Embroidery Hoop Teacher Gifts

An apple for the teacher? Well, a few apples and a pencil?! It’s almost the end of the school year, which means Teacher Appreciation Day is right around the corner. There are many amazing teachers in my life, family members, friends and many who have blessed my own children. One of the longest known icons relating to a teacher is an apple. I took this simple icon and made a few fun and easy teacher gifts.

Hi Alison here, and today I’d like to share these cute apple and pencil embroidery hoop pockets for Teacher Appreciation gifts. I created these a few years back and they were such a huge success, I wanted to get them into a blog.

What you will need:

• Wooden embroidery hoops – 6 in.
• Various fabrics – two 9 in. squares per hoop
• Ribbons
• Embellishments
• Wooden alphabet letters or craft letters

Other supply suggestions:

• Pom-pom trim
• Ric-rac
• Lace trim

Trim both the background fabric and pocket fabric into 9 in. squares. Open the embroidery hoop and place the background square over the inner smaller circle. Take the pocket fabric square and fold in half. With hot glue, attach the ribbon or trim to the fold of the pocket fabric. Place the folded pocket fabric over the background fabric, more towards the bottom.

If you’d like to make a backing, before placing the outer hoop over the fabrics, take the outer larger hoop and use it as a template to trace a circle out of adhesive fabric or any fabric. Glue on the back for the last step. I did not make a backing for these, which is fine as well.

Take the outer hoop and center it over both fabrics, while fitting it into the inner hoop and securing the fabrics in place. Tighten the top fitting to ensure the fabrics stay in place. You can also pull the fabrics though the back while tightening to help center everything.

Once set, trim access fabric from the back of the hoop. After trimming, if there is any additional fabric, fold in and glue to hoop. This will cut down on any extra bulk. At this point, if you have a backing, attach to the back of the hoop.

Finally, for the apples, glue a felt leaf to the top.

Fun part – adding the embellishments. Add tags, letters, whatever you’d like. I found these cute little chalkboards in which I added wooden A,B,C letters. For the pencil hoop I had tags, to which I added a stenciled 1, and chalked on the #. In addition, I placed gift cards in the pockets. You can totally customize these to the teacher if you know some of their interests.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this Embroidery Hoop Teacher Gift. Wishing everyone a wonderful ending to their school year and a fun summer!