Hand Embroidery: Cat Portrait

1. Introduction : Making a pet portrais is such a special project. It's a great gift to give and it can be cherished forever. Sleep. My name is Flo, and I'm an embroider artist from the Netherlands. I have been doing embroidery for about eight years now, and I love to use different mediums in my work. And I also teach embroidery here on skill share. And in this class, I'm going to show you how to make your own pet portrait without using any drawing skills. We are going to print our portrait on the fabric, and this can be done with an online service or with your own printer. You will learn how to pick colors and how to make those realistic looking stitches. I'm not going to say this is an easy project. This is a big project that will be a challenge, but I will show you how you can correct any mistake and make it as easy as possible. This class is for people who have some experience in embroidery. But if you are a confident beginner, then please join me because I really feel that anyone can do this. Let's get stitching and see you in the next lesson. 2. Archie : I want to tell a little bit about the portrait that we're going to stage. The picture I'm using is of dear Archie. I did a giveaway in November 2024 for this lesson because I really wanted someone to have this pet portrait that I'm going to stage for this lesson. And I got an email from the owner of Archie, and it immediately caught my heart because her profile picture was with her cat, and I don't know, it was so sad because after, like, two days or three days after this giveaway, he needs to be put asleep and I don't know. I immediately felt like this class has to be like an ode memorial and something for Archie. And I love for his owner to have this embroidery piece when I'm done with making this lesson. So I hope it's getting a special place in your house, and I hope that a lot of people will learn so much from Archie and I hope you will enjoy your pet portrait. Let's go to the next lesson. I'm going to show you the class project. 3. Class Project: I want to start by saying in the process of making this project, you will become insecure about how it's going to turn out. This happens with me all the time that I lose that confidence in the piece, and this is normal. When it's a big and very detailed, you sometimes just lose that connection you have with it, and you will feel bored with it, and it feels like a lot, and that's all part of it. Whenever that happens, just walk away and come back another day. Don't force yourself to keep going. For me, that is a clear sign that it was enough for today. I need to have a fresh look on it another day. With these tips in mind, I want you to take some decisions on what you want to do. Like, do you have a printer and want to print it on yourself? Then watch my lesson on how to print with your printer. If you don't have a printer, you can use my lesson on how to print your fabric with spoonflower. There are also choices to be made with your materials. Do you want to buy your color schemes based on the picture or get all the colors and choose in that way? Those two are the biggest decisions you have to make. Once you have your materials and fabric, it is time to start stitching. The cat you are stitching is going to be different than mine, but this does not mean that you can't follow along with my lesson with your different cat. Every lesson, I'm going to show you how I mark the fabric and decide what color to use. In this class, I'm not going to show you color numbers, et cetera. I really want you to be able to make those decisions for your own project. And I'm confident that you will be able to do that. When you're on board, your piece is done, I'm going to show you how to frame the hoop, and you have the ability to make the best Christmas gift ever. Trust me. Don't forget to share your project in the project section because I love seeing that, and you can always share your pap portrait and ask for feedback on the pictures itself or share your embroidery piece. Let's start by going over our materials in the next lesson. 4. Materials: In this lesson, you will know all the materials you need to complete this project. All the links to the products, it can be found in the download section of this class. If for a printing label, if you want to use the printing on the fabric method, fabric, I would use plain cotton because any other fabric is going to be to take for your printer. This is only if you have a printer. If you don't have a printer, you can order your printed fabrics online. Embroidery tread. I'm going to do a deeper dive on this in the lesson, picking colors. Needle, I would recommend a needle that is small, has a small eyelid, very important, and it has a sharp point. We want to make small holes in the fabric. Next is the mpicker and that is a great tool if you want to get your stitches out. Very careful. It's a great tool for that. Embroidery because we are printing on A four, you don't want to have any embroidery hoop bigger than 18 centimeter because the fabric will not fit in it. Scissors, any kind of scissors is fine. A pen for making your stage directions, you can use any kind of pen, but I wouldn't use a fine liner because that might stain the fabric, a pret stick for finishing your project and gluing it down in your hoop. With all of our materials ready, we can start with the project. First, I want you to know what the best picture is you can use for your pet portrait in the next lesson. 5. Choosing Your Picture : Choosing your picture, I'm going to show you the pictures that the owner of Archie sent me and why I choose this specific picture. The first picture is, of course, on a blanket, and that would be cute if we would make the blanket, as well. Don't forget that you can totally use things like blankets to make it more unique and add it in the portrait. I really wanted to focus on the pet portrait, so I decided to not use this picture. With the second picture, I feel like the colors are more dull than in the other pictures. And then it already does not feel like it's as vibrant as the colors of Art would normally be. The third one is actually a really good picture, but it is not as good as the four picture that I ended up using. Also because this picture is just really sharp. Like, the picture that I'm using, you can really zoom in. And that's great for printing on fabric or for printing serve because it's so sharp and we can really focus in on everything. So I ended up using this picture because it's the sharpest and the most vibrant, so I ended up using that. In our next lesson, I'm going to show you how you can use your iPad to make it ready for printing on fabric. 6. Remove Background: Remove the background. And this last time we are going to make the portrait pins ready. I'm going to use my iPad for this. And I also want to point out that if you asked it on, like, any Facebook read it, like, everybody will be willing to help you remove a certain background. So you can also ask it in an embroidery Facebook group. You know, everybody will always be helpful and because it's not that much work, if you cannot do it, don't be afraid to ask someone for help, even if it's a stranger on the Internet. Here's Archie. I make sure my canvas is A four, and I remove the background with the eraser tool. This does not have to be perfect. We are going to stage over it anyway. Make sure it's not too big for the A four canvas because the hoop has to fit over it. When you are done, you can export it as a JPG. The portrait is already for the printer, or if you want to order it online, if you don't have a printer, I suggest you skip the next lesson and go to the one after this. 7. Print on Fabric : For printing on fabric, you will need a four, a shipping label for printing. You will also need your fabric and a printer, of course. Then you roughly cut your fabric to fit on the label. After that, you remove the fabric and peel off the back, and you are left with a sticky label. You take your fabric and gently put it on the label. Make sure your hands are nice and clean, and rub the fabric as long as possible so all the creases are gone. Now you can cut away the remaining fabric from the sides. When you put it in the paper tray of your printer, make sure the fabric side is facing down. So what we are basically doing is falling the printer into thinking that it is going to print on paper. When it's done printing, you peel the sticky part of the bag from the fabric, and it's ready to be put in the hoop. I do want to point out that this is not the most environment friendly option because you do throw away the label in the ends. If you don't want to use a printer, you can join me in the next lesson where I show you how you can order your fabric online. 8. Print on Fabric Without Printer: What if you want to make this project without printer? That is no problem. You can have your picture printed on fabric and have it sent to you. I have to warn you because this is very addictive, and before you know it, you will be printing everything on fabric. I want to make it clear that this is not an affiliate product. I don't get any money for it. I'm not affiliate with this brand whatsoever. I just really like this service. And I have to say I'm a little bit addicted to putting stuff on fabric now. I it's a thing. What are you going to do is you go to the website Spoonflower. This is a website where you can buy fabric or wallpaper and many more items that are being sold by artists, and Spoonflower prints the design. You can also put your own design, for instance, on fabric, and that is what we are going to do. To be able to do that, I'm going to get my account and upload a design. I'm going to choose the file for the cat portrait. Now you can see that I have a pattern of cats on the fabric. Oh, my God, how cute is that sheet set with the cat pattern. Okay. But we don't need that. We need to go to the fabrics. When you click on the Bats, you can still see the patterns of catads. We are going to change that by editing the fabric and click on center. This means that our design will be in the center of the fabric. You can see that our design is way too small for the fabric. We are going to change that by making the fabric a 20 by 20 centimeter swatch. Now I'm going to scale it a bit and make it a little bit smaller, just enough to cover that swatch area. You can choose from various different fabrics. My advice is to stay with linen or cotton. You can also choose more than one type of fabric. Unfortunately, the shipping is quite expensive. I don't know how much the shipping is for the US and other countries outside Europe, but for Europe, it is like $15. You can also just do the entirely picture without deleting the background. You can make a wonderful piece like I made here. So here you have. Like it's a little bit dirty. That's why I don't know what happened to it. I have a toddler, you know. That's what happens. Um, but here you can see that it is, you know, I use this picture to embroider, and then the rest I just left it the way it is. This is called Crepe Dhen. I hope I hope I'm saying this, right? I mean, this is a crepe de chine Crepe DSineKrep dechin is it, I think. This is a little bit stretchy, but not really. You have to make sure that it's drum tie, but this gives, like, a really nice, like, photo sheer, nice effect. So if you go to the website, you can also see, like, little mock ups, like that they kind of, like, show you what kind of fabric it is. So just play around with that. Again, addictive. I mean, you have no idea how many of the I have laying around. It's just the amount of joy I get from making these and then having them shipped to me and then just opening that little packet and taking all these printed fabrics out is just it's my joy. It's my joy in life. It's, it's my joy. I love it. I love it. So it's fun to leave the background as it is. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to match your colors with the picture on fabric. 9. Picking Colors: Picking colors. When I started out with embroidery, I planned my design and went to the craft store and got all the colors that I might need. This became expensive very fast, and I feel like when you do embroidery like this, it is kind of like painting. You need all your colors to work with. And you have to work with whatever is in your budget, but make sure that you have enough threads to choose from. For this project, I'm not going to show you what numbers I'm using because every pet portrait is different. And what I want you to learn from this lesson is that you understand how to pick colors for your own project. So what I do, I just get them all out and I really just look at all the colors that might slightly even might be good for the sparred. And then, so I make the first initial choice of colors, and then I go back and say, Okay, does this really work? Because here already see like, Oh, yeah, this is maybe good, but it can also be too orange. So I'm going to this one I also see in there. Also look at your reference image is also a really good idea. Keep that in mind. And I really make this first initial choice based also on every color that I see. No, this is not really green. I do see dark green in here. And all the colors that I might be worth it. Just put them in a p here. There are two colors that you always will need, and that is white and black that will always be in there. Yeah, different shades of green. Try to get a little bit of that. I also see like really light green, so I'm also really underneath. And I really look at, like, the tone, for instance, this is really yellow. We don't need that. I like to keep a lot of these flesh colours because I see a lot of those in it. Always a good color to have, like, a gray, dark gray. All the pinks, I feel like we have a lot of these undertone pinks in it. I just get them all out. Not a good gray, get it out. All these lights, this is more to the yellow side, and this is more to the cream side, getting it out there. And I think now this for the initial phase is good. What I recommend is that you have a little bag, you can put all of this in so you like this little sandwich bag that you know, like, Okay, this is where I'm going to put all the stuff for this project. What I think is important to add is that it will take time to know your colors because I have used different shades of brown so much over the years that I know how to contrast between those colors will be. And you will see that in this class, because I'm way less confident in choosing my pink, for instance, and that is because I don't use them as much. So it takes me longer to know what shade will work best. And things to remember is take all your shades out that you think would be good for your portrait. It's the first selection of colors, and don't think too much. Just go with whatever you think will be a good fit. Don't forget the small specs in the eyes and the eye color. Those all need different shades. Before we are going to actually do some embroidery, I want to show you the plan. Before we're actually going to do some embroidery, I want to show you before we're going to do some action embroidery, I'm going to show you how you make your stitch direction in the next lesson. M. 10. Stitch Direction: In this lesson, you will plan out your stitches. This is something you don't really have to do on paper. You can also do it directly on your fabric. You will see that in every new lesson of the cat portrait, I also make a little bit of a stitch direction on the fabric. And here it is printed on just paper. Now, what we're going to do is something that we're going to do on our fabric. But if you've never done this before, I might suggest that you first practice this just on paper. So what you want to do is you want to make a plan for the stitches. What direction do you want your stitches to go? So first, we focus on, you know, those big points that really make the face. So the eyes, the nose. And with the nose, you really want to have those definitions. So, for instance, here, I see you really want to have those nostrils made so we're going to make those dark. And if we look good, we can see that here is kind of like a line. And then we also need to think about, Okay, how are we going to do our stitches? So here, we're just going to make our stitches filling in these nostrils. And then we have the nose and with the nose, it's just going to go like this. You know, upwards. And I want to make a line here. Because here I see that it morphous into this other color. And then we're going to go up again using this lyre color, and I see here that it's a different color again. And then when you really look good, you can see here is like a line of different color fur around the nose. So I really want to make that difference and here. I'm going to make this up, but I see here a very slight. Is that Sometimes my English is a bit off. I'm sorry for that. Uh I say that slight slant. I think both work, right? Pink. So till here, and then you make the stitch pattern again. So that is really what you want to do. You want to make those patterns like, Okay, what am I going to do? Need to have some kind of plan. Where are the stitches going to go to roughly? And then we have here. Here, I feel like it's really one color. And I already see that I make how much stitches are going to go because you see here, we're morphing into more straight and we're going down. Also. And here is really yeah, where the lip meets. That little Do you really want to draw that out and make for yourself, like, Okay, this is a stitch direction that I need to take. And then here you see that here is a line where it goes a bit darker. Here is where it stops. And here it becomes darker overall. So you just want to make a line about there that you know, like, Okay, so here it needs to be a different color, and it's good to practice it on just an A four so you know what you're doing. And then you can also do that actually on your actual pet portrait. And on your pep portrait, here when it comes to the printed version, you have a slightly better view of it than here. So it's always good to just start here with, you know, drawing it out, see what you're going to do. So if you draw too much on your actual pep portrait, it's, you know, you can just come back here and look at this one and be like, Okay, this is what I wanted to do. Then we have the eyes. In the eyes, you just have to, you know, you want to make that V where it goes into dark here, and here here will be a stitch, and here it will be a light. Here we're going to do a line because I see that that really is a line. You see also here is really, like, a line around it. So I'm basically going to have two stitches and then I'm basically going to do or to make the fur or it's going to be a solid line or fill in like here. And when you look at the eyes, you can see that we are going to use a lot. And when you're looking at these eyes, you can see that we're going to use a lot of different color gray. It's like mapping it out. And here you can really make those lines of, like, Okay, here is going to be a different color. Here is going to be a line here it's darker here You know, you want to do longer treads. And here you want to stop it. I'm just doing it really rough now because we're not actually on the pet portrait itself. And what I also like to do when I look at these things is that I can see where my difficulties is going to be. I already see it happening. Like, for instance, I see it happening right here. That is the difficult part for me, I think, because you don't want to have that too wide or too narrow here. You want to make sure that this is really separated because this is gonna be a mouth, but you don't want to have it too much. Let's see here. Oh it's a bit exaggerated, but then I know, like, Okay, here is that I color. It looks a bit looks a bit much. But it's just for you to look back and like, Okay, this is where I really need to pay attention. I think this is also going to be a difficult part because these are long hairs, and you want to show that these are long hairs. So then you're going to have You work with the shade around those long hairs to really emphasize that these are long hairs, which is also very difficult, but this is a really nice sport because we have lots of different things that you will see with cats in general. And you will look back at this one, but you're also going to look back at the actual picture. Zoom in Zoom out. I think this is good. I think this is what I need to do. You're also going to have your reference picture. You're going to also look at your picture itself. What I recommend is looking at it on an iPad or your phone that you can really zoom that in. Again, you can do this also directly on your fabric, but it might give you some more confidence to it this way. In the next lesson, we are finally getting our needle out and start making some practice stitches. See you in the next lesson. In this lesson, you will see all the stitches we are going to use in the cap portrait. You have everything ready to start your project. Let's start with the eyes of the cat. When I start with my embroidery piece, especially when it's printed on fabric like this, I like to start with the eyes because you want the eyes to really look realistic. And from there on out, you can build your piece in this and from down out, you will build your piece. In this lesson, you will understand what kind of colors to use for the eyes and how to blend your colors afterwards. The eyes are done. The eyes are done, things to remember, start with a shade that you like for the eyes and then take two shades in the same color scheme. Don't be afraid of some big contrast because you can always take a darker shade and blend it in between, like I did. It is time for the nose. See you in the next lesson. I'm going to be honest and tell you that I made a nose, and then I did not like it, and I took it all out. This happens. What happened is that I went with the colors in the reference picture. And when I was done, I just felt the pink and when I was done, I just think, like, the pink and the verticalplasance was not how it envisioned to look. So I just took it all out and I started again. I also want to be honest and say that this was the most difficult part for me. Animal noses, human noses are very difficult to embroider for me. 11. Practice Stitches : In this lesson, you will see all the stitches we are going to use in the cat portrait. For these stitches, we're starting with the basics. I'm going to make a line here. So here we have a piece of embroidery thread, and for everything that we're going to do, we're going to use one strand. So in this floss, you have six little strands, six treads, and we're going to use one. So what I like to do is I like to hold one on. So I'd like to hold on one and then just slide all the other ones off like this. So then I have one strength. Everything is going to be with one strength. A beginner's mistake is faking that year, they're like, Oh, but if I do use two strands, then it will go quicker. Yes, it will go quicker, but you will see it if you use it for a big part and just to fill it in quicker, you will see it. It's a choice. You can do it, but you will see it. So this is our basic split stitch. I'm going to show you from here how it's looking at the back so you see it really good. So this is going to be, for instance, the back. What I do, and this is absolutely something that I do. This is not how you should do it. This is just how I do it. Looking from the back, I just let it dangle. Because here, you know, if I pull You know, it still is like, you know, I can pull it out. But as soon as I hit, like, this tree, stitches, this stitch is not going anywhere. And again, I'm also going to cover this up. But if I now pull it and I'm pulling it really well, I have to pull really, really hard to get any movement in. But I just let it dangle like this because I just like to have speed in my work. I don't want to stop and then, you know, make a nod out of this. If you are, like, I don't trust it. I want to have it neat. I'm not a very neat stitcher. I have to say, especially when it comes to the back. I'm not a neat stitcher. But what you could do, let me take this out. If you are someone who is a very neat stitcher and you want everything to look really nice from the back, also, wait, I have to show it how I would show from the back. Then so this would be the back then. What do we have here a couple of stitches in. You could also, of course, make the choice of weaving this in. So for instance, I'm done with this color, I want to use a different color and bring my stitch bring my needle up and I can weave this long and my stitch like this. And, you know, you have it all secured. You can also even do a double knot, if you want. You can knot it up like here. Make sure that this actually is in the knot. You can tell that I don't do this often because I really don't make all these knots. But you can definitely make it really secure, and then you cut this tread off. You can also just put it in here, go in here, and then, you know, let it just dangle from there. And then you go on with your other stitches, you go on with another color, and then you just bring this one out whenever you want to use this color again. You don't cut off a thread for a new color, let it dangle there, and then you pick it up when you need to use it again. The basic of the stitches, for instance, when you're making a line is you call it the split stitch. So you only when you're making a line or you're falling a line, don't make it too long because then, you know, it gets very choppy. Trying to, you know, not use that much space in between. And then what I like to do it's not go in the same hole because, you know, you can go into the same hole. Go to bring you a little bit closer so you can see. So not going in the same hole, but really going in the middle of that stitch. Because then you get really this nice even line. So you bring it up, And this is really the base the base for everything that you do. And when you do it this way, you can easily, like make a circle. Because you make really small stitch, especially when you're making a circle because you have so many curves in there. You just go back in the middle of that other stitch. You're making small stitches because we want to make that curve go in the middle of the other stitch, go down. This is, yeah, what I said, the base for everything. I go to make the whole circle. And then next to this, we have our long and short stitches. And the long and short stitches is really the word itself says it already. Long and short. And that's how you create for next to it, And it doesn't have to be super straight. I know that there are people who really, like, you know, have, like, two lines that they're really like, Oh, here's the shorts and here's the long Um, I think that takes away a bit the magic of it because fur is not you know, it doesn't have to be that precise, in my opinion. Everything I say is really about is my opinion. Everything that I do here is just from doing it myself and just, you know, doing it a lot of times. So you see here now that there's still a lot of room whites. So then I go back here, I fill in And maybe make it here a little bit longer. So it's like long, short, short, long, long, short. Doesn't have to be exactly I just want to have all that space filled up. So here might go a little bit. Here might go a little bit longer. I think people are too concerned about, like, Oh, it needs to be precise. That's not what makes or breaks it. Then here again, go back into that in the middle, here in the middle. I don't even really look where I'm going. I'm just going somewhere in those stitches. That's how you build it up. Y. I got tread. And then, for instance, we have another I'm going to use another color. I have another color here. So let's go going in with another color. Then just going in again, depends, sometimes it depends if I want to go really far in, not far. It depends how much you want to show off the other color, how much you want to. So here I'm going to go into the same stage of the other. So like what we did here, the split stage. This is when we're doing another color. Then I do like to go in here in that out stitch and then here, not so much. But you can do. That's how you create gradients. I want to show you an example of, for instance, I've done this piece, and I'm like, I like it. Not loving it. It's too much contrast. I want to have it not so contrasty. And that is actually always good. Whenever you have two colors that you're using in your portrait or how many it's always good to get a couple shades of that color and so when you're doing this, actually it's too much gradients over there. I want to soften this up. Then you can also go afterwards in with a different color. And I actually prefer doing this. I can really see how it looks. So I can it's also fun to do to just afterwards go in and just look at what color would really blend well within this. So that's something I really like to do just afterwards blend it in. Something that also sometimes happens is that I have to layer stitches because I have, like, for instance in my embroidery, that it goes like this and that it goes like this and the stitch pattern of the first going like this, and then you have to make little shapes. And then you're like, Well, what do I do in the middle? And then you just layer it. So you make all these Vs over each other. On top of the head, when you have a tabby, when you have something that has different colors, I like to make little vis in the middle to overlap. I was looking at something that I see people doing wrong, not wrong with pet porches. It's not wrong. Nothing is wrong. I want to emphasize on that. But what I see a lot is, for instance, so here is the nose. And here is, you know, next to the nose, the little nose area, then your stitches have to be like this. Right? For instance, your sich pattern is like this. Now what I see a lot of people do is this. Or they do, like this. And that is not how you should do it because it ends up being very choppy and it will not look pretty. If there's a curve going on, you go along with the curve. So for instance, here, you make what we learned here, the split stitch. You make that curve. If there's a curve, you just go along with the curve. And then it will all look prettier because it's all curved. Now, here two. So make sure that you go along with the curve and you don't make, like, it really choppy because then what you see is that here, you have to change direction, and then you get this really choppiness of, like, Oh, here we need to go this way, so we're going to go that way. And it ends up not being a nice stitch pattern. So whenever you have a curve, go along with the curve and make it into this split stitch and don't make it really choppy. So things to remember is that you can always go afterwards and add detail, add shade, add whatever you want. You have everything ready to start your project. Let's start with the eyes of the cat. 12. Eyes: When I start with my embroidery piece, especially when it's a printed on fabric like this, I like to start with the eyes because you want the eyes to really look realistic. And from down out, you will, like, build your piece. And in this lesson, you will understand what kind of colors to use for the eyes and how to blend your colors afterwards. Now, here we have our embroidery piece with the printed fabric, and we're going to start. What I'm going to start with is the eyes. I'm going to start with the eyes and nose because there we can really build it up from there. And I'm going to use my friction pen. It is you actually don't need to use a friction pen because this is all going to be covered up. But I do want to make some lines of where I see. Okay, here is it important that I use a different color? And you see that here, is a different color gray or different color green. Here you see really a dark edge around the eye. And if I look closely, I see that here is a fold I see that till here there is also a different color green. And yeah. So what I'm doing is I'm really mapping this eye out. Keep in mind that I'm also going to look at the reference picture or color I want to use. But here I really see that it's darker. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use a really dark, it's a darkish, bluish, dark color for that. Notice that this is a different color so that we have contrast. And also, the eyes are like a thing on their own, like the real inside of the eye, same as the nose. So you don't really have a stitch direction for that. I go here's my anchor point. And here I had this line that I created, so I'm going to go till there. And it is the easiest to start with the eye because it kind of makes it, really, doesn't it? What I'm first going to do is make the pupil. So make that black in the middle. I'm going to put a lot of detail in the eye because yeah, the eye is just very important. To really look at your eye. What does it need? What colors are in there. And you can always change it. And here I can really go in and change and do multiple colors, but I think here it's best to just use black to really have that big strong contrast that we want. Okay, so here you see this spec that is still open. That's where we're gonna put our white. I love adding this. It always makes it pop so much. It doesn't matter how small it is or how big your portrait is or what you're stitching, what animal. Until you put that little.in there, that's when you know it will look realistic. Just gonna put that vertically in. I filled in the iris, and what I'm now going to do is play around with different colors of green. I'm first going to take my darkest green. That is this color. And I'm going to go ahead and do that here. As you can see on the picture, it's slightly darker around the iris. And that is also the shading of the actual eye. So we're going to mimic that a bit. You can see that it is also the way the light falls. I'm going to continue this dark green around the iras. Okay. Yeah, a lot of these things are also you just have to look at what looks good. Don't always be too much obsessed with the actual image because it's also good to just think like, Okay, what looks good? I think here it's just good to do that around the iris to use that green is good, I think. And then I'm going to play around with some lighter colors. Now, I have three lighter colors, and I'm afraid that this color is a bit too that will pop too much. I think this is a good about these two. Maybe I'm actually going to try this first because I really like that color against that other green. That's why it's good to just get a couple of greens, and then you can really, like, put it against each other and kind of feel what will work. And that is also the advantages of printing your fabric is that you can literally you can put it on the color itself. It might be a bit too much contrast. We can always change that. Now, you really get that glassiness of the eye with these contrast. You can see that the color difference is pretty intense from that other green. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to look in my back and see a green that has some sort of a transition color for those other colors. And I think I find one here. You see that it's just darker than this color. And it's, like, a nice middle color. So then you see that you really have those three colors in one color scheme like kind of like the same kind of greens. What I'm going to show you is that even if this is after so I'm now going to go over the eye, it's really easy to just do it once this already is filled in. So don't worry. You're just going to go in between two stitches. You have two stitches in between the other stitch and go a little bit up go a little bit down, you just blend it in. Because it's not fat. We cannot really blend it. But we can sort of blend it. Just go over it a little bit. I can really see how nice it goes together. It's subtle. It's a subtle difference, but it's big enough to make a difference. Just to soften up that really color blend it in. I'm not only going in between. I'm I'm just putting sitches wherever a little bit. Maybe going back here a little bit. Maybe want to soften it a little bit more. I think this is a really nice color now. What I'm going to now is I'm going to take a slightly lighter grade than this and put a line around the eye to really make that eye pop out, like, this is an eye. So I'm just going to put a line around it. I'm first going to do eye the other eye exact the same. And then I'm going to do the nose, and then we work on a different feature. So we're really, like, building up and going towards each other and looking at all the different aspects of the cat. It's also good to when you're working on it, to just take a step back, like I'm doing now showing you to look for it from a distance, like, how is it looking? Does it look realistic? Am I happy with it? Because if you're looking too close on it all the time, you will have no idea what you're doing. Going back on the e, I'm just going to do the same thing. Now I'm going to take the other green that we use here to blend, and I'm going to use that for the entire eye. And then I'm going to make highlights with maybe the lighter tread. I'm just going to see if it works at two colors. And because we put a line around it, you can really make everything horizontal. You see now the difference between them, but I feel like there is a little bit too much of a difference. So now we're gonna take that really light color. Not really light, but the light is green. I'm just going to do a bit of them on the outside. So you see how that's, like, really subtle? I think this is an amount of contrast I want. And don't worry. You can always change it. That's what we love about our treads. And what I also love about this method is that Because it's printed, you can literally see it coming to life because you're trying to make it as realistic as possible. And I love that. See, it's still part of the whole printed fabric. It's, you know. So if I now zoom out, it's not like, Oh, that those eyes really seem out of place, you know, you really see that it still looks like part of the printed fabric. Now, let's leave the eyes for what it is. And we're going to go to the nose. The eyes are done. Things to remember, start with a shade that you like for the eyes and then take two shades in the same color scheme. Don't be afraid of some big contrast because you can always take a darker shade and blend it in between, like I did. It is time for the nose. See you in the next lesson. 13. Nose: I'm going to be honest and tell you that I made a nose, and then I did not like it, and I took it all out. This happens. What happened is that I went with the colors in the reference picture. And when I was done, I just think, like, the pink and the verticalplasance was not how it envisioned to look. So I just took it all out and I started again. I also want to be honest and say that this was the most difficult part for me. So I'm going to draw a little bit to make it more visible for me. I'm going to really look at that reference picture what I want to do. So here we see these nostrils. First have those really there. Here, we also see that nostril and we see a little bit going upwards. Here sideways. Look, you can see that here, it's already difficult to really see it. But here I have it, maybe it's a little bit more rounder here. Yeah. I can see that it goes then all the way here and here is a line. You can really see that it goes till here. Maybe even a little bit lower. And it doesn't matter because this pen we will not see. We're going to go over it, of course. But it's good to make really that to make those good to make those lines to really see what you're doing. And we see that till here, it's a bit of a darker color. So I'm really going to try to make it as much as the picture, and I see then that there is, like, this dark brownish color here. And the nose is such a delicate little feature on a cat. It's not like a dog's nose that it's really big, but it has so much impact on the portrait. No you just slowly filling this in. Now I'm going to take a pink colour. Gonna take a new dish. Not too pink. You can see in the picture that it's very pinky, pinky. But this is one of those times that I'm going to make an artistic choice and not make it as pink as on the picture. The reason why is I think it will make it too big contrast. Actually gonna make it sideways. And I'm not going to go all the way from this side to that side, but I'm doing the trap painting from one side to another, so in reverse a little bit, that makes sense? I think this stitch going sideways will make it, like, more distinguished from the other stitches that we're going to make around it. And I can imagine that you're like, Well, you just make this line, why are you covering it up. I now know exactly where that line is because I've seen it now so many times on the fabric, so I know where I'm going to place that back in I'm gonna blend a little bit of darker tre in there. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a really, like, lighter pink just to give it a little bit more depth, a little bit more shadow, a little bit more we're going for in here in the top. Just a little bit. Okay, so a little bit more stitches of this in that is similar to this. You see how much colors you uses just over that because it is maybe a bit too light. Breaks up a catch. I think this is good. It's not too dark, not too light. What I am gonna do is now is take that same dark color here and make that line gonna split it in two and make that line here. See how that already makes it more realistic. That line just also works wonders. The one thing, and this is really how it goes when you're doing a board, you just want to add more. You just looking you're making, you're looking back. What more can it have to make it look better? And I'm thinking more contrast. It's a brown, and I'm going to do that with just a black tread in the inner nostrils. Just outline it. It's just gonna be really subtle. It's not gonna make a huge difference, but a little more depth. I think the main takeaway of this lesson is that you can just take it out and start again if you don't like it. You can prepare your stitches all you like, and in the end, just not liking the stitch direction. Sometimes colors can be tricky and you just have it wrong sometimes. Sometimes it happens. I also have it wrong sometimes, a lot of times. So things to remember is, like, stay neutral with your colors and I realize that horizontal is just better for cat noses. No when you're doing dark noses, but with cat nose, better to be horizontal. And don't feel bad when you have to take your stitches out. Don't feel like it's the end. It's not the end. It happens to a lot of us. You will not see it on Instagram or on TikTok that people take it out, start again. It happens. And don't feel discouraged because we all do it. And it is frustrating, but we all have this. We all have these moments. Now that we did the nose, let's go upwards towards the ears. See you in the next lesson. Mm. Mm. 14. Nose Upwards: I'm going to stitch above the nose upwards, just like the eyes. I'm going to draw on the fabric for stitch direction. I want to make sure that I know which way I'm going to embroider. If you're looking at the picture of the cat, then you can see that here. So here are little marks next to the nose, and it goes all up here. That's a little different color. So I'm going to mark that because we want to have you know, we want to know which way we are going to use our stitches. It's more here to the side. It goes here also a little bit into a shape that you can see from the nose up. Here. There we have a little bit of this pink going on. It's more in a triangle. Then I'm already marking this, but here, going up here, I also see a different color. And then what I really think is important always is to just for yourself, have these little stitching direction. Like, Okay, this is where I want to go with my stitching. And don't worry. Of course, nobody's going to see this. And in this section, I'm going to use, like, a very light light pink because you can see in the picture, it is a very, very light pink. You know, almost that you don't really see it as a pink, and that's what we're also going to do. So we're going to stitch it now, you will see that it is, you know, you'll be like, Oh, that doesn't look pink. It doesn't look that pink. But when you put it in contrast with other colors that we're going to use, it will have a slight pinkish hue onto it. I'm just making long and short stitches. I'm doing this until the line that we made. So till here. And it has a little bit of that coloring, you can see that the nose goes up, and I think that I'm going to use very light gray for this. So with gray, you have the choice of very cool undertone or a more green undertone, and I'm going to do this undertone because I think that will look better with white. I can always change it. This is more like a green warm undertone. I don't want to have it too cool. So I'm going to see how this is going to look. I'm going to first stitch the outside for the shading and then I'm going to do the inside. I can always decide later to make the shading darker. I was gonna go here and a side. And this is something that almost all cats have. It's like, shading above the nose. Now I'm going to take a very white like, not a white, but a very, very Light cream. Maybe a little bit lighter than this. Maybe I should just do white. I think I'm going for the white. In my mind, I'm thinking, Okay, should I take a really a really light beige, like I have here, for instance. But then we don't create that much contrast. So I think I'm gonna go for really white, make it really stand out. Now, what you're going to do and something that is not easy is to really connect those treads with each other. I'm first going to make all the stitches around here, and then slowly, we're going to connect them with the outside. Go to bit in, so it really, like so it really gets buried in there. You see that I really go in with my tread and the other stitches. But as I see it now, we have a decent amount of shadow that I think will look good in between the other stitches. And now it's really coming together. And I think if I look at it that we have enough shadow. Not sure yet. But when everything comes together, you have a more clear view of what you've done. And you can really say, like, Okay, how does it look? Does it need more shadow? Here, I see that we have the same color as here. And I have to say this is also very personal because I don't know. If you think about it, should you really do this? Um, but it's such a minor little thing in the picture of the portrait. But maybe it's a very distinctive thing of this particular cat, and then you really want to incorporate it because it's important to the owner that it is there because it reminds them of, you know, that's their cat who has this color next to the eyes. I think that's what really makes a pet portrait that it has all these little all these little things in there. Okay. Also something that I really find with these pet port is that it is quite addictive. You started and you cannot get your needle down because it's just very addictive to keep going and to keep bringing this face to life. It's not that you want to have it done, but it's like, Oh, I just want to add this and see how that looks. And if we then look the way in my head, I will think it looks. So it's always a very surprising thing, and I'd say very addictive to just keep going. Now that this is also filled, I'm going to fill the rest of this in with just plain white. I like to do my stitches pretty high. Okay, now, this is done. Here is gonna be another color, so don't worry about that. What I am going to do is here is a little bit of white. S on the side? So I do want to put a little bit of white this way. I still have a little bit of white over, and I'm just going to finish that off and put that here because here we also need some white. You can see here that the direction of the hairs are going. So what I'm typically doing, you can also draw this out, but that I already curve my tread I curve it because the stitch direction is going this way. So I just make a line that I'm gradually curving towards here. That is enough because my tread is done. If you want a reminder on how to do the stage directions, you can always go back to the lesson about practicing your statges and give yourself a refresher on how to do them. Now, let's make those ears and see you in the next lesson. 15. Ears: The ears are pretty much the same with cats. So if you know how to do one ear, you know how to do a carrier. With this ear, you are going to use the split stitch a lot. So if you forgot how to do that, I suggest you go back to the practicing of the stitchens and get a refresher. Again, of course, I'm also going to show you a shorter version in this lesson, so don't worry. We're now going to go on to the ears. I'm going to use the darkest color. And I initially was thinking about this one, but I think that's too warm, and then I landed on this one I will look good at the reference pictures, I think this is just a more not too orange brown. So I'm going to use this one. This is a DMC one. So what I'm going to do with these ears, I want to make here a line. So here I'm going to start with my stitches. Then I see here that we have those stitches coming up from here, and we're not going to do them yet. We are really going to look at here. This is all going to be whites. Probably mix in with a different off white color. So here I'm going to put a line around it. Then that is already drawn out. I'm going to start stitching here. I'm just going to fill this up with this color. And here you just have to do a line. You don't really have to make a long short stitch. But here I'm just going to stay in this one color Well, I'm now going to do so I'm going to take this color and do it a little bit here so we can blend it in with the whites. Because you can see in the reference picture that it goes a little bit like here in here. We're also going to do some strands of some lighter hair in there, and we're also going to do a bit of the color from the nose. Now going to take my white, and I'm going to follow these lines. What that means is I'm going to connect, for instance, here and here, making long stitches towards that. All those laws that I'm joining, I'm just going to connect those with the white. Now that I filled it with the white, I'm going to use a little shade darker than here, but we used for the nose, and I'm going to put that in between. And this is one of those choices that I'm not really looking at the reference picture. Yeah, I'm not looking at the reference picture for this, but I'm more thinking about like, okay, if I only do a lot of white, then it's just such a white space. So I want to break it up with a different color that is not too much, but does give a little bit of contrast between that white. Because here we want to have a little bit of the flesh color. So I just want to break that white up a little bit with a different color that you can, that it looks a bit more like an other color of fur. And this is also one of these things that I'm just randomly put in here and there. Because we do have to, you know, we want to fill up this whole space. The question is, how do we do that? And with this, we keep that lightness, but it's not completely just a white space, especially also here. I'm going to put that in between these stitches just to blend it in a bit. This is very similar to the color you see here. I might use this color for there, so that's also a little bit in my decision. Also going to put a little bit of here. So you're filling it up a little bit. A bit of a change. I'm going to use the same color as the nose. Then here I'm going to make it lighter in the middle and towards the outside, we're going to make it darker. But I'm starting with the light color and just connecting that with all the other threads and then in between. So I'm also going in between. What's that color? And here, you can just go in because you can see that I marked it here, so it means that I'm going to go up and it's going to go over that layer of the ear. So that doesn't matter. Sometimes you also have to make decisions based on, Oh, I'm going to go over here. You're not going to see that. So now I'm going to use a dark thread, actually almost the same. I think this is just a tattoo dark. But we can try it because why not? Here's the one that is a little bit lighter. I think I'm going to use that one. I'm not going to finish the rest of the ear. I'm just going to fill it in with the darker stage, the ends of here, and then I'm going to do this here, that ear, I'm just going to do the exact same as I did here. So nothing new. I'm just going to follow the same lines as I see here. Both ears are now done. You are now an expert in making those split stitches. We have lots of difficult stitching behind us, and now we are going to continue making that area around the eyes and ears. See you in the next lesson. 16. Top of the Head: In this lesson, we are making the top of the head and connect the ears with the nose and that area between them. This lesson is really about how to fit colors together and show the stitch direction. Now I'm going to continue with the head. And here we can see those patches on the front where you have these different colors. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to make some lines where I want those stitches to go. So here I want it to go till here and here. Till here and here. Here. Here we have those stitches. That's where I definitely know that I'm going to use this color. After I've done this, we're going to look at what color we're going to do with the ears. But first, I'm going to fill this in with this color that we use here. And I love how you can see it, like, building up. And because this is the top of where it's printed, I'm going to go a little bit over it just so I know for sure that the Well, that you don't see the printed image. So this is the color that I used. And now I think about what color am I gonna use for here around the eyes, next to it, I was thinking actually first about this one because that makes it a little bit warmer. In the picture, it looks a bit warmer. But then I see this one, and I think this fits better with this. Now, so this is a dilemma. If I look at it on camera, I think this is actually better when I look at the picture. I actually I'm gonna try this because I feel like it looks better with the picture. And if I'm really hesitant about a color, if I'm really not sure what I will do, I'm just going to try. And in the worst case, I just remove it. That's what I do. Or I go over it, or I blend it in. As you see that we did with the eye, we blended it in a bit with a different color. It's not a really cut and dry process. It's not that I know immediately like, Oh, yes. This is absolutely this color. I'm just going to try it here because here we have a lot of that brownish gold color. I'm just going to see how that matches in. I'm gonna zoom in a little bit more and show you. I do think this is good when it comes to contras. It's not too much, not too little. But typically, you also don't really see it until yeah, a big portion is done. Then you can really, really judge it. And sometimes that really sucks because that means you have to get in again and do it over. Just making some V shapes. On towards the top. So here I'm making, like, these V shapes over each other. 'Cause here we have this awkward little place where, yeah, we don't really have what we can do short and long. And the same goes for this place. Always remind yourselves to keep the fabric tight. So what I'm seeing here when I look at the picture of the cat, is that here the stitches go like this. Because again, as I said, you need to have a plan with your stitches. Here we see different color. So we know what direction our stitches is going to be and here it's just going to blend in here. Here we have the different colors. So when I make really a block like here, it means we really have a different color going on. So it's going to be darker. Then I will be looking at the picture, what we're actually going to do, what color. I know what my plan is. 'cause here we're going to have that awkward spot a bit where it's like, mm, where do we go? What do we do? And you can already anticipate it to curve your stitches to words where you want them to go. I think this is where a lot of people have problems with You start and then you're like, Yeah, this looks good. But then it's like, m. What do I do with all those stitches? And here we're going straight in next to that white. You're just coming together a little bit. Oh, you see it out here. I'm also getting a little bit. In trouble with my stitches. I'm just going to fze a bit on top of each other so you get that fur effect. Here are putting a bit of stitches on top of each other because we have that awkward spot where everything comes together. I'm just going to leave that for now that spot and go to this side because here it's very straightforward. So here's just straightforward gonna go all the way to the ear a little bit over it. So I'm gonna show you, like, I'm gonna go in the ear a little bit like this. I'm gonna do that all the way here. I'm going back with the dark color that we used before and add it around the eyes where I see it needs that dark color. I do feel like it is a bit too dark, and I'm going to take a shade lighter for around the eyes. I don't want that much contrast between all those colors, so I'm going to blend it with the dark color. I do this with long and short stitches, but I make sure you still see the color underneath. This is not an official embroidery technique. This is just something that I do and it works for me. You see that I make the long and short stitches pretty long. Well, this is because this cat has longer hair. If I did not have a cat with long hair, I would make the stitches shorter. You can see now that I use this light tread all over here, and it just makes it I don't know, it just works. So there's always something that works really good to just layer your tread because it makes it here just a bit more interesting. I'm going to look here at the eyes, and I see that we just have the lightness coming back here. Make sure to keep your fabric straight. Then when I look more, I can see that we're slowly to the side is where we're gonna get that dark tread again. So I'm going you do it till here. Something that I also see what is not so clear with us anymore, is that there is a real line a real clear line of where the eye begins. You see that here? We kind of did that better with the dark thread. So I'm going to add some dark thread also in here and put a line around it because now we don't have a really good definition of the eye. You see here, I did it with, like, the dark thread, and it kind of works. I'm going to pull it a bit more it's not super visible. But let's also do that on the other side. We're gonna do that dark tread here because it does work. Something that we also see is that there's a really clear dark line around it. Don't worry. We're gonna add that because it really needs that sharp line. I see that there's gonna be a really dark line going this way. I'm going to make sure that this is more crisp and that there's a clear line like we have here. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to mark everywhere where it's dark. So here we have indeed that darkness. Here we have a line. With some darkness, we have here around it. Here it's going like this. And then aside. And then here, it actually goes a little bit even darker. I have to see how we're going to deal with that. But first, like, make this first, I'm gonna make this light, and then we can follow along with this. It really is, like, a big puzzle. So I'm going to start here actually with that dark we start going here. And then also under the eye, I see that darkness. And then all the way, actually, I'm going to do. Okay, now we have that darkness around it. I'm going to proceed with the lighter color. So making these stitches connect them here so we can go down. Okay. Now I'm going to go back here with that light. And don't worry, you can always change it or you can stitch over it. But as you can see, it's quite a puzzle. And I'm first going to embroider here those light stitches. I want to remind you that when we practice the stitches, we made those V shapes that I made in the beginning. So you can always have a look back if you want to know how to make them. Experiment with blending colors together just to do it. In the worst case, you just remove them, but get that confidence to add and remove and blend. Don't follow rules, make your own rules. We still have lots of more stitching to do. So come with me to the next lesson where we are stitching under the eyes and feel the cheeks. 17. Under Eyes and Cheecks: So I want to point out that yes, sometimes it can be a bit boring. Like the lessons are pretty long and it can be repetitive. Sometimes it's difficult for me to have that. Like, how do you know, that border between, when is it like repetitive or, you know, do people really want to see this? Is this important. So that line is sometimes a bit blurred for me. So know that you can always speed up the video if you're like, Okay, here we go again. Here she goes again. Just speed it up or not. I hope you don't speed it up, but you can if you want to. So here we really going to make that pattern. Ooh. Of the fur. And then we're, you know, just gonna continue long, short, long, short in between. I'm gonna fill this hole up where I colored it in. I'm going to fill that up with this brown. Here I'm only going to do this line and not the lines underneath it, because I'm not sure if this is going to work with this color, because here we're going to have the whisker. So it's like the ink caping or how do you really call that the beginning of where the whiskers are. So there you see a little bit of a shading. I don't know if I want to have that brown or I want to have that gray so that it's actual shading. Here I am going to make that line. I think it's good to only make this line and then leave the bottom for what it is. And first fill the rest of it in with light. It's really a brown color. I'm going to fill that in with only this color. So here we really did a little bit of shading, but now I'm just going to focus on doing that only with this light color. Here we have, of course, that it morphs into this, how do you say, this other transition of the face. So here I'm also going to do it all the way down. What I'm doing with my stitches, I'm going more cross eyed. So that we have the same direction going in here. Now, we still need to do this and here. But I'm going to fill it in till here with the lighter thread, the thread that we used here. I'm just going to see how that looks and what I think about it and I filled it in. The one thing you can really see is that it's pretty harsh. If we look at the picture, then this is quite a harsh Look. And we're going to soften this up, so don't worry. I'm just going to fill it up where I think it needs to have those darker and light, and then I'm going to soften it up a little bit. We're going to use a transition color. So a color that is a little bit lighter than this, and we're going to soften it up because now it is very harsh. Don't worry, we're going to going to make it much softer. Now I'm going to see how this works because this is not something that I want to soften up. That is something that I hope will look like a good shadow. You can see that it's really that it's harsh. These colors are not blending in that nicely because if we look at the picture, yeah, it's a little bit more blended in. That's what we're going to do. So I'm going to take a darker shade. This is what we use. This is the shade that I use here. And now I'm going to go in with a darker shade just to go over it. See how that looks. It's difficult with cats because they have so many different colors sometimes that you just don't really know how to navigate it. I'm just going to blend this color everywhere a little bit in. I'm now doing really the dark edges of it, really the shadows that I see with the dark tread and really with this brown tread. And later, we can just go ahead and use some other colors and blend it more in because here it is really dark. And what I now really do is that I'm looking really closely at my reference picture. There we really see the shadow coming through. Make sure that we heard that shadow also here. And the more we go down, you can see that the shadow turns into a little bit grayish because we're going to go ahead and go more into that. Here, you can see that we're going more. We're gonna draw it out. Here we have a course this right. This. And actually, I think I'm did it a bit too far because here it go bit like this. And here we have to have those shadows. And I think till here, because here we have that line going. I'm going to make the shadow with this dark brown. And here we have the shadow going sideways. And then we're also going to do really small stitches here for the whiskers. I'm not going to make them really close together because I do think if I look at the pictures that it is a little bit like little little tiny space between them always. So I'm also going to do that. So I'm now really focusing only on two colors that I'm using. And later, we're just going to add more color. This I'm also going to pull all the way till here. To really have a definition of that line that there is that cheek. 18. Around Nose: In this lesson, we are just adding the last things before going towards the neck. You see here how to make small shadings for the whiskers that we will add when we will do the details. So I'm going to use the same color as I use here for the shading on the nose. I think that will look pretty. Here for those whiskers, I don't know how I call it in lining. It's like the shadow of where the whiskers meet. So just like before, I'm just going to put little stitches next to each other and then fill it in with just plain whites. I'm not following exactly the lines that I drawn. It's just a ballpark. I'm actually going to draw something out because I see here there's also a little bit of a shadow. I don't know if I'm actually going to make that, but maybe I'm going to use this thread also for that shadow right there. What I'm going to do what I think I'm going to do is I'm just going to make that shadow. And then if I see that it is too much, I'm just going to blend it in with a different color or I'm just going to go over it with the white. Here, I'm going in closer. You can see that it's just little stitches, so it's really what it is. I'm going to fill this up with this color. We'll see how it looks. It's the same color as I'm using here. I'm going to use that in here. I'm going to leave it to here. I'm not going to do it all the way to this line because I'm not sure if I'm really happy with this shadow yet, and I want it to be very minimal there. Now I'm just going to fill in the rest of where the whiskers are just like we did here. So you see that now we've filled in all the whites. I first really want to do this bit. Gonna drat it out. It's a little bit curved slightly. None we have here, this. This goes maybe here. See how far we're going to make that. But first, we're going to focus on this here and we're going to use the same colors as we did here. We're going to have this little thing in the middle, go all the way down, but we're going to do that as the last. Well, we're going to put that till here, down. Because it's such a small area. I'm first going to fill it all with the same pink that we use for the nose. Could put that in the other stitches. So small. You can see that I'm doing really short stitches here because it's such a small little area. To be honest, when I now look at it, it is too far. I went too far down. So I'm going to remove some threads. I think that looks way better. We're going to take a really light pink. And I'm going to make a line. Just because when I look at the picture, I can see that it's quite a very, like, tight line because it's, like, a mouse. I think that will look good if we also do that. And then it goes a bit to the side I see on the picture in the middle it's a bit darker, bit fuller. Visual things that I then observe that I see. And then I'm like, Okay, I'm going to do that like this. And then, of course, we have that line in the middle. Put that a little bit more downwards. Maybe put another little stitch next to it. I think that is good to put a bit more emphasis on the darker part. It's always a good way to look at it from a distance. So now you can see, Okay, that looks good. Now I can go on with the rest of it. So here I draw it out. You can see that I made, like, really tiny hairs because I can see that on the reference picture that is also very small hairs. And I'm going to take a shade lighter. You can see, and I'm just going to do that underneath there. Ing I now realize that I really don't like the line I made, which is so funny because I was so confident about doing this and that it would look good. I keep looking at it, and I think it's better to put some little light stitches in it instead. It looks so much better now when I look at it from a distance, adding some last stitches in from the area under the mouth, and we are moving on to the next lesson where we move on to the last part before adding the details, and that is the fluffy neck. See the next lesson. 19. Neck: I'm starting with drawing out the lines of the hairs, even though I'm just using white, I am going to follow those lines just so our stitches will go in the right direction. This entire neck is going to be filled in with white. You can see that I'm making these lines quite long, when it's long hair. You also want to have that illusion that it's long hair. That's why we make it into one line. I am going to make this all the way down. I think that's just gonna look really good. And what I first want to do is when I look at a picture of the actual cat, you can see that with the white, it goes on and here to here, it also goes on. And I actually want to go all the way down and here also, all the way down with the white because that's just part of what it is that I like to look at it and be like, Okay, I actually want to I really want to do more because I think if we just do this that I don't know, it doesn't really come to its right. So I'm actually going to take my my reference picture, and I'm going to go and use a shade here. And so that's a little bit darker. And until, what do we say? It's actually here, I'm going to go and bring that all the way down because I think it's nice if it, like, goes all the way down then it goes all the way down into the hoop and I really think that will look really nice. I'm going to take a slightly darker color here and I'm going to blend that in right here. I'm going to do it all the way till the end, so that really flows into the fabric. And this is not something that I already at the beginning, decide. That is something that, you know, when I go further and further, then I'm like, Yeah, I want to go to the end of the hoop with this because I think that will look more pretty. I'm gonna do that actually, all the way till here. I'm gonna fill this all the way in with long and short stitches. You can see that it's done with what I needed to fill in. So what I'm gonna do now is I'm going to make it the way I want because it's obviously not done yet. I made everything all the way to the bottom. I think that just looks really good. It is finally time for my favorite part of this embroidery, and that is going to be adding the details. 20. Details: My absolute favorite part of the embroidery process is to add all the small details. And I like to do that at the end because it makes it all come together. And now I just want to go over all these things that I think need some improvement. And here, what I think needs some improvement is that I want to have a little bit more grayness in the pupil. So this is how I usually go about a portrait. I make my initial portrait, and then I go back and I like, Hey, these are things that I want to change that I don't like about it? And then I do that actually when I'm done. So you can always think like, Oh, while you're stitching it, like, Okay, I'm going to leave that for when I'm done, I think this gives a more open look. I'm happy with that. One thing that I also noticed when I looked at the picture is that the hair from the ear is, like, much longer. It goes like, over the ear because here I can really see that it goes really over the ear. Make sure your fabric stays tight. So that's what I also want to do here. Really get that over the ear. A couple of stitches so that it's clear that those hairs go over it a little bit. I'm also going to do that on the other side. Here, I'm going to go also over it. I think this looks better. Now I want to go ahead and look at this because I'm not happy about that, how that lays on there. It's not really a mistake in a way, but more like, don't really like the way that looks, how that is on the fabric. So it's come with the same color. But just make this way more apparent that it's here. Because now it's really small, but I want to make that really dare truly see it. Don't worry. You can just do this afterwards. If you look back and you're like, maybe this should have been better. And this is actually one of my favorite things to do. I love going over it in the end because it's really like the finishing touch. I can really change things right now. And I really like that. But I don't have to fill things in anymore. And it's a shade lighter than this what I'm now using because I don't want to have it quite that harsh. In this late stage, it's important that you keep your fabric tight because this is where it can really work against you. I love tweaking my work. I love doing this over it again. What can I do more? Then here I see here that it more flows a bit. Also, see that here are quite some hairs that are lighter. Here, I'm going to flow a bit more to the side. So it's starting to look way better, in my opinion. So first, I don't know, because I'm just, like, looking at it all the time, and I'm like, I really need to address it. This part, it's bothering me. So here I want to take this color. A little bit, a little bit more golden. Let me just zoom really good in that picture. So here we have it more white, actually. I'm going to start with adding more white in here. I feel there's more white and more lighter color, even also here. Like it goes more back. Needs more blending with a softer color. I'm going to get this. This is really a light beige look at it good. It goes pretty far back that, um, lighter color. Also here. So if I look at all the pictures that here, it's just a bit more blended in. I'm going to use this color. You see, I'm just trying out different colors to see what will work to blend this in a bit more. I think this is a good color. I think that really helps with making this transition a little less harder. As good to see it up from a distance as you're like, Okay, this really needed that. I want to have it as much as the original, but it also needs to work. Pull this a little bit more here. Alright. Just so you have some of this going back there. And this is just so that we have a little bit of that shadow coming in here. Otherwise, it's too much of a one, there's no transition. So we do want to bring back a little bit of that transition here. I'm now going to tackle the white bit here. And what I'm going to do, I'm going to take a light brown, and I'm just going to make some swirls in it. Not really swirls, like some lines here I see. I just go a little bit with how I stitch the white light so you can see I can see where the lines go that I stitch them in what direction. I kind of just follow those directions. I just take a really light brown. I look at the picture, I do see a little bit of light brown in there. I'm just going to add a lot of lines of brown And I'm going to make, like, going to put it into smaller hoops. I think we're going to go till here. So here I'm just gonna continue with that brown. This is really important that I wanted to show you how that looks if you just use one color. You can see that not all white is the same white, but just so you get the feeling of, Okay, how does it look when you put a color over it afterwards. You see that I added all the brown lines. I'm going to make it here a little bit more the same as here. I think I'm going to start here because here I want to have it that's separation at. Make sidelines so that not just this brown blob. See that we have going down till here. And here you see it go a bit, like, more to the cheek. It's better to just first do it with this color that we already use. I just want to blend it in a bit with a different color. So I'm doing long and short stitches, just not covering everything. It gives a really subtle effect. I'm first going to finish this, see how I like the end result, and then we're going to go to the side and see So it's starting to look more how I want it to look, and I think I'm almost getting to a point where I'm done. I do want to take more of this lighter color and put a bit more here and make it go a little bit smoother in here. Play a little bit around with different colours. So we also have a little bit of that other color peeking through. So this is really just the last things I'm doing. And this is my favorite part. Eyes and stuff are also my favorite part, but I also really like to put those last finish in touches because it does make a difference, in my opinion. I do really see now such a huge difference with just these little things that I do. I think it's done. The only thing that I'm a little bit, like, maybe want to put a little bit of some difference in is here. I'm going to take a light yellow, really light yellow. So it's, like, against the white. And I'm going to do the bottom here. Because if I look at the picture, the bottom is also pretty white ish. And I want to have a little bit more of a color difference now. Because now you can see that we put the brown here, and now we don't have that much color difference. So I'm trying to bring that back a little bit. You immediately see the contrast, and that's what I love about doing it afterwards. Now that I'm really, really, really done, we are going to make the whiskers. So what we're gonna do is we're going to go from here. So these are these little dark dots where the whiskers go. In the picture itself, you can see, like, a lot of whiskers. We're going to see how much will look good. And I'm just gonna make one line. So for instance, I want to have this going here. Going back to the side. A bit longer. Because we want it as straight as possible, so I like to just yeah, do it like this. Just one stitch. Now our piece is done, and I'm going to put it in a smaller hoop, and I'm going to do that in the next lesson. 21. Framing Embroidery Piece: Now we are done. Yay, it's time to frame it. I'm just going to glue it in a tiny bit smaller hoop, just so it will fit better. I'm not going to wash it or anything. You know, you can wash it, but I just like to leave it this way. So the hoop that I use to stitch it in is 18 centimeter, and I'm going to use a 60 centimeter hoop. I like it a little bit more smaller. Here I have the piece, and you can see that we don't have that much fabric to glue down around the hoop. So I want to make sure that it will be tied in there, and I'm going to do that by putting it in a smaller hoop. This hoop is F prime, and it's just a nice hoop for framing, in my opinion. I have it in the PDF that you can download so you know where to get it. First, I'm going to cut all the loose strats off so we don't have all these loose strats, like going everywhere. Next, I'm going to take my smaller hoop and put a piece of fabric in it. It does not matter what kind of fabric. You can also even use a different kind of color or a pattern. I'm cutting it so it roughly fits over the hoop, and then I'm taking my embroider piece and lay it over the piece of fabric. And then I put the outer hoop over it and pull on the fabric so it's night and tight in the hoop. When I'm happy with how it looks, I cut off the edges and I start with the first fabric grease we put in. I take my prittick and put it on the fabric and press it down on the hoop, and I do this all around. And the same goes for the other layer, and our piece is done. Archie is done, and it is now time for this piece to make the long journey overseas. In our final lesson, I'm going to share my final thoughts. 22. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for watching, and I hope you feel encouraged and inspired to make your own cat portrait. Please leave a review. It helps me a lot and see you next time in another embroidery adventure. See you in the next class. Bye bye.