Warhammer 40K Hand Embroidered Wall Hanging

I was recently commissioned to embroider a passage from Warhammer 40K lore. It's definitely not the most uplifting thing I've ever embroidered, ha!

That being said, I love mixing delicate embroidery with strange and dark subject matter, so I was all over this. :D

I completed this piece little by little over the course of a week. I'd say it took about 15 hours - a bit quicker than I thought it would be. I satin stitched the first letter of each paragraph and then did the text in three strands of black embroidery floss. It took almost a whole skein of embroidery floss to finish it!

∆∆∆ Want to see more of my embroidery? ∆∆∆
Check out my Bob Dylan "Forever Young" lyrics piece!
I've also got an ible posted about the basics of embroidery.

Step 1: Progress Photos

Most of this was done at night after I finished up work, so pardon the questionable photos. :D

I laid the pattern out in Pages and then copied it onto canvas using a water soluble pen. This part alone took about an hour.

I satin stitched first so I could feel accomplished and then worked my way through the rest of the text. I spent 1-2 hours a night for the first few days, and then on Sunday I had a marathon embroidery session and finished it up!

After it was done, I washed it in the sink to remove the water soluble ink and help remove the creases from the hoop. I left it to dry overnight.

Step 2: Trimming to Size

The final size of this piece was supposed to be 8x12 inches, so I trimmed it a bit larger. I settled on 9x14 inches, because that would give me enough allowance to fold over the edges and finish it properly.

Check out the back! I really do think all tiny embroidered text looks like the Black Speech of Mordor from the back. :P

Step 3: Sewing the Edges

The first thing I did was fold over, iron and sew the two long sides of the embroidery. (First 1/8 inch and then almost a 1/4 inch) Before I sewed them down, I cut a piece of unbleached muslin to size and laid it in to help protect the stitching.

Once that was done, I folded over the top and bottom edges by about 1/8 inch and sewed them down. Then I folded it over by a little over a half inch and sewed it down again.

This created a nice sized pocket in the top and bottom which will allow the insertion of wooden dowels to keep it taut and pretty while hanging. I used pencils for staging the photos and testing it out.

It's important to note that I used white thread for this and a very small stitch length (set to a 2 on my Janome machine) to keep the stitching less obvious and cleaner.