Transcripts
1. intro: My name is [inaudible] and I'm going to [inaudible] from the Netherlands. In this class, I'm going to show you how to create your own print of fabric. I will show you how to create your own piece with the help of Spoonflower as a site where you can create your own custom fabric, but a repeat pattern or just a single swatch. This is also really helpful for people who want to display their illustrations in a unique way or graphic arts on their own photography. I will show you how to trace over to embroidery. I'm going to show you how you're going to have the image and how are you going to trace over it limits the threats basically, and how it's going to help you with your project. This class is for anyone who likes makes media and who loves photography, graphic art, and likes different ways to display it. There are so many options and I would love to show you how many options there are and how easy it is to do it. I will also go over all the details on how to stitch your fabric, how to trace over it. In the project section, you can upload your own photography, your own picture, and I will give you all the details on which colors to use, which DMC colors you can use for your projects. So you will have a custom color scheme by me.
2. Tools you will need: In this part, I'm going to show you all the tools you will be needing for the embroidery part. If you don't want to do the embroidery part and just want to frame your fabric that you have printed, you can skip ahead and go to the section part at the end of the class on framing. What we're going to need is a hoop. This hoop has a diameter of 18 centimeter. It's just a wooden hoop and it has a screw button on the top, as you can see here. You can just unscrew it and put the fabric in and then screw it back. What we're going to do is we're going to put two fabrics together. This is the Sulky Solvy. It's a water soluble stabilizer and the Spoonflower fabric, and we're going to combine that together and put in a new hoop. The Sulky Solvy, you can see the link below, it is papery fabric that if you wash it, it dissolves. The reason why we're going to use it is because the fabric that I'm using is very delicate, and if you put some stabilizer under it, then it can hold more threads, you can do more and it's just better. Afterwards you can just put in the water and it's done. We are going to unscrew it. First put the destabilizer on it to settle, soluble stabilizer. It's quite a word, and then the fabric, this is always a bit of a difficult part to make sure that you are hoping it right, but it doesn't really matter that much because well you can always change it, and we're also going to change it a little bit because I want to have the whole sweater on it. I want to stitch the entire sweater so we're going to have to move it eventually. Make sure you unscrew it enough so that it fits, and when it's fits, you plop it in and you screw it back. Also make sure that on the back this Sulky Solvay, that it is nice and tight so that everything is even. There you have it. You screw it close, screw it close as much as you can, and in the process of stitching, always make sure that it stays tight, so always put that fabric so it stays tight.
3. Stitches that we will use: We're going to practice the stitches that we're going to use in this project. First I'm going to show you the needle. Mine is slightly bent because well, that happened, but I'm still going to use it. These are from DMC. I will post a link in the description. All the stuff that you're going to need for this project I will put in a link. These are DMC needles and they're very thin, so you're going to go up at your needle. You're going to use one strand. You're going to hold the thread. You're still holding the thread, and now you're not holding the thread anymore. You can let it go. It will sort itself out. This is one of the stitches we're going to use a lot. Now I'm showing you how to do it a bit the wrong way. You're going to go in the other thread. What I did here is I didn't go directly in the other thread. You have to really wiggle and get right in the middle of the other. You see, because now it is a straight line. You go in the other thread, another one that we're going to use is for the hair. We're going to go up. I'm not saying this is the way you have to do it, this is the way I do it, so this is for the hair. For instance, you want to create shading, so you're going to make rows long and short, and don't worry that they're not that close together because you can just go in. Again, this one you can make a bit longer. I go in, I go all the way up, there's a lot of different things you can do to get a better feeling of how to do it. I'm going to go as close as I can get and show you how to do it. Let me focus. Yep, so here you see the rows that we made, I'm going to make some more rows next to it, this color, and I'm just going to repeat the same thing. Now you can see it from up-close and see how it looks. See here you can also see the mistake better that I made because you can see that with the first stitch with a straight line I went a little bit next to it, so then you get a double stitch, so I didn't went into this stitch but a little bit next to the stitch. If you go in the stitch then it's just a nice line. We're going to make rows again. [NOISE] Doesn't have to be perfect next to each other. I'm sorry if you hear noise. Those are my Guinea pigs drinking from their water bottle. I don't know how to get that sound out. You see that I'm going slightly more next to it to cover the section. Is nice because you can make your own pattern with the long and short stitch. Now I'm going to get a different color and see how you can blend it in. Oh, it's slightly edged doesn't matter. Wait. No, that's a bit too off, so you cannot go for one stitch and then go diagonal? I think that's English word, so make it straight. Here I'm not even doing a split stitch I'm just going in. Squeeze the needle in the other threads, this looks more difficult than it is. If you see this then it looks less daunting, but it's just also a matter of just doing it. Who cares if you fail. You unpick it, you do it again, you go over it. These are basically all the stitches you need to know to make this project. If you can do this, then the project is a piece of cake. Yeah, I'm hope you're going to continue with embroidery.
4. Uploading and ordering custom fabric with spoonflower: An important thing to remember is that when you upload something to Spoonflower is that you have to have it copyright free or you have to own it. I think it's a good idea to always make sure that you have copyright free images and you have a website for it. They have amazing photography to choose from, and there are so many. It is Unsplash and together we will explore the website, how to use the functions, how to do the search tools and eventually I will choose some pictures of them. You go to the Unsplash website and you type in seascape. You get all of these amazing free pictures of seascapes, and you can do endless scrolling, but I want to have a seascape with a girl. All of them are really great pictures that you can use. They're great for embroidery. I like that one. This one I'm going to use. I'm going to download this. I'm going to download the file. Now we're going to go to Spoonflower and I'm going to show you how you can upload it to Spoonflower. You're going to design, upload, and you choose your file. You wait till it uploads, and you have to do a confirm copyright. That's why I think it's a good idea to use free images. Now you have this. I want to have it centered so it's not on repeats. I want to have Crepe de Chine, that's the fabric I love. I want to have it on a sample and I'm going to make it smaller and here you see also how it's going to look in real life. This is how you're going to get it. We're going to add it to the chart. If you want to be sure how your colors will print on what fabric and how it will look, then you can also order the fabric sample pack. You can see how all the colors look on different fabrics and paper. It's just $3, but they're very popular now. You have to wait awhile to get them. But it is worth the wait if you want to be sure about your project. Here I have some different fabrics that I ordered. They look really nice, I'm going to show you one and the one that we're going to work with. This is one with a surfer girl on it. I really like it, and the background is also how I wanted it. Now I'm going to show you the one that we're going to work with. This one I really love how the colors ended up. I'm going to show you from up-close how it looks. The camera doesn't capture it that well, but it's really nice. The colors looks really nice on a shiny fabric and it's very see through and it looks really good. The shine is really nice and it's really amazing they printed it. You really can see the details.
5. Embroidering hair : For the hair, we're going to use one strand for all the hairs. We're going to begin with the light part. All those spots you see where it's really like the highlight but the light reflects the hair, we're going to use the lightest color there. Now I'm going to show you from up-close because I did some part of the highlight and I'm going to fill it with a slightly darker color. If I wouldn't do it up close, you wouldn't see the difference, I think in the color. It's very subtle. It's a very subtle change of color that I'm using. I'm just going to use a technique where you do a split stitch. You're going to go in what you need on the other side. Now I'm using a darker color to really just fill in the space with different shades of brown. You're following the lines from the picture. This is the darkest color that I'm using. Now you can really see how nice the really subtle difference is in the colors. We're basically going to repeat this everywhere on the hair. Light for the reflection, a subtle change of color. It's a really dark [inaudible] to take to darkest color. It's basically how you do it. For the top of the hair, we're going to do actually same thing, although we now are going to do it in a straighter line. You're just going to look again for the highlights from the sun. Some thread is catching all the highlights that I really want to catch. Then I start making my way from the top to down. I did all the highlights that I really wanted to have there. Now I'm just going to basically go from the top of the head and work my way down. You're going to use different colors. We're going to just blend. This is also what I do, I just randomly use heights. I don't have a specific like you have long, short, long, short and has to be the same height, especially with the hair is good if it's really uneven. Makes it more interesting with the colors, with the blending. Here you can really see from up close how I do it. I went from light to darker to the darkest. Now it's just a matter of blending it all in. But the large portion here is definitely the dark part. We're almost done with the hair and now we're going to continue with the sweater.
6. Embroidering shirt: For the shirt we're going to use two strands because otherwise it's going to take a very long time. For the shading we're going to use two strands, sometimes one strand. You're going to start somewhere in the middle and you're going to make rows of lines next to each other. This is basically just filling this space with thread. You're going to do it on even a bit so long, short, long, short. If you do it at the same length, you're going to see it from a distance, so it's better to do it long, short, long, short. Also we're going to blend it in with different colors to make the shading. You're just going to start with making rows. This took me pretty long. This is a little bit challenging because it can become quite a challenge after bit, a bit boring. We're going to fill it in all the way to the other side of the sleeve. I'm going to show you how to do the shadow on that side. You can match it up with the other side later. Shading is a really difficult thing to do, in my opinion, especially clothes or skin color, hair not so much but with skin and clothes, I think it's really difficult. What I'm doing here is I'm going in with a slightly darker gray. I'm just going to follow the lines of the picture. This is really handy for me. I find it very difficult to do without these reference. I'm basically tracing it with the slightly darker gray. I'm going to fill that in with the medium grayish tones. Now I'm using a really dark gray to go in those really dark shades. It maybe look really dark now but when it all blends in it looks really good. Now we're going back to the normal gray, and as you can see it's already really coming nice together and it's blending really nice. We're just going to continue doing that. Here we have the end result of this side of the sleeve, and you're just going to do the same thing on the other side.
7. Embroidering Neck: As the last part, we're going to do the neck. We're going to go sideways because the shading, as you can see in the picture, is also sideways, and it's a nice change to have a different direction of shading. We're going to begin with the darkest part, because as you can see in the picture, also closer to hairline, the skin is darker than at the end. Now, I'm going to use a slightly lighter color, and we're just going to repeat what we did before. You're going to go in and make rows. For the last part, I'm going to use the lightest color. This happens to me a lot when I do embroidery. Because when I look at it now and I'm using the lightest color, I do think to myself, the darkest color that I use doesn't blend well with the two other colors in my opinion. I think the other ones are more orangey and the dark color is more to the red. What I'm going to do, I'm going to go ahead and take another color. I'm not going to unpick, but I'm going to cover it up. I do that because unpicking is, first of all, the worst. Nobody really likes it. But it saves you time and it's also nice that you still slightly can see the other color underneath. Now, I'm going to show you how to cover up that other color. I'm now going to use a color that is a little bit more flesh stone, and a little more orangey, and a bit different. I'm just going to go over the other color just to cover it up and blend it in with the other color. In the end, I think it looks way nicer. Sometimes it happens that you look at it from a distance and you're like, "No, actually," and then it's very easy to cover up. That's what I like about embroidery. As you can see, it looks now way better than with the color that I used before. Well, it's now done. The only thing you need to do is the ears. I didn't put it on film because it's just straightforward, just a couple of lines. Use two colors and you blend it in a bit. It's basically the same thing. Then we're now going to wash it.
8. Washing the fabric: We're all done, and it looks really pretty. I love it. It's really nice to background with the stitch hair and sweater, the shirt, the neck. What we're now going to do, we're going to get it out of the hoop and we're going to cut away as much of the soluble fabric as needed because we want to wash away as little as much as possible. I'm going to use a bowl of water, it's just water, nothing else in it. I'm going to cut away all the excessive soluble fabric that's hanging on the side. Well, this is just a scissor that was really close to me, but maybe use a better scissors than this. I'm going to cut away all the unnecessary soluble fabric because you may want to wash it away but get as much off. It's also good to reuse it. Here we have it almost, the whole piece, and I'm going to put it in. As you can see it's just gone within a few seconds. But after that you want to rinse it off good. It's was too difficult for me to film it, but what I do is I rinse it off under the tap. Just let it soak for a while. I'm just dabbing it under and then we're going to go to the tab and wash it off and let it dry.
9. Framing fabric in hoop: Now, it's dry. I don't know if you guys also feel that, but it's a bit harder than it was in the beginning. I don't know how that is, what it is. Anyway, it's still fun. What we're going to do is we're going to cut away all the loose treads on the side. Don't worry that it will not look good or that it will fall off or that the treads will come out, it won't. You can only secure it with glue using embroidery scissors. Now, we're going to put it into hoop. I was telling you that we're going to use the position of the hoop because I don't want you to see the not stitched part. I like it when it's completely stitched till the bottom. Then if I turn it around, you're just going to make it really secure, just pull on everything a bit so that it's nice and tight, and screw the , I don't know how it's called. I'm really close. This is not my strongest part, but this is how I do it. I use textile glue. Again, you can find it in my description. I'm going to put that textile glue on a piece of fabric. First, I'm going to cut out excessive fabric. I can imagine that for people it's a bit scary because it's like, oh God, what if I cut too much off? You won't. You have to cut a lot off because you're going to wrap it double over the hoop, and you don't want to see it on the other side, so you will need to cut a lot off. I couldn't find my fabric scissors. The ones that have these, like a wave scissors. You guys know what I mean. That looks way better. I couldn't find it. But normally I do that, and then you get a nice even look. Yes. I'm using a piece of fabric that I'm going to throw away. I'm putting it [inaudible] because I know myself. I will squeeze too hard and then it will [inaudible] all over the place. I'm trying to avoid that. I think it's remarkable how I did it just out of the camera shot. Oops. But you get the picture. You just put the glue, there you go, on the fabric. Then when I put it on the fabric, I'm now going to smear it out on the top of the lid, and I'm going to put it over the fabric. You can also use a paintbrush. Now, you're just going to fold it over. Now, we're done. We're just going to have to let it dry. Thank you so much for joining me in this class. Can't wait to see what you all are going to make. Please leave me feedback, good, bad, it doesn't matter. Thank you so much.
Floor Giebels, Embroidery Artist
