I go back to the drawing-room, as it were.

This frog is a good enough frog. But he has all the movement of a pet rock. I put him up and immediately knew changes would have to be made. The first change, for all drawings, is to flip them horizontally. The drawing goes in the back and the embroidery shows from the front. So it needs to be flipped.

In this frog’s case, we needed more help. So I treated him like a paper doll. I cut out his legs and arms so I could move them at different angles.

My drawing paper is Totally Stable, an iron-on removable light stabilizer that takes drawing well and traces easily. it also can be ironed back together after you find the position you want.

I moved his back leg at a further angle, moved his farm back so his weight was on it, and stretched the other arm out so it was reaching. Then I used my drawing to enlarge my pattern since it will shrink with the stitching.

I’m much happier with this. We’ll see how it stitches up.

For more information about adjusting patterns, see Drawing on Distortion. For patterns of mine, you are welcome to work with for noncommercial work, check out Patterns for Embroidery, a pattern book I prepared for free motion.