Sugar Skull Embroidery for Beginners
Check out this colorful way to create an embroidery sugar skull art piece for Día de los Muertos.
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We truly enjoy a cute and relatively easy to do embroidery DIY project! That’s why we like the idea of adding embellishments pieces like beads and sequins. This makes the embroidery part a bit less tedious, especially when we are working with kids or friends that are beginners.
For this embroidery project that we are sharing with you today, we decided to get inspired by the sugar skulls from Día de los Muertos, a tradition that we love to celebrate every year! This cute sugar skull embroidery art piece can replace the popular sugar skull made out of actual sugar in your altar of Día de los Muertos or it can end up being a beautiful art piece to hang in your living room or any other space in your home all year round.
Check out the tutorial below, and the materials we used to create this cute sugar skull embroidery project! It’s easy enough for beginners, and also for older kids, and you can use any color palette that you love. I’m imagining the same sugar skull but with all sequins and beads in orange and yellow tones, with an autumn feeling. Or blues and greens tones, for a more fresh and summery feeling.
You could also use another kind of fabric in a darker color, like for example, instead of using muslin fabric, use denim fabric and decorate the sugar skull with white embroidery floss, white beads, sequins and buttons.
To make an embroidery sugar skull art piece for Día de los Muertos stat by tracing your sugar skull in muslin fabric for embroidery using a pencil. It should look something like this!
MATERIALS:
How to Create an Embroidered Sugar Skull:
Before you start, trace a sugar skull shape with eyes, mouth, nose and even the flowers in the middle of the skull and raindrops to decorate the borders, like you see in the image above, in your muslin fabric using a pencil.
Place all the beads and sequins in your work area to be able to see them, separate a few of them by color and organize them before you start adding them in your project. This planning part with save you time when you start adding the sequins and beads in your sugar skull.
Then it’s time to make the eyes of your embroidery sugar skull. We used a pair of big buttons for the eyes in a bright and interesting color. Use embroidery floss to place them in the middle of the skull, one in each side. After you finished placing the buttons, delineate the eyes adding sequins with beads in the middle all around the buttons.
To make the teeth of your embroidery sugar skull, use sequins in white. Place six of white sequins in a straight line, and then six more in the bottom. You can use embroidery floss to attach them, or glue them carefully in the fabric.
For the nose, pick a contrasting bright color and fill the upside down heart shape completely. To hide any trace of the pencil lines you used before, delineate the nose using white embroidery floss.
It’s time to decorate the sugar skull with flowers and raindrops! Now add some flower in the middle of your sugar skull and some raindrops around it. Use embroidery floss to cover these shapes completely. You will need to add more sequins and flowers around the sugar skull to delineate and embellish the shape.
When you your sugar skull embroider piece is ready, cut the excess of fabric in your project and use the embroidery hoop as it was a frame.
Place your sugar skull on your altar for Día de Muertos, outside your bedroom door or in your living room wall. If you make one don’t forget to share it with us over Intagram at @LiveColorfulCo.
