How to Illustrate with Fabric & Thread: The Art of Fusible Appliqué

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Out of all of the mediums you could use to express yourself, have you ever considered fabric? Hi, I'm Lauren Weber, artist, designer, and quilter from New York. No, no, not that New York, [LAUGHTER] this New York. I grew up on a small hobby farm surrounded by plants, flowers, and endless inspiration. I was drawn to a sewing machine at a young age, and I've been crafting ever since. Now I'm the owner and founder of Garden Girls Studio where I quilt, illustrate, and design patterns usually, can you guess it? Garden inspired. I love plants and creating. I realized pretty early on in my quilting career that I wanted to design more than just quilt blocks, squares, triangles. I wanted to paint with fabric. In this class, you will learn how to illustrate with fabric through the art of fusible applique. Fusible applique is like collage, but instead of using paper, you're using fabric, and instead of using line work, you're using stitches. I am going to walk you through how to take your ideas and sketches and turn them into fabric art. For your class project, you'll create a simple fabric illustration based on what sparks your imagination. You know nature gets my creative wheels turning. But we'll have a whole lesson on how you can find your own inspiration. We'll start with choosing your fabric and deciding which prints, patterns, and solids work best for your project. We'll progress into strategically layering fabric and thread to showcase the focal elements in your composition, and we'll touch on some of my favorite embellishment techniques, including embroidery and thread painting to bring dimension to your project, which can really take your work to the next level. Seriously, these extras are really going to make your work pop. Feeling nervous to get started? To make the process easier, I'm providing a template that can be used to create a simple illustration using the techniques we covered in this class. This class is perfect for beginners, but all skill levels are welcome to join in on the fun. We're letting loose, this will be low pressure. You don't have to worry about perfect seams or stitches. You just have to have a desire to create with fabric. Without a doubt, fusible applique is a great skill to add to your creative toolbox. If you're a traditional quilter, it can help you think about working with fabric and thread in a new way. If you're a DIY crafter or creative, why not add fabric and thread to your creative portfolio? Think about all of the projects you can make. Or if you're someone who just loves fabric, but doesn't know where to begin, allow me to introduce you to fusible applique. Join me and we can step into the world of creating with fabric. By following along, you'll not only learn new fusible applique skills but this process will help you expand your creativity. These techniques are going to shift the way you think about all of the possible tools you can use to create your artwork. Now is your opportunity to think outside of the quilt blocks. If you're ready to paint the world around you with fabric, grab your favorite sewing supplies, and let's get started. I'll see you in the first lesson. [MUSIC] 2. Class Project: [MUSIC] Let's dive in. The goal of this class is to illustrate with fabric and thread using raw edge feasible applique and have a little bit of fun along the way. For your class project, I'm going to ask you to create a simple fabric and thread illustration using the techniques we cover in this class. I'm going to ask you to create a template for your project. Choose your fabric, assemble your illustration, and then choose one thread technique to incorporate into your project. You can opt to do more, but I'd like you to choose at least one technique to try to give your work a little bit of extra detail. When you're all done, I'd like you to upload your work to the project gallery so that we can see what you've accomplished. Take a picture of your fabric illustration. Tell us a little bit about your process and fill us in with the parts of the project that you absolutely loved and the parts that gave you a challenge. Let us know if you had any questions. The more that we share within this community, the more we all learn. I can't wait to see we've upload and be sure to keep us posted with updates along the way. In the next lesson, we're going to dive in and learn a little bit more about what illustrating with fabric and thread means. I'll see you there. [MUSIC] 3. Fabric and Thread as a Medium: [MUSIC] Welcome back. Let's talk about fabric and thread as an illustrative medium. We often see fabric used in fashion and home decor and in classic quilting projects, but how often do we think about using fabric and thread in our artwork? Well, in this class, I'd like you to think of fabric and thread as tools that you can use to create artwork. Fabric is going to serve as the foundation for your illustration. Often, in painting or drawing, we work in layers. First, you sketch general shapes, then you start layering in extra colors and details. That's what we're going to be doing as well. We will be using fabric to create the base shapes for our illustration, then layering in thread to add shading and details. In order to do this, we're going to use a technique called raw edge fusible applique. Raw edge fusible applique is a way of layering irregularly-shaped pieces of fabric. The edges of the fabric are generally unfinished. Their are cuts which makes them raw. Thus the name raw edge applique. In traditional piecing, every square, block, and triangle has to come together and line up. You have to have seams where points need to meet, edges need to be finished, but in fusible applique, we throw some of those rules out the window. We can start layering our fabric pieces and gluing them down and sewing them together, which gives us a lot more freedom in our creation. It's like collage. The freedom of collaging with raw edge fusible applique means that we can make illustrations with our fabric. We're not bound by boxes and points and squares and triangles. We can freely create shapes to make our illustrations. We can explore different fabric types. We can use these fabrics and compile them in a way that's going to create texture and movement and space in our piece. Within this class, we're going to be using quilting cottons. But even within that realm, if you think about the different prints, patterns, and solids that you can use, I want you to picture walking into a craft store or your favorite fabric store. You'll see all of the bolts of fabric along the wall and just imagine that those bolts of fabric are your paint palette. Think about all the different colors you can use, all the different textures. Are there stripes? Are there polka dots? Are there florals? These are the materials that we're going to be using to create our composition. I want you to start thinking about fabric as your paint palette. How can these fabrics be layered, mixed, and put together to create something new? Now, let's talk about thread work. Fabric can only get you so far, but ultimately, it is flat. Even if you layer multiple pieces of fabric to create shading, thread is another tool that you can use to start creating dimension in your work. We have a number of thread types and threadwork techniques that we can use to enhance your work and build on our fabric foundation. Think of thread-like paintbrushes. Different brushes and writing tools give you different effects. The same is true for thread work. Our goal is to build on our fabric foundation and use thread to add details, texture, and shading to our project. We're going to cover some of these embellishment techniques later on in this class but for now, I just want you to start thinking about how you can use thread as line and shading. I want you to start thinking about how you can use fabric to start building the foundation of your illustration. For example, if I'm looking at a leaf, maybe then I'm going to use thread for the veining and fabric for the leaf shape, and so on and so forth. Once you start realizing all the different tools that you have when you're working with African thread, it's going to open the doors for you to be able to start creating textile art and this class is just the beginning. I want you to start thinking about how you can use these tools to create your composition. In the next lesson, we're going to start talking about finding inspiration. If you're ready to get started, I'll see you there. [MUSIC] 4. Gathering Inspiration: [MUSIC] Welcome back. This lesson is about finding creative inspiration. Sometimes when we're working on a project, we just need a little extra creative spark. In this lesson, we're going to cover some of my favorite ways to get inspired. The first way to get inspired, getting out and exploring the world around me. I love going out into my garden and getting inspired by the plants I see. Get on out, take a walk, explore your surroundings, see what's around you, and see if anything's sparked your inspiration. If you see something that inspires you, sketch it out or take a picture, use it as inspiration for your project. My favorite way to gather inspiration is to really notice the details. Don't be afraid to really look deeper at your subject. You may find something there that you weren't expecting to see. The reason why I love plants so much is that they are beautifully diverse. If you look closely, you'll start to notice different forms, lines, shapes, and textures. Seeing all the little differences and noticing how each of these plants and leaves are different, really helps me with my embellishment details later on in my project. These are the details that I'm going to be adding using thread work. I grow a garden to pull inspiration from, so I often bring plants, leaves, flowers right inside, up to my desk and I sketch them out there. Sometimes taking a pen or pencil to paper can really help you notice the details when you start to sketch out something new. Last but certainly not least, I enjoy taking inspiration from photos that I've taken. Whether it be a vacation and adventure, time with family and friends, a new public garden. Using those photos has really given me great inspiration and ideas for my projects. I wanted to show you this project that I came up with a few months ago, I was cold here in New York. It was snowy, it was blustery, it was freezing, and I wanted to re-experience a warm tropical vacation of years past. I went through photos that I had taken old photos and I put them and I categorize them into all of these different categories so that I could draw inspiration for an art project. If you're inspired by what's around you, whether you're on vacation or at home, or experiencing something with your friends and your family, take a picture, take a snapshot. I mean, yes, I might look silly, but look how cool this pattern is in the background. I mean, whether that's a stitching pattern or something I want to make. I mean, look how awesome this plant is cool. I mean, I can create an entire color palette just from this photo. Taking our own photos helps us make sure that our artwork is original. It's really easy to jump on Pinterest or Google to look for ideas, but it's far better to take our own photos to draw original inspiration. When we take our own photos, we can use them to create our artwork. For example, if I was really overwhelmed by this viscous flower and I didn't think I could draw it freehand, I could upload it into one of my programs and trace it or trace it by hand. Taking the time to really dive deep and take your own photos is really going to help you create original artwork and it's going to give you a lot more freedom and your creative process. Once I had all of these things gathered, I actually made a mood board, and yes, I have an Instagramable picture, but don't feel like it needs to be the perfect Instagram mood board or idea board or inspiration board. Get messy with it. I mean, I pulled out all of my favorite colors. All of these neutrals, these sandy tones, I pulled out even some of these murkier tones, they're great, they're perfect. I pulled things that I loved the colors of. I love how the pineapple buds match the sunset, match some of the flora, match. Even the pineapples match the golden on their roosters I saw and did I use all of these colors in my project? No, I really did pull it all together. If you get some fatigue in your project, you can come back to your mood board and get excited about it. Feel that warmth, that energy that you had at the start of the project. Don't be afraid to look back at your photos. Pull them all together, see what works, what colors are really inspiring you, put them all in one space and you can reflect back on it later in your project or as you're moving along. It's just another good option for you to gather inspiration. This is how I find inspiration, but what inspires you? I encourage you to make a list or a mood board of the things that have inspired you. Keep that inspiration handy for the next time you're working on a project. That way, if you need a little extra creative spark, you're ready to go. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about composition. I'll see you there. [MUSIC] 5. Composition: Hierarchy and Repetition: [MUSIC] Welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to talk about composition. Now that we have all of our inspiration ideas, we need to take all of those ideas and organize them in a way that we can create a cohesive design based on a few key compositional principles. Let's talk about some basic principles that we can use to help us build a strong design that is easy on our viewer's eye, balanced, and can help us showcase the important elements in our work. We can help our audience understand our work by creating a compositional hierarchy. This hierarchy can be created by establishing key focal points. It could be emphasized by color selection, contrast, and repetition. Let's look at some examples. The first thing I really want you to think about is how are all of your elements interacting with each other? What do you want the viewer to see? Are some elements going to be more important than others? The answer is yes. You've probably already decided what you want to illustrate. You have all of your inspirations in front of you. Maybe you have a lot of ideas, but ultimately you want to create one or a couple of small focal points. Our focal points are going to be the key features in our design, and they are going to inform many of the design choices we make throughout this process. Oftentimes your focal points are going to have more detail. They're going to contrast from the rest of your work in some way, and we really want to make sure they pop and stand out. There's a few ways that we can go ahead and do that. The first thing I want you to think about is establishing a foreground, a middle ground, and a background. Now, luckily, with fabric, this should not be too difficult because ultimately we have to layer these pieces anyway in order to build our picture. Establish a base fabric. This is going to serve as your canvas, and oftentimes, it's also going to serve as your background. You may have some other background features, but they're often going to be muted. They're not going to have as much detail. These elements are going to build the foundation of our composition. The next element I want you to think about are going to be your foreground elements. A lot of times perspective-wise, your focal points are actually going to be closer to you. It's going to be your foreground. They're going to have more detail. They're going to have great contrast with everything around them. They're really going to draw the viewer's eye in. These are the places that we want our viewer to look at and notice. Then we also want to talk about mid-ground. Your mid-ground elements are going to be your supportive elements. They should support your focal points without detracting from them. Slightly less detail, maybe slightly duller, or tones that coordinate but don't take away from your focal elements. These are important things to think about when we're thinking about fabric, color choice, brightness level, darkness level, things like that. Now, we'll get into fabric selection a little bit more in a later lesson, but just keeping in the back of your mind how you can distinguish your layers, foreground, middle ground, and background using light, color and detail texture. Now, the next thing I want you to think about is, where am I going to put this focal point in the composition? If your base fabric is your canvas and you divide that canvas up into thirds, both vertically and horizontally, you're going to get a grid. We call this grid our thirds grid, or in this case, we are going to be using a rule of thirds. Generally, you want to try to place your focal elements on one of these intersecting lines. These intersecting lines indicate locations that will be pleasing on the viewer's eye. We can use these key locations to emphasize our focal elements using our support of elements and negative space. Negative space is your softer space. It's your non-focal region. You want to establish negative space because it's important for your viewer's eye to rest. So oftentimes we're probably going to use our background space to establish negative space. That's why we want very few details in the background. The other benefit of using negative space is that it's actually going to draw the viewer's eye to your focal points because there's not going to be as much to look at in those negative spaces, so your eye is going to start roaming until it lands on your focal point, the place that you wanted your viewer to see. The last compositional element I wanted to discuss is repetition. Repetition is repeating similar techniques, elements, characteristics, and qualities across your canvas. In this case, if we're using fabric, we want to have consistent colors across our canvas, or maybe our elements have consistent shapes. That way our viewer can really understand what's happening in our piece. Let's say I have 10 leaves in my composition. Of those leaves, five are red, one is blue, one is purple, two are green, and one is yellow. My viewer would probably look at my composition and be like, why did you do that? They might not understand it. But if I made all of my leaves green, even if they were just shades of green, or in this case, if I used different green fabrics that all coordinated with each other, they'd be like, okay, in their heads. Even if they're not saying it out loud, they would establish that all of those leaves are green. Now, I could do the same thing and all of those leaves could be purple and they would still accept that because consistently across my canvas, even though purple may not be a standard shade for a leaf color, they would accept that, okay, all the leaves are purple. They've established it as a rule. In my composition, I'm going to be grouping different leaves styles together. In order to distinguish those, I'm going to give them each a different type of shape or line. I'm going to have super wavy leaves. In another spot, I'm going to have leaves that look like palms. They're going to be skinny, teeny, tiny, thin. So within even my wavy leaves, they're all going to be a little bit different. But because the general shape of those leaves is wavy, my viewers can understand that those are a different type of leaf than say, my palm leaves. If you establish repetition as part of your work, you'll be creating basic rules that the viewer is going to internalize and say, okay, I understand this piece. If you want to create a moment in your design and showcase something important, you can break your own rules. But you can only break them if you've established rules consistently and clearly throughout your design. Let's say that I was creating composition again. I have 10 leaves and they are all purple. But let's say I wanted to have one of those leaves stand out. There was something really important that I wanted to show in that leaf. Well, if I made nine of the leaves purple and one of them orange, suddenly my viewer is going to be like, "I wonder why that's orange. Maybe there's something really important with this orange leaf that I need to look at." Now, if you want to create a moment, something important, really show off something, you can break your own rules, but you can only do it if you've established that rule consistently across your composition. For us, it's really important that we are making intentional color choices when we're choosing our fabric, and it's really important that we're consistent with the way that we are drawing certain shapes in our elements for our design. This consistency will really help our viewer understand what we're trying to express. In this lesson, we've covered some basic compositional principles that will help us intentionally organize our design elements so that we can create a balanced, cohesive design. In the next lesson, we're going to take all of these principles and use them to create our illustrations layout. But we are going to use that layout to create templates so that we can cut out our fabric and start assembling our project. If you're ready to get started with creating your layout, I'll see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 6. Layout & Templates: From Planning to Prep: Welcome back. Now that we've discussed our compositional principles, it's time to start discussing designing our layout. In this lesson, we are going to be finalizing our illustration ideas in creating a design layout. We are going to be using this design layout to create simple templates. What will we use these templates for? Well, we need these templates to cut out our fabric shapes for our illustration. Let's walk through how we can take our sketches and drawings and turn them into templates to cut our fabric. Step one, you are going to sketch out your illustration ideas. If you haven't finalized your subject or what you'd like to create for your illustration now is the time. Your sketches don't need to be particularly complex. In fact, they can be relatively simple. We just need to get an idea of what elements we are going to be using in our illustration. You can use whichever drawing technique works best for you. You can sketch digitally by hand or even trace your design elements. Sometimes I'll use one or more of these techniques depending on what type of project I'm working on. Use whichever technique feels most comfortable for you. Step 2, we need to determine how each of our sketched elements, will be placed in our illustration to start creating our design layout. Now you're going to see how all of your design elements are going to work together to create your composition, I'm going to recommend you create little thumbnail sketches. Take all of the elements that you sketched out in Step 1 and arrange them, keeping in mind our key compositional principles. Don't be afraid if one of the thumbnails is not working. Just scrap it and move on to the next. Keep sketching until you can see how all of your elements are going to work together. Do you need to make certain elements bigger, smaller? Do your objects overlap? These are important things to start thinking about. You can also work digitally if you're more comfortable working with your elements on the computer, I say, go for it. Keep in mind, you don't need to know every single detail at this point. Start to understand the details so we can add them as embellishments later. But for now, you just want an idea of the size, scale, and placement of your elements. Keep in mind your rule of thirds, your use of negative space, and how you're going to lay out your foreground, mid-ground, and your background. Step 3, at this point, it's important to define a clear edge on your elements in this layout. I know sometimes when I'm sketching, I tend to leave things vague. My drawing is very loose. Now is the time for clearly defined shapes. That is because these edges are our guidelines for our templates. When we go to cut our fabric, we need to make sure that these lines are crisp. These lines will indicate where we're going to cut our fabric. If you haven't already darken the outline for all of your elements. In Step 4, we're going to trace each of these outlined elements onto a separate piece of paper to create our templates. I'm going to say trace onto a separate piece of papers that we can reuse those templates over and over again in the future. Personally, if I make a mistake or if something doesn't come out quite right, I like to have my original template to refer back to. Keep in mind that as you're tracing each of your design elements, none of these elements should be overlapped anymore. You need to be able to distinguish and cut each shape separately so that each shape can be cut from fabric as you're tracing, this is something super important to keep in mind. There are some situations when you will not want to trace your template exactly on the outline, you may want to slightly extend any edges of design elements that are positioned underneath another object in your composition. This will give you wiggle room down the road when you go to reassemble your project. If I know two shapes are going to overlap, then I trace a little outside of the outline on the bottom layer. This part of my outline won't be visible because it's sitting under the top layer. In this case, my leaf has an extended edge which will be positioned under the flower petal, leaving a little extra fabric to overlap means that I have a little more wiggle room for cutting errors when I'm reassembling my project. If the shapes fit together exactly, there's little room for error. The edge of your fabric shapes will need to be cut nearly perfect, to fit together properly on reassembly. Instead, draw your shapes to extend underneath their neighboring shapes. That way if you're cutting isn't perfect, it won't be an issue when you're reassembling. Any objects that have visible edges, those edges will all be exact, traced right on our outlines. I am only extending the edge that is going to be covered by another object against when I reassemble my composition, my fabric shapes won't have to line up perfectly edge to edge. There will be a little wiggle room for my final placement. Personally, in my wreath project, I'm going to be drawing around every leaf shape, even if its placement is behind or under another leaf in my composition. There are so many elements overlapping in this project that it would be way more difficult to reassemble if I had to try to crop each leaf and pinpoint its exact location. Instead I'm cutting my leaf shapes whole and we'll let them overlap in my final project. That is what works for me in this project but you can consider outlining what's visible in your composition. But keep in mind that your placements will need to be more exact when you go to reassemble your project. Step 5, if your templates are super complex, make sure you label letter or number them. Because we're outlining all of our objects as standalone elements, it's really easy to get them mixed up. Suddenly something that was a pumpkin is now a whole bunch of really abstract shapes. Or something that was a flower is a whole bunch of really abstract shapes. To make sure that you're putting them all together in the right order, number or letter them in your original sketch and then number and letter them on your template piece. That way you can refer back to your original drawing to know exactly how all of those elements are going to fit together. I want you to use this lesson to create some templates for your feasible applique. I'm also going to recommend that you avoid working with teeny tiny elements. As you're creating your templates, try to keep your shapes in your objects at a reasonable scale, at a reasonable size. The smaller that you work, the more fussy it's going to be when you're going to lay out your project. If you've teeny-tiny little shapes and you've got to keep them all in one spot, they're much harder to manage. But if you have pieces of fabric that are of reasonable size, it's going to be a lot easier for you to work and get through this project. Don't be afraid to keep your shapes simple. I'm going to be touching on some embellishment techniques later on that we're going to use with thread work that you can use to add details and textures to your illustration. We can always get more complex later and we can always add more details later. To recap, you're going to sketch out your ideas based on your inspiration. Create your compositions layout, outline the edges of each design element, trace your elements onto a piece of paper and label your templates. All right, everyone that covers layout and creating templates. In the next lesson we're going to cover one of my favorites, fabric selection. If you're ready to choose your fabric, I'll see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 7. Fabric Selection: Pattern and Color: [MUSIC] Welcome back. Now is the fun part, fabric selection. I love this stage in the process because I can finally start seeing my project come together. Planning is great, but creating is so much more fun. As an artistic medium, fabric is pretty awesome because it's already printed. How do we know how to layer these prints and patterns together to create a composition? Let's talk about the different print and pattern styles that you can work with. One of the first options you have are solids. Solids can be a challenge to work with, they are a total blank slate. On the bright side, you can create whatever you want with them. On the downside, it is a blank slate, so it can appear flat if you don't add some extra details or pep it up a little bit. In order to make your solids look a little more interesting, you may need to add embellishments, painting thread, other fabric, maybe you need to layer a little bit more. Now, my favorite style of print to work with, are near solids. Think batiks, hand dyeds, those types of fabrics. They're usually tone on tone, they have good texture and color. The reason why I love semi-solids so much, sometimes I can find elements in the fabric that will guide how I use them. If I have a bunch of leaf shapes like for my wreath, I'm going to find fabrics that already have nice lines, like vein lines, or maybe they're blotchy, like how I would see leaves in nature, so there's interests already in those fabrics. They aren't as dull as solids, but they aren't as robust as prints, which is what we're getting to next. The third type of fabrics that you can use are prints and patterns. Now, prints are pretty awesome because they have a lot of texture already. It's like having a paintbrush in Adobe Illustrator, you can sweep your whole Canvas, and suddenly you have a new pattern or texture running through your composition. It's great, but it can also be a little bit overwhelming if it's not used properly. Keep in mind that you can mix and match these different options, so you can pair solids with semi-solids or patterns to take your doll solids and give them a little bit more life. You can take your busy prints and patterns, and you can subdue them by matching them up with some solids, so explore and find out how your fabrics play together and determine which parts of your illustration you want to be a little bit more busy or a little bit more subdued. For example, your focal elements are going to need a little bit more detail, they're going to need a little bit more movement, so maybe in those parts of your project, you can have a few more busy patterns, whereas maybe some of your background elements may need to be a little bit duller and a little more subdued. Think about how your fabric palette and how your fabric choices are going to impact your composition. How do you choose a color palette? Personally, I usually work one of two ways, I either like a whole broad color range of colors, or I work monochromatically. You can work monochromatically, or you can work with a wide range of colors. But ultimately, the most important factor that I want you to think about is how these colors work together. I want you to think about contrast. The colors you choose for your focal elements should stand out in contrast from the other colors in your palette. Your midground elements are going to be supportive elements. The colors you choose for your midground design elements should emphasize your focal points. You may want to choose colors that are slightly more muted, slightly lighter, slightly darker to make your focal elements stand out. Your background elements and base fabric should have the most contrast relative to your focal elements, but be sure to choose a color that doesn't compete with your focal point. Establish neutral colors to help balance the colors in your illustration and give your key elements a chance to shine. Using a neutral color for your base fabric is a great way to help draw attention to your focal points. Now, keep in mind that these are not hard and fast rules, play with color and have some fun. Lay out your fabrics and see how they worked together before you make your final selection. Which colors pop, which colors fade into the background, and how can these fabrics be used to emphasize key moments in your illustration? If you're feeling stuck, if you feel like there's too many color options, you're not sure what to do, now is the time to go back to your inspiration board. See what colors we're inspiring you at the start of this project. See what might work now that you've decided on your layout. Now is a great time to get re-inspired, revisit all of those early ideas, and get the creative juices flowing. In terms of what type of fabric to use, I'm going to highly recommend using quilting cotton. The feasible web that we're going to use, or at least the one that I'm going to use is heat-activated, and not all fancy, fun and silly fabrics can handle heat. I'm going to recommend you avoid silk, chiffon, netting tool, unless you have a lot of experience working with those fabrics and fibers. You can create some really awesome compositions using just quilting cotton, and that's what we're going to focus on in this class. To recap, we've talked about different fabric print styles, how to consider contrast in your fabric color selection, and again, I highly recommend you use quilting cotton for this project. These are going to be the fabrics you use to create your design. This is the fun part, have some fun with it, lay out your fabrics, see what works. Make sure your fabric is washed, pressed, and ready to go so that we can move on to the next step in our process, cutting our fabric. If you're ready to move on to the next lesson, I'll see you there. [MUSIC] 8. Cutting Fabric Elements: Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to work on prepping and cutting our fabric and using our fusible web. We're also going to discuss how to use our fusible web paper. Now, every fusible web works a little bit differently. Be sure to follow your products given instructions. But essentially fusible web acts like glue. We will be activating this glue twice in our process. Once to attach the glue to our fabric shapes, and again later to place these shapes in our overall composition. In this lesson we're going to cover tracing our templates onto the fusible web paper, activating our fusible web glue so that our templates are attached to our fabric and cutting out our fabric shapes so that they are ready for our composition. You are going to trace each group of elements onto a piece of fusible web paper. So if you haven't already decide which fabrics you are going to use for each object in your illustration, you are going to trace each group of templates based on fabric type onto your fusible web paper. They're all grouped by fabric type. Your piece of fusible wet paper is likely going to be 2-3 layers thick. You're going to have a rough layer and that's going to be your glue or your fusible web. Then you're going to have a waxy or smooth piece of paper and that's the side that we're going to trace our elements onto. What's really important to know is that you need to trace a mirror image of your elements onto the fusible web paper. Why? It's like if you were taking a glue stick and a piece of construction paper, you're gluing to the underside of the construction paper and the pretty sight of your construction paper is going to be face up. Same concept here. The bottom of the fabric is going to be what the glue is going to be attached to. When we flip it over, the right side is going to be facing up. As you're tracing your templates, trace them in reverse, trace a mirror image. An easy way to do this is to hold your template drawing up to a window or use a light-box face your template outward so that you can see the lines through the piece of paper using the light from the window or your light-box, then you're going to trace those reversed lines onto your fusible web paper. If you're like me and you're doing a wreath or something very natural, it won't make a huge difference if the leaves are flipped mirror image, it's not what we were hoping for, but it won't be the end of the world. But if you're doing something with say, lettering, that's going to be a huge difference because all of your letters are going to be backwards when you go to put them onto your base fabric layer. This is super important. If you don't do this, you're going to realize later that your elements are reversed and if it's something like lettering or font, it's going to come out backwards, which I've really just don't want to happen to you after all of your hard work. Be mindful that you're going to want to trace a mirror image of your elements on to the smooth surface of your fusible web paper. As you are tracing, group all of your elements that will be cut with the same fabric together on your fusible web paper. Organizing your templates by fabric type will help you be more efficient. This way, we can fuse all of our elements to a single piece of fabric and cut them all at the same time. Once you have your elements traced onto your fusible web paper, cut around the edges of where you traced. No need to activate all of the glue if isn't necessary. Then cut your selected piece of fabric to be slightly wider than the templates you just traced. Now we need to sandwich these layers together so that we can activate the glue onto the back of our fabric. The way that my fusible web works, this is how I make my sandwich. Step 1, place a piece of parchment paper down on your ironing surface. Step 2, place your fabric on top of the parchment paper with the backside facing up, so the non printed side of your fabric should be facing up. Step 3, place your fusible web paper template so the glue or the rough side is down on top of the fabric so that the glue is in direct contact with the back of the fabric you selected. The smooth paper we traced on should be facing up. Step 4, cover these layers with another piece of parchment paper to protect your iron from any straight glue bits just in case. My fusible web is heat activated, but follow the instructions for your fusible web. Yours may not work the same as mine, so for mine, I'm going to heat up my iron. I'm going to press and hold for a few seconds. Once I know that that glue is activated, of course I don't want it to burn, I'm not going to leave it on for too long. But once I know that it's activated, I'm going to remove my iron and I'm going to allow it to cool. Now you want to make sure you give your fabric enough time to cool so that your pieces have enough time to fuse and the glue has enough time to react while you're allowing your fabric to cool, go ahead and repeat all of these steps for all of your different fabric groups until you've completed all of your different elements and shapes. To recap, make sure that all of your elements are grouped according to fabric type. Make sure you trace your elements as a mirror image, and then go ahead, create your sandwich. Use your fusible web according to your manufacturer's instructions for each of your fabrics that you are going to use for your project. Then once all of your pieces are cool, you're going to go head and you're going to cutout right on those outlines. There's likely still going to be a piece of waxy paper protecting the other side of your fusible web. Try to keep the paper attached if you can. It will help the longevity of the fusible web because we have the glue on one side. But our next step is going to be placing our elements on our base and then gluing again so that they stay attached and our composition. If you can try to keep that piece of paper attached for now until we're ready to do our full composition that would be helpful. If the piece of paper falls off it's no big deal. Don't stress, it's just something helpful as we move forward in our project. Go ahead and continue this process with all of your fabric shapes. If your elements need to be arranged in a certain way or if they are lettered are numbered, makes sure that you keep them labeled and organized so that they don't get mixed up at this stage in the process. Personally, I have both either drawn right on the outside of that smooth piece of paper if I can, if that piece of paper falls off. I've also printed pieces of paper that have my template on them from my computer and I'll put the individual pieces of fabric right over the shape that they're representing so that I can't possibly mix it up because I'm good at mixing things up. Stay as organized as you can and I will see you in the next lesson to assemble our project. This is getting exciting. I'll see you there. 9. Final Layout and Assembly: Fusible Appliqué: Welcome back. We're almost there. We're entering one of the most exciting stages in our project, seeing it all come together. So in this lesson, we are going to discuss our final layout and assembly. The idea is to build your layers from the base on up. The first thing you're going to do is prepare your base fabric. This is going to be the canvas that we are going to be building our composition on. You're going to make sure that it is washed, cut to size, and press nicely. That way we can start assembling and laying out all of our fabric shapes on top of this base layer. You're going to lay out your base fabric on a flat surface. That could be a table, a design wall, an ironing board, any flat surface so that we can start assembling and layering our design elements to create our composition. So now you have your base fabric. If you have any other background elements, it's time to start laying those out. For example, if you're doing a landscape and you have some distant mountains or horizon line, now it's the time to put those pieces on top of your background layer. As you are arranging your fabric elements, be sure to place them glue side down into your composition. The printed side of your fabric should be face up as you're positioning it and arranging it for your illustration. Don't forget to remove the little pieces of waxy paper on the back of your fusible web elements. That way, once all of your pieces are in place, you'll be ready to glue. Next up, you make ground elements. In my case, this is often my leaf shapes. A lot of times I use flowers as my focal elements. So my leaves are my mid-ground elements. In my wreath project, I'm using my mid-ground leaf elements to create contexts for my layout. I'm grouping my leafs by shape and color, and I'm starting to form that characteristic wreath shape. Starting to define the wreath area in my illustration by placing some mid-ground elements to create context will help me know where to place my focal elements. Finally, you're going to add your focal elements. Sometimes I do add in my focal elements a little bit early. I'll place a few of my mid-ground elements, but then I want to make sure that my focal elements are going to be in the right spots. The location of your focal element is what's most important. We need to make sure that they are placed in their proper positions. You can always add back in some of those mid ground elements later once you know where you're going to place your focal elements. Those mid ground elements can be added back in by just tucking them underneath your foreground elements or your focal points. Keep in mind, you will likely have to make adjustments as you go. That's totally okay. Maybe you'll realize that your contrast isn't quite what you thought it was going to be or maybe the scale of your shapes is just a little bit off. Goodness knows, I've trimmed elements along the way. That's totally okay. Remember that we can use different embellishment and thread work techniques to add contrast, texture, and extra details to your elements. The most important thing to remember at this stage in your project is just making sure that your elements are in the correct locations. Once you have all of your design elements in their proper locations, we're going to activate our feasible web for a final time. Sometimes before I activate my feasible web for the final time, I like to take a break and step away from my project. I'll come back later with fresh eyes just to see if I want to make any other adjustments before everything is finalized. It is 100% okay if your design evolves, if it changes. It doesn't need to be like your original thumbnail. It's okay if you've found creative happy moments along the way and added them into your project or realized maybe something wasn't working and you've changed it, you've adjusted it. This is meant to be a creative process where things can flow. My projects often change as I go. [LAUGHTER] My style gives my patterns a little bit more character, and that's what I want to show through. I want my designs to show my unique style and my unique character. I want your unique style to shine through too. Now if you don't feel comfortable fusing elements down directly to your final Project or if you have a lot of little pieces, say like a flower and you've got a lot of little petals, and you want to assemble those before placing them onto your final project, there's another technique that you should know. To do this, you're going to take your elements, you're going to arrange them between two pieces of parchment paper and according to your fusible application instructions, to a very light gluing and then you can still peel off your newly fused object before placing it onto your final project and then fusing it again. Now I say lightly fuse because it'll be easier to pull off your parchment paper if you've lightly glued it. But honestly, I could peel it right off and it's still activated on my background. Now, the benefit of this, is that now I can take whole flowers and move them around without moving around individual petals and individual flower centers. I can take the entire flower shape and move it where I want it in my composition. This is another little technique that maybe useful for you. Now, if you're struggling with a lot of little pieces or maybe your elements just won't stay in place, don't be afraid to step out of this process and make it work for you. This process isn't set in stone, so if there's a technique that's going to make your workflow faster, better, and more efficient, easier for you to work with, I say go for it. For example, like I said my elements tend to move, I'm pretty clumsy, so I will bump my shapes and then I whole flower will move out of alignment. One of the techniques that I use is, I'll use a tacky glue and I'll take a toothpick and I'll take the smallest amount of that tacky glue and I will place it on the bottom side of my elements, say my petals and I will use them to anchor my objects in place before my final glue down. This helps to make sure that nothing is moving as I'm working. You can also use pins or the clips or whatever happens to work for you just to keep everything set still, so that you can get your whole layout ready to go before you glue it down. If there's a technique that's going to make your life easier, add it into your process. In fact, I'd love to hear about it. If you're willing to share it with a group, tell us about it in your class project, or in the discussion panel. We would love to know what techniques you used and how you made them work for your project. The more that we all share, the more that we can all grow and learn in this community. I cannot wait to see what you come up with. Once your layout is just the way you want it, now is the time to fuse it down. If your glue is activated, remember to use your parchment paper to protect your iron and you're ironing surface. Be very careful when you're placing your piece of parchment paper down that it doesn't bump or move your elements that you've just so nicely laid out. Make sure you activate every shape. You don't want little pieces falling off and you go to lift up your fabric composition, so make sure you are activating all of your glue that all of your shapes are nice and secured. Once everything is all fused down, we're going to move on to the next lesson, where we're going to discuss the different ways that you can incorporate thread work into your composition. If you're ready to get started, I'll see you there. 10. The Importance of Threadwork: [MUSIC] Hey everyone, so we just finished assembling our composition, awesome, super exciting. Now it's time to start adding in some details. We're going to get into thread work. Over the next few lessons. I'm going to be reviewing a few practical stitches. These stitches are going to be perfect for finishing your project quickly getting through DIY projects, low touch projects. Then I'm going to cover a few illustrative embellishment techniques that are going to have some more decorative stitches. Be a little bit more fun and flair for your work. Now, you don't need to be pro sower in order to tackle these stitches, we're covering just some of the basics of hands stitching so that you can get comfortable as we move forward with our embellishment lessons. Some of you may be thinking, do I really need to add stitches? Really, you don't have to add any stitching at all. I'm encouraging it because it's going to help add dimension to your work and it may help reinforce some of your fabric. I use permanent feasible web. If you're using a light feasible web, it may be important to reinforce your fabric just so it doesn't start fraying, it doesn't start peeling from your base layer. Adding just a few stitches is going to help make sure that your project lasts a little bit longer. In some cases, if you add fun stitches, it's going to take your artwork to the next level. If you decide to go through and stitch your fabric, you have a few different options. You can choose very practical stitches, stitches that are going to help you get your project done quickly and efficiently. They're going to hold your project structurally together or you can use embellishment stitches that are going to be a little bit more fancy. They are going to add texture dimension, depth to your work. You may work with a few different fibers and techniques just depending on your overall composition, we're going to cover both strategies moving forward depending on what your goals are with your project. Let's talk functional stitching. Not every project and fabric illustration has to be a work of art. It doesn't have to be loaded with a ton of decorative stitches. Sometimes we need to consider function overflow. Are you in a time crunch? Are you just looking for a simple DIY project to do with your family? Are you looking for something more functional than decorative? Well then these stitches may be right for you. These practical stitches can also be used as decorative stitches later on. It's a good idea to go ahead and get comfortable working with a needle and thread if you aren't already. Keep in mind, I don't want you to fret about having perfect stitches. Goodness knows mine aren't going to be perfect. A lot of times I worked by machine the stitches I'm going to be showing you in the next few lessons we're going to be doing by hand. I tend to work with irregular stitches because I'm doing a lot of work with nature themes. I don't want my stitches to be perfectly even and neat because I want my work to look a little bit more natural. Now, you may want a nice even coat or a nice even edge to your work. That's up to you, but you're going to be looking at my status, I promise you they aren't going to be perfect. I don't want you to feel like you're statistic to be perfect either. There is a place for irregularity and natural looking work, and it's okay if your work isn't perfect. The goal of these next few lessons is to get comfortable hand stitching with a needle and thread. In the next lesson, we're going to cover the running stitch. It's a simple stitch. If you're ready to start sewing, I'll see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 11. Practical Sewing: Running Stitch: Welcome back everyone, let's get sewing. The first practical stitch we are going to be learning is the running stitch. The running stitch is very versatile. It's not a continuous stitch, which means there's going to be stitches and spaces between your stitches. You can vary the stitch length and the spaces between your statistics to get different looks and effects. I love this stitch because I can use it in hand embroidery and I can go rogue and not stitch in a straight line. But if you want to be super practical, you can use this stitch to stitch along the edges of your fusible applique. In my next few examples of these practical stitches, I've used heart's down to a piece of fabric so that you can see how these stitches may be used with fusible applique. You can also opt just to use a simple piece of fabric with an embroidery hoop and just stitch in the space on that piece of fabric. You can use just that open piece of fabric to create an index for your stitches if you'd like. Depending on the weight of the thread you're using, these stitches will look different and they'll create a different outcome. For example, if you're using floss, floss strands can be broken down into one strand, two, three, four all the way up to six different strands. My stitches are going to look different if I'm using a single strand from if I'm using six strands. If you'd like to keep an index of your stitches as you go so that you can refer back to them when you're working on your work and see how you might like to use different stitches at different thread weights and how those may impact your composition, I totally recommend it. I encourage it. It's super not mandatory, but it might be something that can help you down the road as you're working on your projects. To get started, you're going to need thread, needle, fabric, and I'm going to encourage an embroidery hoop. Let's dive in. First up, your embroidery hoop. Basically you have a knob here, and it's going to loosen or tighten your fabric so you can just lefty loosey, righty tighty. There's going to be an over hoop and an under hoop. They fit together, and your fabric is going to get squeezed between them. When you're working with your project, you're going to want to center as best you can your working area. You're going to put the smaller hoop on the bottom if you're working by hand, and you're going to put the larger hoop on the top. I'm going to just tighten this up just a little bit more. Then you're just going to go ahead again and tighten it up. Now we're ready to work. We're going to start by threading a needle. Now, I'm going to do my DMC floss. I have two strands here. I'm going to go ahead and thread this needle. On the other side, you're going to make a basic knot to a double knot. The nice thing about the floss and especially using multiple strands, It's that it's a little bit thicker. If you use a thinner thread, like a basic polyester thread or just something really thin, you might have to do a few knots because you don't want this knot to pull through your fabric as you're creating your stitches. [LAUGHTER] That is going to go on the back side of our fabric. You're going to go ahead, and I want you to just pop through. Now, running stitch is really simple. I'm going to actually turn perpendicular here. You're going to actually just go over maybe about a quarter of an inch, poke your needle down, pull through from the back. You're going to come again, come back up. Pull your needle right through. Again, I'm going to go about a quarter of an inch. Sometimes I like to use the tip of my needle to measure, and you're going to go back down. Now the key here is to keep your line nice and straight and even. But more importantly, try to keep your stitches even size. That's going to help that stitch look neat. Same thing for your spaces. When I come back up, I am going to try to keep my space to be about the same distance. Again, we're going to go back down, trying to keep my stitches as even as possible. There you have it. Now, I don't want you to fret if your stitches aren't even. This comes with practice. Again, most importantly, it's that you are creating a stitch that's going to work for your illustration. I'm going to go ahead, and I'm going to show you on a fusible applique piece just so you can get the gist of how we would use a stitch like this. I want to reinforce the edges. I'm going to show you how I would just go right around the edge and reinforce using a running stitch. You can choose a contrasting color. In this case, you can see my stitches. Or you can choose a color that's close to matching the applique piece that you're working on. Again, you're going to go a little distance. You can work left to right, right to left. It doesn't make a huge difference. In this case, I'm going to stick with my quarter of an inch size. Again, the length doesn't matter as much as consistency matters. I'm going to go to my backside. I am going to come back up. I'm going to try to keep the same distance from the edge, for all of my stitches. It's equal from where I'm inputting my needle and to the edge of the applique fabric. That way, it looks more nice and consistent. Go ahead and put this back down. I'm going to go ahead and do this all the way around until you see I have a really cute running stitch. Make sure that as you're doing your stitches, if you're working along a curve, like I'm here on my heart, that you go ahead and try to stay parallel as best you can to the edge. I can see my edges here, and I'm going to try to stay as parallel to it as possible. You can work your way right around the piece, and all of your stitches are going to look like they're flowing right with your fabric. If you start running out of thread, that's okay, just tie off a knot and get a new piece and start right where you picked up and where you left off. There we go. As you can see, we've done a running stitch all the way around. Our stitches may not be perfect, but our fusible applique has been reinforced. That piece of fabric is going to stay in place, and we've gotten good practice on the stitch type. We're going to go ahead, and we're going to move on to our next stitch. Now that we've practiced the running stitch, we're going to move on and learn another classic stitch, the backstitch. If you're ready to see how the backstitch can be used in fusible applique, go on ahead and I'll see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 12. Practical Sewing: Backstitch: [MUSIC] Next up in our practical stitch toolbox is the backstitch. This stitch is simple and effective. Unlike the running stitch, when you're creating the backstitch, you are going to be creating a continuous line. Let's dive in. You're going to start by popping your needle through your fabric, pulling it all the way through. Then you're going to go ahead and you're going to drop a stitch just same way we did last time. Leave a little space, pop your needle through your, pull your thread through the back. This time, you're going to leave a gap from the backside. Come back up the same distance as your stitch. Pull your needle through. Then you're going to go ahead and place your needle down in the same spot that your last stitch ended. Go ahead. You're going to pull your needle through. That's the start of your backstitch. Again, my needle is on the backside, I'm going to come up about the same stitch length, trying to find my spot here. Looks a little big. Again you're going to put your needle up. One stitch length out. Pull your needle through. Drop your needle in where your last stitch ended. Pull your thread through the back. Again, you're going to try to want to keep your line nice and even, your stitches nice and even. But we are not perfectionists here. Well, we maybe, but we're not going to worry about having perfect stitches. We're just going to try to get this technique down. Again, I'm going to move on and show you how you can use this with a fusible applique example. We are going to get started on this new applique example, again with a backstitch. I'm going to go ahead and bring my needle right on up and through. Just like so. I'm going to turn so I can work parallel to the edge of my fabric here. Again, you're going to make your first stitch just go right down. Just like we did with the running stitch. You're going to go ahead and bring your needle up but equidistance from the edge, pull your thread through. You're going to take your needle, place it where your last stitch ended. Pull the needle through to the backside. If you've got a backstitch, what's nice about this is it's seamless so you don't have the gaps, it's just a different look. If you want a straight line that doesn't look like a dashed line, this is a good option for you. We're just going to keep going all the way around. Now you can see this backstitch goes all the way around. More even the stitches are, the more uniform the stitch looks. This is an example of the backstitch and how it can be used in fusible applique to reinforce your fusible glue. Now that we've covered the backstitch, we're going to go ahead and move forward with another stitch that's a little bit more decorative but still very practical. The blanket stitch. If you're ready to get started with a blanket stitch, I'll see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 13. Practical Sewing: Blanket Stitch: [MUSIC] The last classic stitch that we're going to cover is the blanket stitch. Unlike the running stitch and the backstitch, the blanket stitch is a little bit more decorative. The stitch is not only great for reinforcing our applique, but it's perfect for finishing off the edges of your fabric on your DIY projects. It adds just a little extra flare while still getting your project done, so let's dive in. The first thing you're going to do is you're going to put your needle through the fabric, and you're going to pull thread all the way down, then when you come down about a quarter of an inch, put your needle through the fabric and come back up in the original spot where your thread was. You're going to pull, and then you're going to leave a little bit of a loop, and you are going to take your thread and pull it through the loop, and that is your first stitch. The next thing you're going to do is come over about a quarter of an inch. Again, come down and then go through the fabric and, then pop back up perpendicular to the last stitch. You're going to pull through until you have just a little bit of a loop, take your needle from the outside and put it through that loop. You're going to pull it up and then out. I'm going to show you that again. You are going to go ahead and put your needle in and again pop it down, pull through, leave a little bit of a loop. Take your needle from the top, come through your loop, pull your thread up and in the direction that you are stitching. You can do this from the left to the right, it doesn't make a difference, can try to keep everything nice and even. It's the general rule of thumb for stitching. If you can try to keep it uniform, that's great. Later on you're going to be learning that we can break all of those rules and you can make stitches that are different lengths if you need to, because we are going to be drawing thread. Just know that if you want your stitches to be really decorative and neat, keep the stitch lengths nice and neat. If you're okay with drawing and improvising, then it's okay, we can be a little bit messy and we can get into that creative flow. Again, I'm going to show this to you on our applique hearts and then we're going to move on to our next part of the project. The last tutor we're going to do around our heart is going to be a blanket stitch. Here we're going to go ahead and pop up through the top of our heart, right along the edge, come down about a quarter of an inch, pull that through and try to come right back up in the hole there, and then you are going to go ahead and pull through your loop and follow right along the top edge of your heart. I'm going to go right back down along that bottom edge and I'm going to pump through. Again, we have a loop there. You're going to come from the top of the loop, pull up and out. Again, go about a quarter of an inch equal distance as best you can in or on a curve in an angle, you're going to come down, push through, leave yourself a little loop. You're going to come from the top of the loop, top of the loop, pull up and out towards the way you're stitching. Your going to go ahead and do this all the way around. Hey, everyone. I just wanted to take a minute to show you my final product. Again, it's not perfect, generally I'm not doing many of these decorative stitches, I like moving on and working with my machine and thread painting, but I thought this stitch would be nice to work with if you just want a fast and easy way to secure the edges of your applique. Yes, we did it. Another classic applique stitch, check. I hope you're getting a little bit more comfortable with your hands stitches and working with needle and thread. Just remember it doesn't have to be perfect, we're here to make art, get our project's finished and out into the world. Next up, we're going to talk about some embellishment techniques, ways that you can use stitching to add detail, line shading to your work. These stitches are a little bit less practical in a little bit more compositional. If you're ready to get started, I'll see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 14. Embellishment: Thread Painting: [MUSIC]. We just covered some classic stitches. Hopefully, now you feel a little bit more comfortable with needle and thread. You can see how stitches can be used in a practical way to get your projects done more quickly, to reinforce your feasible applique. Now, we're going to look a little bit more closely at some embellishment techniques that can be used to enhance your illustration. Before we get started, I want you to consider how you're going to incorporate thread into your project. Adding line in details is great but you want to make sure that you're making decisions with intention. Know why you're choosing a thicker thread or know why you want denser needlework or why you're choosing a heavier weight or what color you're going to choose. Sometimes too much or too many details can really start detracting from your focal points into your work and we don't want that. I want you to be really intentional about your choices. I want you to think about the colors you're using with intention. I want you to think about the types of threads, yarn, strings you are using and how they're going to enhance your work. I want you to think about the density, which sewing techniques you're going to use, are you going to use all of the techniques? Will it be too much? Or are you going to use them in different ways to really bring out all of the best in your work? Now that we have our fabric base, we're thinking dark, we've got our composition ready, we want to start adding in those details. There are so many different ways we can add in those details. I'm going to cover three in the next few lessons. I'm going to cover thread painting, I'm going to cover hand embroidery, and I'm going to cover quilting, just the basics. You could have full classes just on those topics alone. But I'm going to cover enough to get you starting to think about how you might use these techniques in your project. The first technique I'm going to talk to you about is thread painting. Thread painting is so much fun. What is thread painting? Thread painting is a way of using thread to build color in your illustration. The way thread painting works is you are going to be layering in thread. I'm just going to be sewing up and back, side-to-side almost like a W motion up and down until I'm covering the space that I'd like to cover. I often use thread painting for shading, for adding extra dimension. I work with a lot of semi-solids or hand-ides, toner tones. Sometimes I work as a tendency to be flat, but when I'm adding in thread painting, it really starts to make my work have some dimension and some shading, but I'm in control of it. Whereas with a fabric, I may or may not have a ton of control over where the print goes, where the pattern is lying. But when I'm thread painting, I have full control over where I'm placing my color. I tend to thread paint by machine. I free-motion stitch. I dropped my feed dogs. I used my free-motion foot and I worked the fabric back and forth under my needle and [LAUGHTER] I worked in a W motion. What's nice about my free motion stitching is I can go in any direction. I dropped my feed dogs so I'm no longer bound by the straight forward and back motion. I can move my fabric any which way, which gives me a lot of freedom to draw in any direction, create curves with my stitches. I don't have to have everything being perfectly linear. Now, if you're not as comfortable with free-motion sewing, you can use just your forward and back motions and between your stitch length. If you're going forward, you're going to drop your needle pivot just a smidge and then you can back stitch in the other direction. Again, drop your needle pivot just a smidge, and go right on back. Or you can run over the same line and then when you get back to the top again, change directions. If you're not comfortable with free-motion sewing, you can certainly use other functions on your sewing machine to get a similar effect. Make this technique work for you. Keep in mind that if you are working by machine, you may want to use a fabric stabilizer or an embroidery hoop. Using either a fabric stabilizer or an embroidery hoop will help prevent your fabric from puckering. A lot of times when you do heavy thread work and when we're building layers, they can get to be really heavy thread work. It's going to start pulling and tucking your fabric in just from the sheer pressure or tension so having an extra layer of fabric stabilizer or hoop is going to help keep your base strong and firm so that your fabric isn't puckering the way that you don't want it to. I like to use a nice peel and stick fabric stabilizer. You can certainly use an embroidery hoop with your machine as well. Don't forget if you're working by machine to bring your bobbin thread up to the top before you start stitching. If you leave the thread underneath your work, there's a good chance that it's going to get sucked back into your machine and create thread vomit, and no one likes thread vomit on their project. We've all been there, we've all done it, but it's much better if you can pull that thread up to the top of your project before you start working. Hold it in place for just a moment as you start stitching until your project is anchored that way you're not getting a mess on the underside of your work. Keep in mind if you don't feel comfortable working by machine or if you don't have a sewing machine, you can absolutely try this technique by hand. You can use your running stitch and back stitch techniques a little bit more irregularly to create this up and back motion. Instead of working in a nice, neat straight line like we were doing for our practice examples, you could use your running stitch or your back stitch to go back and forth until you get the thread layered effect that you like. Personally, I like working by machine because it's a little bit faster, but you should do what works best for you. This is your project, use the tools that you have to make your creation. I want you to keep in mind that some specialty threads can be challenging to work with. As you're choosing your threads, I wouldn't just go and grab every fancy metallic thread, yarn fiber off of the shelf. Some of these threads are beautiful, they're glitzy, they're shiny. But that can also mean that they may be brittle. They may break more easily. I don't want you getting frustrated working with a thread that is hard to work with. Learn the techniques, and then after that you can start branching out into more complex fibers. The majority of the threads that I worked with in this class are just basic floss and basic embroidery thread, poly, or a rayon thread. I also want you to think about thread color. Are you choosing a matching thread? If you match your thread color to your fabric, it's going to subdue your work a little bit more. If you use a contrasting thread, it's more likely to be seen. Use these in different ways. In my work, I will use contrasting threads when I really want the detail to be seen. But if I want the detail to be more subtle or a surprise or softer, I'll use the matching threads that you really have to get close to see those surprises in details. When I'm thread painting, I like to use multiple thread colors. When you start building thread color, it's going to give your work more dimension. When you look at a leaf, for example, out in nature, it's not a solid color. It has shading. It might be curved from the center. The tips may be a little bit different than the core of the leaf. I want you to start thinking about details in your work. When I'm looking at a flower in the center, from far away, I can see that it is maybe lighter on the outer petals but darker in the center. But if I dive deeper and I really analyze that flower, it's not just one solid color, it's actually going to be shades. It might be darkest in the center and then slowly work its way lighter. Those are the sorts of techniques that I'm going to use for thread painting. I'm going to have my densest darkest colors towards the center of my flower and I'm going to start working my way out from there. Every flower may be different. That's why it's important to have your inspiration. Look back at photos you're using and really look at those details. Be mindful of what you're creating. It's just going to help your thread painting, your embellishment, your whole illustration just come to life. I'll show you the different techniques that I used for my project. You can see how thread painting will enhance your work. I build my thread light to dark and don't be afraid to use multiple colors. Consider using a few colors that are just a shade off and building that color onto your design elements. I'll add a light-base layer that might be close to matching my fabric shape. I used my lightest color a little bit more broadly because it's not going to show as much from far away. Then I might add in slightly darker thread to build in a little bit more detail. The darker thread colors are going to have a much bolder impact so I can use them a little bit more sparingly. Then in this illustration, for example, I used a dark color. I use my darkest color as an accent. That's because it's such a bold color, I don't need a lot of it to make an impact. I can use it to just define the edges of my petals where I'm seeing some of my darkest color or some of those deepest shadows in the veining of my petals. Anatomically, a petal generally isn't flat. It's going to have different veining running through it. I want to use this thread painting technique to show that this piece of fabric is not flat. It's going to be a petal and it's going to have dimension. Keep in mind how your color and contrast is going to work for your project and use that to help guide your thread color choices. I do like to make sure that my stitches are a little bit irregular with my work because I like to work on nature-based projects, so I don't want everything to be perfectly linear. I want some of my lines longer, some of my lines shorter, but do what works best for your project. If your project lends itself to knit then your lines, geometric shapes, work with that. I tend to work on nature-based projects. This is what works for me, but if your project is more architectural by all means, shade the way that works best for your project. These techniques are meant to be adapted for what you are working on. We've covered thread painting, in the next lesson, we're going to cover hand embroidery. I'll see you there. [MUSIC] 15. Embellishment: Hand Embroidery: [MUSIC] Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to be talking about hand embroidery for fusible applique. We can talk about hand embroidery for a long time. There are so many decorative stitches and knots and patterns that you can use. I'm going to keep it simple. I just like taking basic stitches a lot like my running stitch or my backstitch. In my project that I worked on for this class, I used floss, I kept it pretty simple. Floss generally comes as a six-strand unit. You can pull apart those strands so that you can use them at different widths. If you opt to add embroidery to your fabric illustration, you'll probably want to use a hoop or fabric stabilizer to prevent your fabric from puckering. Like I mentioned in the thread painting lesson, I prefer to use a peel and stick fabric stabilizer. If your fabric elements are dense, this may also give you plenty of support. Personally, my fusible web and my overlapping petal layers give me a ton of extra support, almost too much support. Sometimes it's challenging to push my needle through multiple layers. So consider which tools you are going to use to prevent your fabric from puckering as you work. What's great about hand embroidery is that it's elevated. It already has dimension because generally, you're using thicker flosses or yarns or ribbons to make it happen. It's going to start pulling your work off of the fabric, off of the page, if you will. In my work, here I use some simple straight stitches and I used some French knots and I'm going to show you how those work. You can use these different stitches and different density levels. So I can have a lot of French knots altogether, for some really intense detail. Or I can start spacing them farther and farther apart to just add little touches here and there. Again, I want you to keep in mind that some threads and fibers are more [LAUGHTER] challenging to work with than others. Some may be gorgeous but may be brittle. So sometimes those brittle threads are a little bit easier to work with by hand than the ABA machine. You can play around if you want to. But again, I encourage you to work with what you have. Don't take on too much with this project. Keep it simple. I just want you to add in one embellishment technique for your project if you add in more bonus points, but I don't want you to get overwhelmed with all of the options that are out there. Now let's go ahead and look at how I worked with some floss for my project so you can see how you can incorporate hand embroidery into your illustration. A lot of times, hand embroidery is going to be used to emphasize details in your work. At least that's the way I like to use it. I like to use small lines and dots, in this case, small stitches and knots. Specialty knots like a French knot to emphasize areas of my work. For these lines, these dots, a lot of times it really is fine detail because we're doing handwork. It's hard to make it happen over the entire project unless you've got a really small project. If you've got a large project, a lot of handwork is going to take a lot of time. A lot of times I condense my hand embroidery into a fine area that like I said, the centers of my flowers, the tips of my petals, maybe the edges of my leaves, something like that. This is going to be a great time to reflect back on your inspiration board and any of those fine detail inspiration pictures, photos, drawings, sketches that you did and see, hey, where were the extra lines? How can I use hand embroidery to reflect some of those finer details? For example, I like to use French knots for the centers of my flowers. To make a French knot, I bring my floss up through the fabric. I twist my floss around the needle two to three times. Place your needle back down very close to where your needle came up through the fabric. I pull those twists to the base of my needle so it's resting against the fabric. Then you're going to hold the thread tail to the side as you pull the needle through the fabric. Release the thread tail and allow it to slide through the center of your knot and voila, you have a French knot. Then you pull your needle up through the fabric where you'd like your next not to be placed. I usually make knots in one floss color until my strand runs out and I need to rethread my needle. Then I use a second floss color, usually a shader to offer my original color for my next round of knots, and I keep alternating until I fill my space. Using two or more colors, makes my knots more dynamic and that's going to draw my viewers eye right in. Again, you're going to want to use these techniques in the way that works for your illustration. I have a lot of nature-based projects, so I like to use French knots for leaves, petals, a smaller, finer details just depending on what I'm working on. But if you're working, say with something more structural, a building, a brick, could be anything, maybe fruit, maybe you're doing fine details on a teacup or a coffee mug. Use these stitches to create some of those fun embellishment patterns so that your work is starting to lift off of the fabric. For the lines that I use, I use similar techniques so we're running such in our backstitch again, except I'm going to be a little bit more irregular. I might distribute my spacing a little bit more. But ultimately I'm just pulling my needle up through the fabric and placing it back down again and then when I put my needle back in, it's going to be where I want my next stitch to start. It's as simple as that. We don't have to make it any more complicated. I tend to place it in locations where I want extra detail. So that's how I use it. But think about how you can use it for your project as well. The real importance of incorporating some of these finer details is, anyone can see your project from far away. But what really captures someone, you might grab their attention when they get close. These small details are going to be what really makes a person stop and pause and get enthralled with your work, to really get absorbed into your work and keep them there and looking at it, it's an exciting moment, it's something that they didn't realize right away but it keeps them looking because they want to know what other surprises you have in store for them. These extra details are going to help make your work less flat, less stall. It's really going to start bringing your project to life. Now we've covered some simple hand embroidery techniques that will really enhance your work. In the next lesson, I want to show you some quilting techniques and if you're traditional quilters out there, this lesson might be fun for you and a way to think about quilting a little bit differently. If you're ready to hear about quilting and how you can use it to enhance your illustration, follow me along to the next lesson. [MUSIC] 16. Embellishment: Quilting: [MUSIC] The last embellishment technique we're going to cover in this class is quilting. Keep in mind, you don't need to create a quilt with your fabric illustration. This lesson is geared toward those who are planning to quilt and bind their illustration to make it into an art quilt or wall hanging. It's geared toward quilters who already have some basic experience with traditional quilting. If you aren't planning to quilt your illustration, that's okay too. There are other ways to showcase your illustration and we'll be covering those methods in the next lesson. Let's talk about quilting. Traditionally, quilting is the process of stitching through a quilt sandwich. Now, a quilt sandwich might sound delicious, but really it's made up of three layers. You have your quilt top, or in our case, our fabric illustration, you have batting or a fluffy material, usually batting, and you have your quilt back, which is usually another piece of fabric. The process of quilting is stitching through all three layers so that they are bound, secured together. This is what gives quilts their characteristic full, warm blanket effect. We stitch through all three layers and because of that piece of batting, the stitching will create imprints, which we can use to create stitching designs in our illustration. Now, stitching patterns can vary. A lot of times you'll see basic geometric patterns, linear lines, loops, squirrels. But what I want you to think about what this technique is how you can stitch as another illustrative element. Your quilting does not have to be repetitive, geometric, it does not have to be a pantograph where it's the same repeating pattern from edge to edge. You're quilting can reflect your project, which means if you have a landscape, you can quilt in clouds or a butterfly flying by. You can take your floral, like I did, and quilt leaves in the background. You can use this quilting as an additional layer in your illustration, for another level of detail and surprises for your viewer. We can use any quilting technique we wanted. We could just do lines, but my question is why? How does it enhance your work? If lines will help emphasize a horizon line, perfect, I love it. If wavy lines will help emphasize waves in a landscape or a beach-scape, perfect. But why not add in some extra elements when you can also so that it makes sense? Anyone can do triangles or loop de loops, but how do they enhance your work? How do they reflect the message that you are trying to send with your piece? Instead of using a generic pattern, I'm going to encourage you to think of how you can use your loops or your swirls or whatever shift you're going to use to enhance your work. How do they play into the story of what you are creating with your illustration? It's an opportunity to draw people into your quilt. From faraway, they might see my composition and be like, that's pretty let me go check that out and when they work over and they see the quilting, they'll realize, oh my goodness, there's so many surprises and details in here. That's what we want. We want people engaged with our work. We want them really embracing what we've done, and thinking about it, and sitting with it and being like that's cool. What else can I find in this piece? Sometimes those little extra details are just what makes work stand out. So all of the decisions that you make as you're creating should have a purpose. If you're going to be quilting your work anyway, choose a quilting pattern that is going to correlate with your illustration. Let's take a little peak at what I've created. I'll show you how I moved through the work, how I thought about it. I want you to think about how you can use this technique in your work as well. Similar to when I was thread painting, I am, again, free motion stitching, so I can stitch in any direction. Remember to bring your bobbin thread up through your quilt sandwich before you start quilting to prevent a mess of thread on the back of your quilt. Again, I tend to work by machines, so this is all machine quilted, but you can work by hand as well. When you think about quilting is a lot like drawing with a continuous line. If you were to put your pen or pencil down on a piece of paper and not pick it up, that's how you're going to quilt. If you're going to doodle or draw or create waves or clouds, how can you move around your illustration without picking up your needle? Now of course you can pick it up here and there and of course, every time you pick up and move, you're not going have to not off your work, and that gets tedious. [LAUGHTER] The more that I can move around my space freely, the better. I try to plan out like center working outward or left to right, top to bottom, how I'm going to move across my illustration with my thread so that I don't have to pick up my work. Quilting is often done with a basic polyester or cotton thread, usually a finer weight. Even if you used a 12 weight or a 28 weight thread, from far away, it's probably going to be hard to see, but from up close it's going to be a really exciting moment. In my project, I did use a couple of different thread weights. I used a 28 weight thread and I used a contrasting color. I used a 40 weight polyester thread and I used a coordinating color. I want to show you the differences in the effects that you get between these two thread types. Let's talk color. When you have a contrasting thread, it's going to pop more instantly. It's going to stand out from your background. Now I think this can be good in some situations when you're working with quilting, but ultimately, you really don't want it to detract from the rest of your project. If you add in too many details, your work can get busy. Think how you're going to use it in your project and if it's going to work or if it's going to take away from your other focal elements. Now if you use a matching color, it's going to be a lot more subtle. You can do dense quilting and dense patterns, and people will be able to see those lines without it really detracting from the rest of your work. Again, this is where the subtle surprise is, this is where the magic happens. The other thing I wanted to mention is thread weight. The 28 weight thread that I used is a thicker thread, which means I need less of it to make a bolder impact. It's going to be seen from farther away. You can see these leaves are bolder, right? It's a thicker thread, it's a contrasting colors, it's a little bit brighter, a little more vibrant. Now, my thinner thread, my 40 weight polyester thread that I used for the rest of my quilting, it blends right in, but it still makes an impact. Now, the style of stitching that I used, I wanted to mimic leaves. In the photo I had, it was just this vast green oasis, and of course I didn't want to add all of that because I knew it was going to detract from my flowers. But, why not add quilting that has s-curves and c-curves and flourishes that mimic extra leaves? That's what I chose to do. I also placed traditional quilting pebbles, which are just small little circles or ovals around my flowers. I wanted to make sure that my quilting was the densest right at the edges of my flowers so that when I didn't quilt inside my flowers, that space would puff up. You can use quilting density to your advantage as well. I wanted to use it to really highlight my focal points. You can use the loft to puff up certain areas of your project or make those areas recede. The density of your stitching makes a difference. If you decide to go the quilting route and add in this extra layer of detail, consider how it can help enhance your illustration. That covers machine quilting. We've covered our practical stitches, we've covered our embellishment stitches, we are on our way to finishing this project. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you some finishing touches and show you how you can wrap up this project. I'll see you there. [MUSIC] 17. Finishing Touches: Showcasing your Work: [MUSIC] We are almost there. We've covered how to create our fabric illustration, we've added some thread embellishment. But what now, how do we finish off our project? There's a few different techniques. I'm going to walk you through them depending on the type of project that you decided to work on. Now if you want the DIY route, you may be close to done. If you decided to embellish, say, a tote bag or a t-shirt or something like that, your project may be finished. But if you opted to create a fabric base, and create a fabric illustration, we need to take a couple extra steps. Let's go over a few different ways that you can wrap up your project. Let's start with the quilting route. If you've quilted your project, like we talked about in the last lesson, then you can go ahead and bind it like you would a traditional quilt. I wouldn't use this as a bed quilt. You put way too much work into this artwork. Definitely use it as a wall hanging. I would add a sleeve to the back so you can hang your quilt on a curtain rod, or one of my favorite techniques, you can use Velcro to hang your project. You can put Velcro along your wall and along the back of your wall hanging, and then you can switch out your art quilts seasonally if you wanted to. If you decided to go the quilting route, go ahead and finish off the edges with classic binding, and hang your quilt, show it off. You can also frame your project in a large embroidery hoop. Why not show off your work in a classic hoop? I think it's very fitting. Get an embroidery hoop that's a little bit bigger than the size of your project. This works especially well if your project's a little bit on the smaller side because they don't have infinitely sized embroidery hoops. If you have a project that will fit into an embroidery hoop, go ahead, and center it inside the hoop, tighten it nice. You can either trim the edges, and glue them down or tuck them in the back, and then go ahead and you can hang up your embroidery piece. The other technique you can use is you can mount your work in a frame. This again works a little bit better for smaller projects, but it can totally work for larger projects as well. It's just another way to showcase your artwork as a wall hanging. Of course, there are plenty of other techniques you can use to finish off your work. These are just some of my favorites. If you're a traditional quilter like me, you're probably going to bind your edges. But there's nothing wrong with putting it into an embroidery hoop, especially if you're in a hurry. Binding and quilting can take a long time. Again, maybe your a DIY crafter and you want to use your artwork. Maybe you've made an apron, a t-shirt, a tote bag, or a banner, you might be done already. Maybe after you added your decorative stitches, your project was ready to go. Keep in mind that some fabrics and stitches hold up better in the wash. So if you are using your project in everyday use, be mindful when you're going to wash it, to make sure that it doesn't get ruined. Don't want all of that hard work going to waste. Go ahead and finish up your projects. Don't forget to take lots of pictures and upload to the class project gallery. I'll give you a few of my final thoughts in the last lesson. Congratulations, you're almost there. [MUSIC] 18. Conclusion: [MUSIC] You did it, it's time to celebrate. You've reached the final lesson. We've gone through how to create a fabric illustration, how to find inspiration for your project, how to add those embellishments in details, and now we're at the final stage. I hope this class gives you a better understanding of how you can use fabric and thread to illustrate how to paint with fabric and thread. Now, I want you to remember you don't have to have perfect stitches. This class is meant to add a few new tools to your creative toolbox and to have a little bit of fun along the way. I hope you learned something and had a great time doing it. Be sure to upload a picture of your final project in the project gallery. Share with us what part of the projects you loved the most, which parts were challenging for you, and any tips, techniques, and tools that you learned along the way that you want to share with the community. The more that we share our experience, the more that we can all learn and grow as artists and creatives. Thank you all so much for following along. I hope you had so much fun and I can't wait to see what you create. [MUSIC]