Why I Love Embroidery Hoop Displays!

My Nursery Embroidery Hoop Gallery Wall

Embroidery Hoop Gallery Walls are the best! I have had one up in my nursery since my first little one was born. I actually inherited the embroidery hoops from my grandmother's house when she passed away and my best friend had left over scraps from a pendant banner she made for my nursery and I thought it would be cool to display them this way. Every time someone comes into the nursery they comment on how ADORABLE it is, and I have to agree. It IS adorable and I love it.

Making Embroidery Hoop Galleries

I made this new gallery from some fabrics I fell in love with online. I just have to give a quick shoutout to picking out fabrics online! It's fantastic! I usually HATE picking out fabrics. Seriously.... HATE! There is so much on display at fabric stores, it is so overwhelming. And it takes forever to find great fabric combinations that compliment each other. Not to mention my children begging to get out of there. And hauling around HUGE bolts of fabric. It really is a nightmare. But online you can add fabrics to a design wall, see them next to each other, move the swatch around, delete what you don't like and see what goes well together. I love it and I love how these fabrics came together for this project. I started with the pink and blue floral fabric and then worked from there to find complimenting fabrics. I did my fabric shopping on Fabric.com, it was a reasonable price, fast shipping and a much better experience than a fabric store. So here's how to get it done. It's very simple and I don't want to over complicate it. Let me know if you have any questions and I would love to help.

Also, if you want to avoid the high costs of buying embroidery hoops and fabric, you could probably save money by buying this set of 7 on my Etsy shop! CLICK HERE for the listing. I was able to cut costs by buying hoops in sets of 6! They can get pricey.

1. Embroidery Hoops of different sizes

These can get pricey and I shopped around for the best deal. I bought mine online (some in bulk) from Amazon. Here's the sizes I chose and how many I used in that size. You can click the sizes to go to the amazon link. 

2. Various coordinating fabrics

Cotton fabrics are best because they don't stretch and deform the print as easily, but the floral fabric on this project was jersey and it still worked, it just takes a little extra care when tightening. I loved the floral fabric too much to not use it. I chose six different fabrics for this project, the peach colored fabric was repreated in two different sized hoops. I found my fabrics on Fabric.com.

3. Glue- I used plain Elmer's

4. Scissors

5. Nails and hammer to hang

It helps to layout your hoops in the beginning to make sure you have the fabrics you would like in the hoops you like before you start glueing.

1. Separate embroidery hoops

2. Put glue on the inside of the larger outside hoop, rub the glue out a little so it covers more space.

3. Loosely lay fabric face down on top of the glued hoop

4. Put inside hoop over the back of the fabric and press down into the outside frame

5. Tighten the embroidery hoop screw

6. Pull the fabric tight so there are no wrinkles

7.  Wipe off the excess glue that came through the edges of the hoops, if you feel like there wasn't enough glue to make the fabric stick, add a little extra glue on the top

OR

8. Let the hoops dry

9. Trim off the excess fabric

10. Nail and hang

My son insisted on a Batman Birthday Party this year, which shocks me since he doesn't really watch the shows and prefers to play most anything other than super heroes. And despite me suggesting Star Wars or Legos, only a Batman Birthday Party would do.

To my delight, there were SO many ideas and gorgeous graphics online for batman themed birthday parties. I fell in love with all the monochromatic batman parties. GORGEOUS! But to be honest, most were a little over the top. They must have had a budget of thousands of dollars. So I went for something similar but toned down.

So here it is. A great Batman Birthday Party with free printables! Just click the download button underneath the image of graphics you like.

We started the party with a Super Hero Training Course. Once completed the kids earned their batman capes. They seriously LOVED it. Here's the training course rundown.

1. They crawled under the string, without touching it.

2. Zigg-zagged through the cones as fast as they could. 

3. Knocked down all the villains with the tennis ball.

4. Crashed through the brick wall

5. Hit the Joker with a water balloon.

They loved the obstacle course so much that they had to do it again all in their capes. It was so adorable to see them all going at the same time. My mom made the capes from the shiny fabric she got in Jo-Anns, cut points on the bottom, and put velcro on the top to put them together.

Next, we moved on to cake and ice cream. My mother in law made some amazing chocolate-chocolate chip cupcakes with white chocolate frosting. YUM! They were displayed on boxes wrapped in black butcher paper. I hot glued yellow rectangles on there to make it look like Gotham City (I did the same thing with the training course bricks). I also made some personalized cupcake toppers to fit the theme.

Cupcake Toppers
I cut out the circles and taped them to a tooth pick. I do not have a free download of these because they are custom with my son's new age and name. But they can be customized for you and your birthday party on my Etsy shop.
Order Here

The food table also had coordinating food labels and water bottles.

The Piñata
The pinata was the most anticipated part of the party. Everyone loves a good Pinata. Let me fill you in on a few of my tricks of doing affordable pinatas at parties on my DIY pinata post. Here's one trick... fill pinatas with the goodie bags!

Batman Goodie Bag Labels
Says "THANK YOU for keeping Gotham Safe" . We put the goodie bags in the piñata which helped save money on the candy. We also put each kids name on the goodie bag which helped avoid any fights when it exploded. You can find my tutorial on how to make your own piñata here.

Download Here

Pin the face on the Batman wasn't such a great hit because most of the kids peeked through the blindfold and cheated! But if cheating can be avoided "pin the.." games are my favorite. This version has various lego expressions of the Lego batman and they have to try to get the mouth inside the spot on his mask. Lego Batman Pin The Face: Head