Hoop-tastic!

If you're a long time reader of the blog, you may remember me talking about making an embroidery hoop art wall. I first saw the idea on the purl bee back in September 2010 and after raving about the project to friends finally found some wooden hoops in October of that same year! Wendy found them for me at her neighbourhood thrift shop and we quickly made a trip there to pick some up in a variety of sizes:


All I had left to do was find some swoon worthy fabrics to stretch in my new frames and stick them on the wall! Sounds easy enough right? Apparently not. My extremely picky taste and frugality put fabric finding on the back burner and my lovely wooden hoops never made it up on the walls. *Sigh*

When I moved to Victoria this past September Lindsay and I spotted some craft packages of beautiful printed scraps from The Milkman's Daughter (the sister shop of Smoking Lily). I may have gone overboard (ok, definitely went over...) and bought five packs. It felt like christmas opening up each of the bags to see what bargain gems I had acquired and figured they would work perfectly for my embroidery hoop project. Unfortunately once again the project got put back in the closet as unpacking, organizing, and getting my health under control seemed to take priority. Well - good news! This weekend I finally decided to take the plunge and behold my embroidery hoop covered living room wall:


Oh my am I ever in love! I've spent countless hours humming and hawing over how to cover our mass amounts of bland walls in our condo and the long strip behind the couch was certainly the most difficult. Our extremely limited decorating budget certainly didn't make it any easier but since I already had all the craft supplies waiting in my craft room project, I figured there was no time like the present to get it finished! Hooray! Take another peek from side:


What fun! I didn't want the fabrics to be overly feminine since although I doubt Fraser would complain, I'm sure he'd appreciate a more gender neutral approach to our main living space. I also wanted to go with a slightly asymmetrical layout so it wouldn't feel like I was over thinking it, even though I did go through a few lay outs before I got a composition I was happy with. To top it all off I completed the whole thing while Fraser was out so I got to see his reaction to the embroidery hoop wall when he got home!

The majority of the hoops are the Smoking Lily pieces, although I did use a grey pussy willow print I bought from bookhou at home:


I really love how each hoop looks and the Smoking Lily prints have charming off center composition. This is balanced out with a few patterned and striped prints like the super fun blue mason jar fabric I bought from bespoke uprising!:


The grey maple seeds are probably my favourite of the bunch, but I do have a special place in my heart for horse printed on striped rose cotton. I wanted the largest hoop to have a large print on it to bring in some interest and I think it turned out quite well:


I still have a few large hoops left and loads of scraps so as soon as I find some more smaller wooden hoops I think I'll do a similar spread above our headboard! My weekend thrift shopping trip was pretty unsuccessful (since all the thrift shops here are pretty looked over and ridiculously over priced) so I may have to wait until I head back to Kamloops so I can buy out Cost Savers! Oh well, it took me over a year to complete this first project so I'm sure I can be patient. So what do you think? How do you decorate your walls? Ever tried embroidery hoop art? Any hoops you think I should switch out?