Mastering Hand Embroidery with A Stitch in Quine: Surface Stitches Lvl 1

1. 1. Surface Stitches Lvl 1 Intro: Hello everyone and welcome back to mastering hand embroidery with a stitching Quine. My name is Becky and I'm going to be your hand embroidery tutor. In this class, we're going to be reviewing surface stitches. And if you didn't join us for the last course, I do strongly recommend you go back and look at it. We did review many of the materials and equipment options which you will need to complete this class. That being said, a quick recap, I'm going to be using my sleep frame with Calico and I'm gonna be stitching in threads such as cotton polyester and cotton and wool. You don't have to have all three of those threads to complete the class, you can just stick to one. And if you're looking to stick to one, I would recommend stranded cotton. We're going to start very gently with nine simple stitches which we're going to sample or practice in a grid of squares before we move on to a resolved motif. If you haven't already transferred on the sampling grid and framed up your fabric, you will need to do that before we move on to the next video. But all of those processes can be recapped in the previous course, the template for the grid and unresolved motifs are available for download in the description below. But let's get to the stitches. 2. Working with embroidery threads: When working with embroidery threads, it's really important to keep the length quite short. If you have an overly long thread that travels through your fabric multiple times, you will find that friction will start to wear on it quite significantly. And the signs are snapping threads because they will eventually snap. But on the way to that, that's the most extreme thing that will happen. On the way to that. You will have pale colors going gray. You, if you have a shiny threads such as silk stranded cotton ray on, they will lose their shine and we'll particularly will go very fuzzy. And that's all an indication that you're looking for, that your thread is starting to deteriorate. And it's usually, as I say, because of friction when working with parlays. I've found in the past that when you've overworked to parlay, the thread color changes quite significantly. So if you see that happening, You may want to take out the last couple of stitches and just end your thread. But there is a trick. A lot of people will take this game in one hand. After you found the end, you have to find the end. I usually go looking in the middle for a cut end to Paul because there's usually on a scheme like this, there's usually two ends. The one I try to go with is in the center and I can't find it. This happens a lot. Bear with me there. Okay? So one of the tricks is to take your scheme in one hand and draw the thread down to your elbow, snipping it at the wrist. Now for most people, this will generate a decent length piece of thread that you can use. N is just about right. I tried to keep my thread links to about 25 to 30 cm, which is ten to 12 ". But I'm quite tool. I'm five foot nine. I have quite a long around your tongue. Here. I tend to find that this distance in most threads is a little bit too much. So I have to just really judge it by eye. You can get out a tape measure if you want to be really quite precise, but don't rely too heavily on the long term. Measuring everything and being really caught up in that can be quite detrimental to the process. We've talked about stranded cotton before. It's a divisible thread, which means it's designed to be taken apart. It's one of the few threads that are any kind of stranded threads, whether it'd be stranded right on stranded Silko stranded cotton is designed to be taken apart. It's not designed to be used in the wet comes off of this game. This game being the bundle of threat. When this thread is manufactured, the individual strands, there's usually about six of them. And stranded cotton, it's usually six. They are likely twisted together to hold them. And in going through that process, they develop twist on the individual threads themselves. And twist is what usually forms and knots when you're stitching. So if you have a problem with not magically appearing in your thread, it's probably because you have a buildup of twist on them. So what you need to do is to take each strand individually and extract it. So you just separate one out and then you pull upwards. It's best to pull upwards. You can see it's all gathering there in my hand. And when the thread is released, twist will drop out. It's really important to give it just a few seconds to hang. That twist can drop out because the twist can cause knots. If you're using more than one strand of stranded cotton, I often use to, you Take a second thread and separate it out individually. Again, letting that twist drop out. Now, I will then recombine those threads to put them back into the needle. The reason I do that is because they will sit a lot better when you are stitching with them. If you separate two out in one go, not only could you bundle get all smelled up, which is really annoying, um, but they will sit slightly twisted around each other because again, the whole bundle has been twisted together so that it holds together on the screen. When working with stranded or divisible threads such as the stranded cotton, there are two approaches that you can take. One is to extract a section of the bundle and cut the whole six threads off in one go. I tend to find when I do this, I will take one to two threads out of this and then the bundle kind of disappears, I lose it. I often find it gets attached to the side of my arm or my clothing and I find it when I finished stitching for the day. So I don't do that very often. I tend to extract a section of the thread. And then if you go in and pull out just one thread, can actually snippet there. So I've cut it close to the bundle itself. And then you can extract the thread by pulling upwards. Again, pull upwards. If you pull sideways, that twist this on the thread where they'd been played together will actually increase. That's where you get tangles, which is why extracting straight up is the way to do it. Again, let that twist fall out. You can let it fall out of the bundle as well. Then when you go back to get more, you're just looking for that cut through it, close into the screen. And you can cut in the same area to take another thread. 3. Casting on: Waste Knot method: One of the questions I get most frequently from my students is how do I start my thread? Well, we've actually got two options that we're going to quickly look at. The Q1 is whether or not it's the one we use most prolifically. But we have a special process for it because you don't want to put knots on the back of your work. Knots can be very lumpy and add bulk to the back. So if you're going to mount against a piece of board, like you can see here in the background. You will find that the nut will push against that board and bulge forward out of the work and it will look unsightly and you don't want that. So we have a special way of treating this that does leave a couple of discrete stitches in the fabric, then not will then be removed. Now, I use this cast on in all of my own work, but you may not see it in the demonstrations that I do. That is because I've found in the past that those stitches that are going to sit on the top of the fabric can actually be confusing or misleading in a photograph or video footage. So for sampling purposes only and for demonstration purposes only, I will be putting knots on the back of my work, but I encourage you to practice the waste not technique to cast on. We're going to look at, because it is actually hugely effective. It will, is one of those things are elevating your work, particularly when it comes to the final presentation. I count myself a length of size eight poorly, and I'm going to use a size 20 fortunately or needle to thread it. I'm going to pinch one end between my thumb and forefinger. I'm going to lay the eye of the needle over the very end of the thread and just roll my fingertips backwards, slowly parsing the thread through the eye of the needle. The reason I do that is if you leave the tail kind of unsupported and just try doing this, you're generally just pushing the thread out of the way because there's no support to the thread to pass it through the actual eye itself. And as you do it, you're probably going to fray out the end. So pinching and just seeing the very tip of that throat, place the eye of the needle over the top and just roll your fingertips backwards to pass it through the eye of the needle. So to tie the knot that I will need for the waste naught technique, I need to lay my thread along the forefinger of my left hand. I'm right hand dominant. So I'm going to hold the needle in my right hand and use my left hand to hold everything. Some delay my thread along that finger. Place the needle at right angles over the top. And then just wrap the thread around the pointy end a couple of times. If you do that around the eye of a needle, it doesn't work so well. It doesn't work at all. So with those wraps in place, I'm just going to push the needle up a little bit. You can see I'm just going to use my thumb to pinch and pull them off of the eye of the needle. And you're just going to pull all of the thread through until it stops and you have magic not. So I know what you're thinking. I can just lick my thread and then it's gonna go through the eye of the needle a bit better, isn't it? Well, that's not really a good idea. If you're using wool, particularly, the fibers can get caught up in your mouth and it's pretty disgusting. It also depends on what you've just eaten and drunk. If you've drunk something like tea or coffee, they're actually natural dyes. Or if you've eaten something that is a creamy or spicy or oily, all of those things in your mouth can actually transfer onto your thread and then onto your fabric. The same is true if you're wearing lipstick or a lip balm. And in the wider context, makeup as well, we tend to touch our face more than we realize. If you are wearing a lot of makeup, any makeup really that can transfer onto your hands, which then once again transfers onto your fabric. All of those things are pretty much impossible to get out. Now, in the next few clips, you're also going to see me touch my stitching as a demonstration. So there's a few times where I'm going to just place my finger onto rows of stitching so that I can fill the height difference between them because you can have a height difference between your searches. You'll notice though that I'm just pressing my finger against the fabric. I'm not rubbing the stitches. If you do that, you can actually disrupt them, distort them, but you can also fluff and felt some of the fibers stranded cotton ball lose its sheen, that kind of thing. So be careful about the stitches you put in place. Make sure you tap them rather than wrap them. 4. Casting on: Loop Method: There is another method for casting on. This is known as the loop method, and it only works when you have an even number of threads in your needle. Now we've talked in the past about the thread length being kept around the 25 to 30 centimeter length. Well, I've actually doubled that. This is about 50 to 60 cm in length. And the reason I've done that is because I'm actually going to take both cartons and bring them together. And in doing so, I have the length of my threads and double the quantity of threads I'm putting in the needle. And I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to support the throat by pinching it between the thumb and forefinger. I'm going to take innocent instance, the size 26 shinier needle, placed the eye over the cuttings and again, just roll my fingertips back, pushing those two through the needle or at least trying to if you ever find that they do fluff out a little bit, can just trim in slightly and try again. There we go. So I now have two threads and the needle, and on one end, a loop which I will use to cast on. Once again, starting from the top of my frame and on my pencil line, I'm going to draw the needle down through from the top of the fabric, bring it up just a short distance away, very small distance. And then I'm going to take my needle and pass it through that loop. So the needle is going to pass through the loop. You can pull it tight. And that is your thread secured. From there. I'm actually going to pull the thread back. And that's going to reveal a little hole that I can then pass the needle through. The bulk that you can just about see there. Just pop through to the back. So I got very discreet stitch there. And from there I can stitch as normal. I also have quite a unique way of stitching. I sit with my right hand or dominant hand under my frame and my left hand on top. And I pass the needle through the fabric between each hand. Now the reason I do that is because I have more motor control and dexterity in my right hand. So when I'm trying to bring it up from underneath and can't really see what I'm doing. I have better control to bring it up in the right place. I have less control over my left hand, but that's fine because as I'm placing the needle, I have better visibility to put it in the right place. I highly recommend that you try this method of stitching. It's actually great for coordination and your brain and keeps you ticking over, keeps the gray matter ticking over. But it also means you can stitch more efficiently and more effectively. I tend to find that the stitches I make are often better shaped as well. So give it a go. It may take you awhile to adopt the habit. It's a tough one to get into, but keep reminding yourself and keep trying. 5. Trouble shooting: So I've just worked a line of stitching. And you can see here my thread, this is a piece of cruel. You can see here the thread is starting to split and it's not so obvious on camera, but a kind of thick part is starting to form here. And I can hear it as I take the needle down through the fabric. So this thinning, this I'm twisting of my thread is actually a weak spot that is quite likely to snap. So I need to cast it off. And I probably can cost off with just the two tiny stitches. So I'll be looking to place my needle just ahead of where I've been stitching here. And I can then trim it and start again. But what happens if the thread does snap? So I will pretend that my thread has snapped and I need to do something about it. It's too short to realistically work with. So what I'm actually going to do is take a short piece of the same thread. So this is just a short piece of cruel. I'm going to bring those two ends together in a slightly larger needle, because obviously I'm using a double thread and it's gonna be slightly thicker. Just going to thread that up. What I can do is use this loop. Two, pull my thread through. So I can take that down. You can see that loop has formed. I can put the tail of my thread through. If I just wanted to pull the tail through to the back and weave it through on the back. I could absolutely do that. But I still want to make that to stitch cost on. So I'm going to bring my needle up and just pull all of that thread and then loop through. My end is still caught there. So I can go back down and just do the same thing again, pulling that through. And if I just do that process one more time, bringing my needle up here, I can put that loop. Sorry, I can put that tail through the loop, pull it through one last time. And you can see that that's my two stitch cast off and my thread is trimmed. So what happens if I want to take out some of my stitches? Well, I see a lot of students kind of scratching their stitches within needle and thread and you can do a lot of damage your thread. So I like to do, and you may see me doing this in the future videos, is using the Eye of my needle or finding a blunt needle. Just trying to gently tweet, tease them out using the eye. And you can see I'm not making short scratch emotions on the thread. I'm trying to slide in underneath it and just carefully pull it out. When you want to pick a thread like this, you have to be very careful of any damage that may be done to it in the process, you might decide that it's actually best just to cost that thread off or remove it entirely and start with a new one. So here I'm working with multiple strands in the needle. And you can just about make out that the stitch hasn't gone down well, there's a couple of threads that are sitting higher than the rest of the stitch. And it's going to stand out a little in the finished piece, which I don't want. I want it to be more discreet. And the best way I've found to deal with this is just to take each thread in turn and just gently pull on it. And you can see one of the threads went through there. And that's the other one. So you can just gently pull them through and then re-throw it your needle and go back to the stitching. 6. How to: Back Stitch: I'm sitting comfortably at my frame. I have had a snack and a drink and washed my hands. I have covered my frame, although I have noticed that the area where I'm sitting, the tissue has been rattling a little bit which has interfered with the audio for this video. I have in fact removed that, but I've replaced a fabric, cloth on the motif that's just over here on the left-hand side. And obviously I've got tissue covering the rest of the frame. I have threaded up for my size eight per lei with a knot on the end. I've also gathered together my scissors and an HB pencil and a pen, along with a ruler, scissors and the thread or obvious there for the stitching, the pencil is, if I need to, I can draw an extra lines. So if I wanted to plot in a line that I can stitch along, I can just draw on with my HB pencil. This will be discrete. So I'm using the HB pencil because it will create a discrete line that will contrast enough with my background fabric that I can see the line, but not so much that it would stand out terribly if I didn't quite cover it. Now, I've decided that I want to make my sampling a record of the stitches, something that I can refer back to, which is always a good idea. So I've decided I'm going to label each of my boxes as I go. And I will probably make notes on here as to what fiber I've used, how many threads are in the needle, that kind of thing. And I want that to last quite a long time. I want that to be there permanently. Now, pencil can be rubbed off as you work, so it can go missing a pen like this won't, it will stay there for a very long time. It may fade over time, but it will stay on the fabric. So I'm going to use this for its longevity. I also have a ruler. If at anytime you see me using a ruler is purely to give you a scale or a context for the stitch. Do not get obsessed with measuring everything. It will slow you down. It will cause you to second guess yourself. Measuring everything with obsessively is not a good idea in the long term. Measuring your stitches just so that you're getting in the right ballpark is absolutely fine. But becoming obsessive about measuring everything is not. So use it sparingly and only when you need it, try not to get fixated. Our first stitch is going to be backstitch, which is very simple. It works really nicely, isn't outlining stitch and can be used in combination with other stitches as well. So I'm going to start by drawing a line on my fabric. I'm going to start with it straight. Then I'm just going to make it wiggle a little bit as I go up. Working stitches around curves is a really good idea because you start to understand how you need to tweak them in order to come around those curves. So I'm bringing my needle up at the base of my pencil line. And as I previously stated, I am putting them on the back. For this demonstration. The two tiny stitches that sit on top of the surface can be distracting when you're learning a stitch for the first time. So I'm going to bring my needle up and plunge it on the pencil line. I'm being very strict about where I bring the needle up and where I place it. Sticking to your pencil lines, to your paint lines and he designed tacking line, anything like that is paramount. For contexts that is about 3 mm in length, which is just under an eighth of an inch. Now, my goal with this is to try and keep my stitches the same length if I can. And to do that, I'm going to bring my needle up away from the base of the stitch and place it back down against the first stitch. So I'm working backwards towards the first stitch. Again, I'm going to bring the needle up away. And I'm trying to match this distance of bare fabric against the stitches. And I'm estimating those distances and i'm I'm working by, by. When I plunged the needle, I'm looking to go into the same hole as the second stitch starts in. There should be no gap. So when I'm finished, I have created a consistent line of approximately the same size stitches with no gaps between them. As I come around this curve, I need to keep an eye on my stitch length to ensure that I'm covering all of those pencil lines. So on a curve like this, my stitch length will often shorten. I tend to find though it doesn't shorten so much that it becomes visibly obvious. You don't want stitches to stick out. If your eye is drawn to one particular area, whether it be of the whole design or a line of stitching. Generally it's because something is different in that area are missing. So if my eye is drawn to a particular stitch in this line, it's probably because it's smaller or larger than the ones around it. So now that I have completed my line, I want to end my thread and I'm going to make those cast off stitches like I showed you in the previous video. But what I'm actually going to do in order to hide them, I don't want to trim my thread to the edges because it will be seen. So I'm going to bring my needle out from underneath that last stitch and I've put it on quite a steep 45-degree angle. I'm going to go back in at the same angle to make that tiny stitch. And then I'm gonna come up in the next one under the next one. I'm trying not to split the stitches as well. So I'm trying to place my needle quite carefully. But the idea behind angling the needle is that it should create a stitch underneath the main decorative stitch. Right. So I felt that pop out. Sometimes you'll hear a popping noise. So what I've somehow managed to do is to put my needle back in the same hole. I've just come out off, so I'm gonna try that again. Try and take it down a little bit wider this time. There we go. I can now bring the needle out from underneath the third stitch. Pull on my thread and snake, and then you go invisible cost off. Looking at what I've done, I have covered all of my paint lines. I can't see any of that in-person or on the video screen. And my cost off is disappeared as well. Overall, I think my stitches down here on the longer run a slightly bigger. This one seems to be bulging out a little bit, but I think that's just where the thread has spread a little bit. As I said, as I get higher up, the stitches have gotten a little bit shorter to accommodate the curve. Overall. I'm happy that that's gone down quite nicely. So now I want to fill in the rest of this shape following the same principles. Keeping my stitches roughly equal in length, ensuring there's no gaps or fabric visible between each of the stitches. 7. How to: Back Stitch Pt2: So here I have some wool, and this time I am going to do a proper cost on, I'm not going to draw on a line because I'm gonna see if I can wing it. So that's my two stitch cast on. I'm going to park my needle just out of the way to take the knot off. And I'm gonna make that first stitch. Now you'll find with thicker threads, you want to do longer stitches and that's absolutely fine. I'm trying to follow those same principles of keeping my stitch length consistent, working back towards the previous stitch. And as I'm doing this as well, I'm trying to make sure I don't split the previous stitch. I don't want to pass my needle through it. I want to just simply slide through the same hole. So with that done, I'm going to cast off my thread again. Practicing that to stitch cast off by sliding it under those stitches. This is practice. So if you don't get it quite right, It's absolutely fine. Keep going. And you can see that because I've been distracted and talking. I have actually missed it a little bit. So my cast on stitches ended underneath my line rather than underneath the stitch. And because my cast on was wonky, you can see another stitch there. But as I say, this is a learning process. This is sampling, is the opportunity to practice your stitches, regulate your attention. We want to do it well, but also if we have these minor floors, we want to learn from them. So I'm going to leave that in. So next time I look back at it, I will know I need to do better at that. So what I'm now going to do, so I'm just going to write on here wool. So I know what fiber I've done that in. And since I have some stranded cotton, I'm just gonna do the same thing again, practicing my stitches, regulating my stitch length. But I'm going to sample it in different combinations of stranded cotton, so 1234 and so on. And to do that, I will use different size needles. 8. How to: Back Stitch pt3: So I have filled in the last of the space. And you can see not only I have my original line of backstitch in size eight pearly here. I've done a short run of it with two threads in the needle so I can see the size difference. And actually when I place my finger over the top, There's quite a height difference as well. This can be useful when creating perspective in a piece. Having something that's closer to the viewer. A slightly higher stitch, which can then be done in thicker threads, can help to create that sense of perspective. I've also tried to, in the wool, you can see here I've got two strands. The original one strand. I then tried it in a final rule that I have. And you can see I've done 12.3 strands. Again. The line is thicker and when I place my hand over the top, it's higher as well. And then I've just simply gone through the different quantities I can do with stranded cotton, starting with 654. This relates to the number of strands in the needle as I'm stitching. Where I've used multiple strands in the needle, I've had to go to a bigger needle size. So where I've got two strands of wool and pearlite, I've gone to a size 22 Chanel that is very much dependent on the thickness as the original thread you're using stranded cotton. I've used a combination of 24.26 and you'll needles. And the same for the fine wool as well. You can see I've done some wavy lines, I've done some straight lines, have done some spirals. I've played as much as I can with the stitch to make myself familiar with it. And you can see as well here with the standard cotton where I've got a larger number of strands in the needle. I have got bigger stitches. Now I don't think it's really showing on camera, but this first stitch here in person looks a little bit thicker to me and that's because that's where I've put my cast on. Now with a single-strand of stranded cotton, I potentially should be finding somewhere else for my cast on my two tiny stitches because that is highlighted to me. I feel like my eyes drawn to X. It's a little bit thicker. So that's something to remember for the future. So I can now look back on this as a reference point for when I'm trying to decide how thick or how large I want my lines in backstitch. Many of these lines I have not drawn on or given myself a paint or pencil line. I did for the final examples and the original pearly. But many of them I've worked by I because when you are working, particularly with very fine threads, sometimes that paint line or pencil line can see. Now I've been quite lucky. The fine wool here. I did draw a pencil line for this and it has covered quite well in person. You can't see anything. But I don't think I would've gotten away with that with the stranded cotton. I think the pencil I would would have been seen. There are instances where you need to do that, where the stitching will be so delicate and find that drawing on a paper pencil line will actually make them thicker and heavier. So learning to do things by AI is a very important skill. But also you could attack on, if you wanted to, you could run a tagline if we, as we've discussed in previous videos, and stitch, too bad to removing the tacking as you go rather than just winging it. 9. How to: Stem Stitch: The next stitch will be stem, stem stitch. So again, I'm going to draw a straight line that goes into a bit of a wiggle. So I can practice the stitch. I'm going to bring my needle up very bottom of the line and make a short straight stitch plunging on the paint line itself. And that stitch is about 2 million links, which is about 16th of an inch. I'm then going to bring the needle up on the left-hand side of that stitch, again, right at the base. So the two sections of thread will be level with each other. I'm then going to make a stitch that is approximately twice the length of the original one. Again, making sure I plunge very specifically on the pencil line. You can see I've held onto that loop, which I'm going to throw to the right-hand side. I'm then going to bring my needle up at the base of the first stitch. So much like the backstitch, I don't want any gaps showing between my first stitch and technically the start of my third stitch. I'm then going to pull that thread through, making sure that I could just see a little bit of that first initial stitch at the bottom there. I'm then going to continue on trying to keep my stitches consistent in length. So I'm looking at where the thread comes out here and trying to match it with this distance here. And again, pulling my needle through, throwing the loop to the right hand side, bringing in my needle up through if I can the same hole as that last stitch. What I'm not trying to do is split it. I don't want to come up through the stitch itself. I just want to come up through the same hole if I can. I don't want to see any fabric between the two stitches. And again, I'm going to pull all that through and you can start to see a little bit of twist forming there. I'm going to keep working in the same way. Throwing my loop consistently to the same side, trying to keep my stitch length consistent and making sure that there's no gaps between the stitches. And you can see the beautiful twist stem stitch forming. Now stem stitch was named because it was quite frequently used to create the stems on flowers and plants. It is a very simple stitch that creates this beautiful twist when worked properly and creates a beautiful twist. If you ever find you lose that twist, it's probably because you've thrown your loop to the wrong side. There is a gap between the stitches and you can see fabric. You will find that the twist gets lost there as well. I'm just going to follow my line up. Again. I'm also plunging quite specifically on the paint line. I've seen instructions before where the teacher has you plunge to one side of the paint line to make a diagonal stitch. What I'm doing in essence is making straight stitches that are being pushed out of the way by the next stitch and the former stitch. And that's what's creating the twist. The individual stitches themselves are straight. Now at the top here. Now that I'm done, I'm going to come up as normal. Pull my thread through and I'm going to plunge in that same place because you always start and end stem stitch with the half stitch. That's what you saw me do down here at the bottom. The first thing I put in was a half stitch. I'm going to finish with a hostage because that finishes off the twist nicely. From there, I can bring my needle up from underneath the stitches to make my invisible cost off. Stem stitch is one of the oldest stitches I'm aware of. It's actually very ancient and we're going to look at that a little bit later. But it's a really, really good one to know. It's just so useful. You can outline with it. You can see I've made a very thin, delicate line there so that can make stems for plants. It can make wondering tendrils. It can outline shapes, but you can also fill with it. 10. How to: Outline Stitch: So you may have noticed when I was stitching this line that I was very specifically throwing my loop to the right hand side. That's because I wanted to create a particular angle. If you look at the stitches there on the diagonal and they start in the bottom left hand corner and they go up to the top right. This is stem stitch. If it's this angle, you are working stem stitch. The other angle going from bottom to top left is actually something called outline stitch. And you do that in much the same way. So I'm going to bring my needle up at the base of my line. This time I'm going to make my stitch fraction longer. That is almost 3 million links to just under an eighth of an inch. But this time I'm going to bring my needle up on the right-hand side, again, plunging on my paint line, trying to make sure the stitch I'm now making is twice the length of the initial one. And this time I'm going to throw my loop over to the left-hand side. I find this actually easier because it's more natural for me to pull to use my left hand, which sits on top of my frame and hold the link to one side. When I'm throwing it off to the right, it feels awkward because I'm having to cross my handover. So this feels more natural to me to do. But I'm going to work in the same way. I'm just going to make sure that that stitch shows a little bit at the bottom and work my way up the shape in the same manner. You can start to see there how the angle of the stitch is leaning, leaning in the opposite direction. So one of my stitches looks a little bit loose there. You can see that's very loose. I'm just going to try and pull some of that slack through. Now we go and tighten it up a little bit. I don't want it too tight. I don't want the fabric to poll, but I do want the stitch to lay flat. Again. I'm making sure that I always plunge on the line itself. I'm not looking to plunge either side of it. Again at the top. I'm going to make that half stitch. And then I can cast off just as I've done previously. So with that done, I can update my title. Just so I know. I'm going to draw an arrow next to each one showing the direction. Again, I've used Perl thread or per lei thread. So both when working either one of these two stitches, I have found over the years, they tend to be somewhat interchangeable. And the question is, how do you decide which one you're doing? Well, when you do a line like this, I always start off with stem stitch and it rests around the curves as it just falls. Essentially. However, if you're working a curved shape, you want to throw your thread to the outside of the loop. So if I just quickly draw on a shape in this shape on the left-hand side, my loop would be thrown to the left, which means I would achieve outline stitch. And on the right-hand side it would be thrown to the right because I want to throw the loop to the outside of my curve. I'm now going to do that in wool. 11. How to: Stem stitch on a curve: So that I remember what, what's what I've drawn arrows indicating the direction I've thrown the loop and I've just written wool down the middle. So I'm going to start with my two stitch cast on. Whenever you do a two-stage cost on, you want to make sure it's close to where you're going to start but not exactly at your start point. And you stitch over those cast on stitches. Like they don't exist. So that's my first half stitch. I'm going to come up on the inside. My loop over to the left, coming up in the middle. And again, just making sure that initial stitch sits in the right place. I'm just going to put my nail over it. That red thread through and I'm ready to continue. You ever do that? Flip through and not catch the loop. Just tease it back. Hello, and keep going. And that's my half stitch. Now, when you do a pointed shape like this, you won't actually get stem stitch to come round or outline stitch. Neither one of them will come around to create that sharp point. You will have to end one and start the other. So I'm going to restart. I've checked my thread is in pretty good condition and I've got quite a lot of it so I can keep going. So I'm going to make my half stitch. This time plunging on the inside. Bring my needle up. Again, just make sure first stitch is gonna be on the right side. And from here on out, I can throw my loop to the right. So my wool is looking a little bit thin at this point. I feel like starting to stretch. But the damage is further along my thread. I won't be stitching with it. So I think I can just get the last couple of stitches out. Again. That's my halfs touch at the bottom. And there you go. I have outlined on one side, stem on the other. 12. Stem Stitch Review: So I have now completed my sample. I've added in the same samples of stranded cotton, so I've worked the stitch in 123456, so on. Here I've worked two rows butted up against each other. I've and I've got stem stitch and outline stitch next to each other. So I'm making this V-shape. I've actually worked that in two strands of wool. And then I've got another spiral that's worked quite nicely. In the final and again in two. Down here, down the bottom. I've actually worked as sample specifically wrong. So you can see it looks fairly normal up until this point, this first left-hand section looks quite normal, starts to look a little strange here. And that's because I've actually left a gap between where one stitch ends and the next stitch starts. And what's happening is that thread is dropping into that gap and not laying smoothly as a twist, It's starting to make a ridged effect. So what I've done is just made a little couching stitch over the top of one of those threads, pull them out of the way so you can see that gap just there. 13. How to: Chain Stitch: The third stitch in our top row is going to be chain stitch. This again is a really great stitch. It's, it can be used to fill, it can be used to outline, is a great texture and it can be quite chunky, so it can be quite a heavy outline if you need some weight to a shape. Again, I'm going to start with a wiggly line down the side. My shape. So the last couple of stitches you've seen me work, I think I've started at the bottom and worked my way up. Will equally you could start at the top and work your way down. And actually with chain stitch, I prefer to do it that way. I prefer to start away from me and work towards me. So I'm going to start at the very tip of my pencil line as I've done before. But this time I'm placing my needle back into the same hole. And the reason I'm doing that is because I want to close off my shape because I'm actually going to be making a series of tiny little loops like a teardrop shape. Again, I'm grabbing hold of my thread because I don't want it to all disappear because that will just unpick my stitch. What I'm looking to do is to bring my needle up to 23 mill 16th through an a to an eighth of an inch away from that initial plunge point. And you can see there I've held the loop open above my lines. So as I bring the needle up is actually coming through that loop because what I want to do is pull all of that through and catch the loop in place. So that is my first chain stitch. It's a little bit loose, so I'm going to tweak it. And I do that by pulling it back and forth until it lies flat on my fabric. And I have that nice teardrop shape. There we go. Then I'm going to place my needle back into the loop. And if I can into the same hole that this thread has just come out off and just repeat that process. I'm going to keep my loop wide over my paint line. Come up again on the paint line, but always stitching to our paint lines if we can. That will get us a better result. And then I'm just again going to pull that thread through, tweak my chain back-and-forth into place until I'm happy that it's lying flat. I've got that nice shape. So I am just going to continue that all the way down. Now, one of the key mistakes I see people make with this is rather than going into the loop. So what I'm doing there is just using the point of the needle to open my loop up so I can see what I'm doing and plunging it in. What I see people quite commonly doing is going under loop. You don't want to do that. You won't be making a complete shape if you do that. So it's always back into the loop you've just formed, again trying to keep those plunge points where the thread comes out of the fabric and goes in and you want to try and keep them level. What I'm not doing is taking my thread, my needle over where it's just come out or crossing. I'm trying to keep the two points level if I can. I think at this point my thread is starting to wear. So I'm going to cast off. And to do that, I'm just going to plunge over that last loop. If I were to go back into this loop and pull all of the thread out, I would unpick pretty much everything I've done. So I'm just going to drop the thread over the edge of that last loop, trapping it in place. And making my cast off. Trimming my thread. To restart my thread after I've cast on, I'm actually going to come up in that last loop trying not to split the threads. I'm trying not to pass my needle through threads if I can, I'm trying to avoid them. I'm gonna pull that thread through, go back into the loop and just act like nothing has changed. Like I haven't changed my thread. Again trying to keep my stitch length and consistent if I can if I can, if one happens to be a little bit different to the other, I'm not going to sweat it at this stage. Remember, we're getting used to ostriches. We're learning how to do them. And I think if I plunge it there, That's my last stitch holding that last one in line, you can just see my couching stitch there. So that's a chain stitch. You can see just sitting, sitting next to the outline stitch there is a little bit broader. And actually if I place my fingertip over the top, it sits a little bit higher as well. So you want to take that into account when you're thinking about where you should be putting your stitches. So to cast off, Given that my chains are relatively small, I can just make my couching stitches in the center of those chains, again trying not to catch the thread. If you think you're going to catch the thread at all, don't do this. I could quite easily have crossed off on one of these pencil lines. Taking my thread from here to here would not have been a big leap. So I could quite easily taken my thread down to this pencil line and cost off here as well. 14. Chain Stitch Review: So now we know how to do chain stitch. We can actually play with it a little bit because each of these individual chains can be worked on their own. So to do that, I'm going to bring my needle up and take it down through the same hole. And I want to do that because I'm looking to complete the shape. If I were to have it slightly apart, you can see there's a gap there and we don't want any gaps. We want to make a really nice clean teardrop shape. So you can see I've already trapped my loop because I still want to keep hold of it. I'm going to bring my needle up a short distance away and I think my chain is slightly shorter there. So my original chain was about three mill or an eighth of an inch. And it's actually about the same size. So it's about three mill. Now if I were using a thinner thread, I could actually make sure to change the shorter, smaller chains. But rather than going back into the loop, create my next chain. I'm just going to drop my thread over the edge of the chain like I was when I was finishing off. And I've got a naught, which doesn't help. There we go. So I can just pull that through. And that is called a lazy daisy or a detached chain. So I can place them at random angles to each other, which is fun. Going back into the same hole, trying to keep it the same size. If I can pull my thread through, catching that leap in place and just dropping it down over the edge to catch the loop in place. So as I said, this is called a lazy daisy or a detached chain. But why do I have to make that short discrete stitch? Will actually I don't. I can go down in the same place. Grabbed my loop, come up instead loop to catch it in place. Then I can make a small stalk. And that is called long-arm chain. That arm can be as long, as short as I want it to be. And they can be used to make small details or embellishments in a shape or on an animal or figure or so on. Now, casting off in these is quite tricky because there are obviously small discrete elements. So again, I'm just going to try and do that in the small chain and try and make it as discreet as I can. Again, if you have a paint line nearby, that might be a better option. I'm going to label that as long-arm and detached. And we will be coming back to those two later because there's some fun things that we can do with them. So my completed sample, I've used the pearly crew will in 2.1 strands, the fine wool in 12.3 strands. And then I've done my stranded cotton chart of one to six threads. I've done the same with the detached Lazy Daisy. And in this sample, particularly, you can see the size difference as you go smaller. So I've started with six down the bottom here. And you can see how my stitches have got incrementally smaller as I've gotten to the finer, fewer number of threads. And up here you can see a little flower shape that I've just made. This is the classic thing to do. We're lazy daisy is, is to spiral them around a center point, making a small flower. 15. The Top Row: So here is my finished sample. It's the top row of my grid and I have backstitch, stem stitch and chain stitch. Now, all of these stitches can be considered to be outlining stitches. Although as I've said with stem and chain, you can use them to fill areas. And you can see just in this middle section, by butting the stitches up against each other, you can actually cut your fabric quite well. Again, you can see it up here a little bit as well. So you can pack those rows into a shape to fill it and we will look at that later. But just to remind myself, I'm going to write outline along the edge of my sample grid. There we go. So we're now going to move on to the middle row, this one down here, starting on the left-hand side. 16. How to: Fly Stitch: So our next stitch will be sliced it this is one of my absolute favorites. It's really pretty. You can work at densely packed together. You can work at Open. It's so much fun. So I'm going to start by drawing two lines just in from my edge. Because as I say, you can work this open and you can work at close. So we're going to work at open to start with. Because that will give you an idea, the best idea of what the structure looks like. And again, to start with, I'm going to work towards myself and with this stitch generally you do and you'll see as I work at why it's better to start at the top of the shape, the peak of the shape, and work your way across it. So I'm starting with a straight stitch. I've come up at the very tip of my line and I'm plunging on the pencil line itself. And for contexts, that stitch is around about 3 million length, which is an eighth of an inch. I'm then going to bring my needle up just out from that stitch and down from the tip of it. So very close, but with just enough gap that I should be able to see some fabric. And I'm going to try and plunge an equal distance on the same side. So this gap between my straight stitching where my thread comes out on the left hand side, should be about the same as where I punished the needle on the right-hand side. Going to pull that thread through. But again, I've trapped my loop because I don't want it to all pull through. And I'm going to come up at the base of that first stitch. Again, I'm looking to come through the same hole. What I'm not looking to do is come through the stitch itself. I don't want to split the stitch. I want to come up at the end of it. With that done, I'm just going to pull everything gently through. And so you can see I get this adorable V-shape on my fabric. But you can see just like the chain, it isn't quite secured yet. So I'm then going to make another straight stitch on my pencil line to track that down in place. I'm going to repeat that action. I'm going to come out away from the last stitch, plunging away from it as well. And I've gone slightly broader. My shape is going to curve outwards, which will look quite precede. And again, I'm just checking to make sure the distances are roughly the same on each side. In all honesty, in person, I think this one is slightly bigger, but it's not so big that it's going to be distracting or look odd. So I'm going to continue with it. Again. I'm bringing my needle up at the base of that stitch, pulling it all through and then trapping it down with that straight stitch. Now this straight stitch is slightly off my pencil lines. I'm going to just tease that out and reposition it. But what I'm trying to do there is keep the straight stitches down the center around about the same length. Again, if there is a minor difference, I'm not going to worry too much about it this time. Minor differences don't tend to stand out too much. But you'll also notice that my first stitch is quite a deep fee and the second one is a lot shallower. That's a perfectly natural thing to happen with fly stitch. It happens pretty much every time I stitch it. You can regulate the depth of the v and that's one of the things to practice in the rest of the square. You can make the V deeper if you want it to be. And essentially you do that by making this central stitch longer. By having the longest center stitch, you've got more space to bring up your needle to create that deeper V. But it will flatten out as you go. And it's nothing to worry about. If you get to a point where it's horizontal and you'll know when near the end of your line, That's when you need to rethink, maybe unpick and start again. But if it's starting to flatten out at the base, I wouldn't worry about it too much. If you're starting to make it go the opposite direction, something has gone quite seriously wrong. And again, stop and reconsider what you're doing. But I'm going to continue making the fly stitches. And where I'm plunging the needle as well. I'm trying to make sure that I'm keeping them parallel if I can. So this point needs to be level with this point. And if you look at the two, I've done already, they are roughly the same. So again, I think that's sent a stitches a little bit short. So I'm going to take the out and reposition it. Just make it a little bit longer. And with that, my stitches complete. So I'm gonna do my invisible cast off again. 17. How to: Closed Fly Stitch: This time we're going to look at close to fly. So we're going to repeat the same process and essentially make the same structure. But you're not gonna be able to see bits of fabric in-between the stitches. So I've had started with my straight stitch down the paint line or the pencil line. This time, I'm going to come up just below the top of that stitch, but very close to it. And when I plunge again, I'm looking to plunge parallel, but very close to it. So when I bring my needle up at the base of that stitch just as we did before and pull it tight so it lays flat on the fabric. You can see there's no fabric visible at all. And this time, rather than making that long stitch down the middle, I'm just going to drop it just over the thickness of the thread a bit like we did with the detached chain. I'm just making a short discrete stitch that catches that in place. I'm going to repeat that process again. Dropping just below the top of that stitch. I'm maybe one to two threads of the fabric down. And I will do the same on the other side, keeping it very close, holding onto that loop so it doesn't disappear. Coming up the base of my last stitch, pulling it all flat and making that short discrete stitch over the top. I'm going to continue down my line. I'm looking to estimate my shape because you can see I haven't drawn on anything extra. If I had drawn a pencil line to mark the perimeter of the shape, you wouldn't be able to see the pencil lines in the gaps. I could have done it with this one because the stitches are so packed together. I should have been able to cover my pencil line, but I decided not to do that. I like trying think to do things by I, I think it's good training. I think it's good for the brain. I think it's good to estimate stitches and shapes. It frees you up to stitch a lot more quickly and you have less obligation to cover paint lines because they're simply not there. But what we'll do later is draw that on so you can see it. I'm just going to keep going trying to estimate the shape. As you can see, it's actually broadening out quite nicely. So I'm going to try and continue that if I can. So at this stage, my thread is starting to loosen off a little bit. I can fill the twist was and see the twist coming undone. So having caught down that last stitch, I can just make my to cast off stitches and take a fresh thread. But you can see where I've plunge my needle. I've tried to tuck it in where I can to make a nice shape and it's not going to badly. So I'm going to start my car stone on top this time trying to fit in those two tiny stitches where I can I'm bringing my needle up and I'm just going to continue as if nothing happened. Much like the chain stitch, you can just carry on. You don't need to do anything special because the stitches don't sit into each other like the chain stitch does. They just sit around each other. So I can continue as if nothing happened. Carrying on down my pencil line. Now, when you start working over those cast on stitches, it does get very thick and sometimes quite hard to get the needle through, which is why pair of pliers can be useful. There you go. My completed line. Just cast off underneath that final stitch. And then cut my thread. Taking care not to cut the stitches themselves. So we have open and closed fly. And I'm just going to make a note of that on the very edges. So I remember which one's which. 18. How to: Open Fly Stitch on a curve: So this stitch works really well to create a sense of movement within a piece and to enhance that you can actually work on a curve. But in order to do that, to keep its shape, you have to pay close attention to what you're doing. So we're now going to work open fly stitch and then closed fly stitch on. So again, I'm starting with that straight stitch. I'm going to bring my needle up. And you can see this time I've given myself an exterior paint line to work too. I'm going to bring my needle up and plunge it on the other side and it feels quite normal to start with. Again, I am looking to try and keep where this thread comes out and where the needle goes in parallel. But rather than it being horizontal, it's now on a diagonal. So I'm having to pay more attention to that in order to bring it around. I'm going to trap that loop just as we've done before with the couching stitch. But my couching stitches are going to be shorter. Remember when you do curve shapes, you're on the whole, your stitches tend to be shorter to accommodate the curve. Now I'm going to bring my needle up again on my pencil line. I'm plunging on the opposite pencil line. Let me talk a little bit. You will notice that the gap here is much smaller than the gap up here. In fact, the gap here is thereabouts a millimeter and the gap at the top. So between the top of this stitch here to where I plunged naval that needle is more like two mil. So that's what a 16th of an inch under a 16th of an inch. And just shy of an eighth of an inch. And that center stitch is just over a 16th of an inch. Now, the reason why it's closer on this side and wider here is because the stitches going to fan around. And in order to achieve that, you have closest stitches on the inside of the curve. My curve is going from the top left down into the bottom right. So the left hand side is gonna be closer together. If I follow those principles all the way down. You'll notice as well that the stitch on one side will generally be longer. So I think this stitch or this half of the V is slightly longer than this side. Now this takes a bit of practice, which is why we're doing it on our sample frame. And I encourage you to practice it a couple of times if you feel you need to, because you're looking for a slow progression, you're looking for the angle to slowly turn. If you ever have a stitch that really stands out to you, it's usually because there's something not quite right about it. So if you have a portion of a run like this where one stitches very obvious. It's probably because it's at the wrong angle. So I'm going to call stuff just off to the side here. I haven't decided yet, but I may well do some outlining stitches. So I may choose backstitch, stem or chain to cover these pencil lines in the end, I might not. We'll see how we go. You can see just about see the pencil lines. Once you get dark thread like this in the pencil lines do fade away slightly. But in person I can still see the pencil lines between those stitches. So in order to cover them, because remember, all of your pencil lines on an actual piece or your pencil lines should be cupboard. What I need to do is decide what outlining stitch my putting around this because you can work in outlining stitch over the top if you want to. What outlining stitching my putting on this to cover those pencil lines. And I could choose between backstitch, stem stitch and chain stitch. Chain would probably build it a little bit heavy for particularly in such a small shape. I would probably go for either backseat your stem stitch. And generally speaking, I would favor a stem stitch because it just looks to me personally, it just looks a little bit smoother. I am going to use two strands of stranded cotton to just go around one half of the shape. Normally on an actual piece. On an actual piece, I would go around the whole shape, but this is sampling and I want a reminder for myself. So I'm just going to do one half to remind myself that sometimes I may need to put an outlining stitch on. As I'm doing this, I have just pulled that central stitch out of alignment. You can see it's just moved slightly there. And I don't want that. So I need to reposition my needle so that I don't disrupt what I have in place. So what I'm going to try and do is bring the needle up on the other side of that stitch so that it doesn't get moved around. So I'm going to try and come up elsewhere so that I don't move that stitch around. And because I am wanting to throw my loop to the outside, in this instance, I will actually be doing stem stitch in that outline. So as I'm working this process, I am trying to ensure that I definitely cover my pencil lines. I am trying to cover just the tip of those stitches as well. My spacing as it happens seems to be falling in line with the tips of those stitches, but it doesn't always do that. You sometimes have to stitch or plunge the needle between the spaces and actually I'm going to have to do that there. So I'm not coming into contact with the next stitch because you're looking to make the stem stitch or whatever outlining stick to use, consistent in length. Sometimes that will fall into the same holes as the filling stitch, sometimes it doesn't. But what I'm also trying to do is make sure that my stem stitch does not disrupt. What I've already got in place because we've done a nice job of filling that shape and bringing that stitch around so it transitions nicely. What I don't want is to start moving the stitches out of the way with the outlining stitching I'm putting up at the top. So here I'm just gonna write stem S C for stranded cotton. And then I will just write Hurley. Yeah. 19. How to: Closed Fly Stitch on a curve: Close fly will work in much the same way. But I'm going to start with a longer stitch because with the stitches packed together in the way they offer close to fly, the angle can come round to be much shallower. So I've started off with approximately a formyl stitch, which is about three-sixteenth of an inch. Again, following the pencil lines, I'm going to come up and plunge down either side of that central stitch, making something short to hold it down. And I'm going to continue in that vein trying to tuck my needle in so that I'm plunging quite high up. When I come to plunge the needle on the right-hand side there. Now my stitch there is trying to roll up. So I'm actually going to do is give a little bit more breathing room on the outside, tucking it in on the inside and the shape should be covered, but the stitch will lay a bit better. So there is still something of an open side and a closed side. But with the stitches crammed together in the way they are, the pencil lines still should not be visible. You can see again the angle of the stitch. It's almost this. The thread lays almost vertically here, but it's on a slight angle on this side. This side, the vertical stitch is much shorter than the other side. It's all to do with the way that the angle curves. So it's definitely something to play with. So again, my thread is quite short and I can feel it starting to untwist. And because this is closed, I can just cast off within the shape rather than directly on the pencil line. With just that little bit done, you can see there's quite a lot of flow and movement through this section. And again, the angle change there has gone from almost vertical to not quite 45 degrees, whereas this angle has stayed relatively consistent. So playing with this stitch on a curve is quite an interesting exercise. You can also see the angle change. Here. It was a very deep V. And you can see again, it's flattened out quite significantly. So it looks like it's almost done. But there is just a small amount of paint that's showing. So that's gonna be my last stitch is not too bad. There's a little bit of a stray one poking out here and this side probably could be better. Part of the issue I have particularly is that I'm looking side on because my camera actually has the top-down view, so I can't see as well as I wouldn't be normally because normally I sit over my work. And obviously in this instance I'm not. At least that's my excuse. So you can see there, we've got it on a curve in both instances, this middle line is wiggled a little bit as well, which I'm not happy about. But once again, with the camera the way I know I can do a better job. 20. How to: Detached Fly: So I've switched to a piece of wool. And there's a fun thing you can do with open and close to fly, which I've just recently encountered. So I thought I'd show you because this is really fun. I quite like this. So this stitch is often used to create tails on the birds because it creates quite a feather-like effect. To play with it. What you can do is work a few stitches of closed fly. That's one. To think I'll go with three. So that gives me a nice little wedge of stitches. And with this last couching stitch, you can see I've made the small discrete stitches over the top just to catch it down. With this one, I can actually make it slightly longer. That's gonna give me a bit of a gap so I can bring my needle up and plunge like we did with the open fly. Then I can catch that one down with a discrete stitch. Snuggle up a couple more stitches. Like so. And again with this third one, I can make a long stitch. So I can create a segmented run of fly stitch, which you could use fly stitch, great and makes a great filling stitch. So you can feel relatively small shapes with it. But you can also use it to create small details. So if you wanted to have like a fern like structure on a hill, you could use fly stitch and actually doing it this way. You could use it as a kind of a bush or a plant, but also the tail of the bird. So that's a fun way to mix the two together. Yes, my thread was getting a bit worn towards the end there and since I only had one or two stitches left to go, I went with it. But if I were doing an actual piece, I would have cost that often taking a new one. So much like the chain stitch, you can work individually flies stitches. So I have just chosen a point to bring my needle up, plunged it parallel to where it's come out. And just in-between in the middle of those two points below where they come out. I bought my needle up, I'm going to pull that tight and I have a detached fly. I can drop my needle over the top of that thread to make a small discrete stitch if I want to. And I can work something similar with a long arm if I want to. Again, this can create lovely embellishments for over the top of stitching. For instance, one of the designs I've done did this process, the detached fly process, and actually placed it in-between an open fly in a different color, which was quite nice. You can make particularly the long run fly like this. You can use to make like a crest at the top of the head of a bird. Which can be quite nice. And you can just scatter them around. You can play with the sizing as well. So I think I might do that for a little bit. I feel the rest of the area. My fly stitch sample is almost finished. I've done detached fly in one strand of stranded cotton there. And the second sample I've just popped in there is in two strands. You can see I still have a big gap here. Well, there's another little trick I can show you with fly stitch, but we need to move on to the next stitch in order to take a look at it properly. 21. Laidwork: So our next stitch is going to be laid work. Much like stem stitch. This is a very historic stitch. It's been around for a very long time, again, alongside stem stitch, one of the most ancient ones I know. And it's great fulfilling larger areas. So this is a 4 cm by 4 cm square. And to fill it, I'm going to go with one of the thicker threads. I'm going to start off with the pearlite. This takes up a fair amount of thread to do. But if you are thinking about using stranded cotton, you want to use it in multiples, I would start with at least three, and I'm actually going to do that in one-half of the square. I'm filling in this larger space with a very fine thread will take you a long time. Now if I had a smaller area, something that's just slightly bigger than this leaf shape. You can see down here that actually could work a finer thread. Filling in a smaller area could work in late work. But if you're going to fill in the whole square, which we're going to do. I would go with a minimum of three strands of stranded cotton in the needle or go with one of your thicker threads. Now, I have worked this stitch in wool quite frequently, so I probably won't use that for my sampling, but there is a color blending process I'm going to show you. So in order to do that, I'm going to use a different color per lei in probably the top corner. When you blend in any stitch regardless of what it may be. The better, more subtle approach is to use a color that is quite close. So you could go with the next color along in the color family. That's generally how we do it. We're on the occasions where you want to pop of color. You want to break things up a little bit so you can go with a contrasting color such as this red you have here. But for the most part, we tend to blend through colors that are quite close in shade. And of course that's the rule that I'm going to deliberately break because I want you guys to see the blending. So this is going to show up quite nicely on camera. Again, it's a parabola, it's the same size. Size eight is just in a blue. So when I come to shade with it, it's gonna be very startling and very obvious. But for the purposes of you learning, That's what I want. For the purposes of doing a result, my teeth, which we'll do later, I will be looking at a subtler color difference to blend or shade through. 22. How to: Laidwork: Laid work is a very densely packed stitch and the idea is that you will cover the entirety of your shape. I'm going to work my way around my title there, so I might just plot it in a couple of small pencil lines to frame my title there because I don't want to obliterate it. But the idea is that we are going to cast on just inside the shape because my stitches are gonna go from pencil line to pencil line. So in this instance, rather than costing on my pencil line, because I know this whole area, this whole thing is going to be covered so I can cast on just inside my shape. And I know that's not gonna be seen because remember, pencil lines, paint lines, and costumes, and cost ofs will all need to be covered by the time I'm done. So I know that this is going to be fine. And laid work is very simple principle. I am going to lay the thread across my shape at this stage, I'm gonna do a 45-degree angle. The angle will vary depending on the shape that you do. Generally speaking, you're looking to cover the longest expanse. So for instance, if we look at this leaf shape again, rather than going across a 45-degree, which I could do, that's a fairly long stitch. I would probably be better off. They're going from bottom to top because that will cover the most effectively. So this stitch kind of breaks a cardinal rule in. We don't want to work overly long stitches because only long stitches will relax and start to move around. And you'll notice as I work this, you will notice the stitches will become somewhat unstable. But I've come up on my pencil line here and I've tried to bring the needle through the middle of the pencil line and I've plunged in the top right-hand corner up here. Again in the middle of my pencil line. I'm brought my needle up next to where it's gone in. So there's the stitch on the back. You can see it's gonna be very, very tiny. There is a very small gap at the back. And I'm just going to bring my thread straight across again. Plunging on the opposite paint line. I'm just going to keep working like that. It's a very, very simple principle. But what I would need to do is to try and keep as much of the fabric cupboard as I can, which I think I'm doing an okay job of. But I'm also trying to keep the angle of the stitch. I do that by tucking my needle in the previous stitches and that again helps with the coverage. Now you can see here I've just brushed across the corner of my shape. So when I make this next stitch, I'm actually going to plunge on this pencil line rather than the one at the top. So I will have to come back and fill in that little triangle. This time I'm going to work along this pencil line. My thread has now gotten quite short. And you can see I haven't got many stitches in, but that's because my shape is so vast. But I'm just going to cast off my throat and take a new one. I could take a slightly longer thread as I will be able to get more stitches out. But again, you have to pay very close attention to the quality of it. It's still all passing through the fabric. And in a vast expanse like this, you will be able to see fluffiness. You will be able to see color fades. Because again, I'm using Pele. And when the pearlite phase, where the color fade is very significant. So I'm going to cast on in that same bottom corner. And just keep going. A little bit of fluff has come up from the back. They're just going to trim that back so it can't be seen. 23. How to: Blend colours in Laidwork: So with this stitch done, I'm going to park my needle out of the way because I can now start my color blend. I've got a nice block of this in. I'm going to blend into another color and I'll do the same down in this corner as well. So I've taken my contrasting color. And I'm just going to cast on in the corner near where I want to bring my thread up to start. I'm going to just make a single stitch in this new color. And parking my needle up. Now that I have two threads on the go, it's really important that I do not let threads dangle on the back. When that happens, you can get the threads caught up in the stitches you're making. So if I've got the green dangling on the back, it could get caught up in the stitches I'm making in the blue and then I have lumps and bumps on the back and it's not very nice. It can ruin the overall effect of your piece. I'm going to park my needle with each stitch, making sure that I put all other thread through. And to take it out, I'm just going to pull back slightly on that thread and go back through the hole. Now, I often forget which side I plunged on in the old thread. So I disliked gently and you can see the fabric and the thread is just tweaking down here in the left-hand corner. So I know I can bring my needle up because what I don't want to do is to end up on the wrong side. So I've been coming up on the same side that I plunge on. What I don't want to do is to come back to this initial size because then I end up with long stitches on the back. Long stitches on the back of your work can stretch over time and go slack. Closing everything on the front, go slack. So very diligently making sure I come up on the same side, I plunge on. So I've just made two stitches in the green and I think my thread assigned to deteriorate. So I am going to cost that often take a new one. But before I pass that on, I'm going to make another stitch in the blue. So just unpacking my needle again, tweaking it to work out by plunged in the top right-hand corner, they're bringing my needle up and making that straight stitch. Again, I'm just going to do one in the blue. So I'm gonna cost on, in this top corner this time bringing my needle up next to the blue. And in this instance, I'm going to make one stitch in the green. Before parking it out of the way. We're gonna pocket just outside of the camera, just down here behind the fly stitch. This time I'm going to make two stitches in the blue. Talking my needle. When I park my needle, what I'm trying to make sure is that this excess of thread that's traveling on the back is not going to get caught up in my next stitch. So my next stitch is going to go from here up here. So if I were to put my thread somewhere up here, it might get stitched into, if I pull it in an opposite direction out of the way, it's not going at all. There's less likely to get caught up. So try when you're parking, try to think about where the thread will lie on the back and how that will impact the next stitch that you make. I'm going to make one more stitch in the green, then that can be cast off. I know I've only made a couple of stitches in that thread, but I needed to change it because it was starting to wear and the twist was starting to loosen up. So you can see I just rubbed my stitches there which I shouldn't do that was very naughty. You can parlay will cope with it relatively well. You don't want to do that on wall. But the reason I did it it was because I noticed the stitches we're lifting in the center. And if you can see that happening on your own work, do not worry about it. That's what laid work does. The stitches we've made here, as I said earlier, we've broken our cardinal rule. We do not make overly long stitches. Well, these are hugely long. These are in fact almost 6 cm, which is two and five-sixteenths of an inch. They are very, very long. They are also correspondingly very unstable, but laid work is in two parts. So we make these overly long stitches and then we're going to work over the top of them. So I'm going to finish off. My blend here. Then I will show you how we stabilize them. So you can see that I have worked and increasingly larger number of the blue stitches and fewer of the green. So I have the block of the green. I have one blue to green, one blue, one green to blue, one green. And I'm now about to finish the rest of this section off in blue. What that means is by slowly introducing more of the blue and taking out the green, I have a gradual transition between the shades. This will be quite startling and these two colors, because they contrast so strongly, although looking at it in the camera and in-person, it does have quite a subtlety to it, which is surprising given that they are so different in intensity. But when you're using subtler colors, the transition will be so gradual that the eye will be deceived into not seeing it essentially. And you can create a lovely graduated effect as a shading principle that can be applied to many different stitches. Which is why we're gonna go back to fly stitch because you can use the same principle to shade fly stitch. Technically, you can do it with stem and chain as well, but I got over-excited with my stem and chain examples and no longer have any space to work the color blend. But if you have little bit of space left, you can try it. I filled in the top half of my square. It's gone down quite nicely around the late work title, but my angle has changed. It started off very much a 45-degree across the shape. You can see very strong line. They're going from corner to corner, is actually flattened out slightly to something slightly shallower. And it doesn't matter. Again, it's happened so subtly that the change has happened on a very gradual basis that it's not obvious. It doesn't draw the eye with the stitching that will put over the top, that will diminish the effect even more. It's much like the fly stitch. Your angle will change. It's just how gradually or how suddenly it changes. You don't want sudden changes in angle and that's true of a lot of stitches. You want subtlety, laid work and satin stitch, which we're not covering in this class, but we will do eventually satin stitches the same way. There is a flow to stitches like this and it's about managing it and not forcing it. Now I've finished, I'm up here in the top left-hand corner. I need to cast off. And obviously there's no space. I could do it on the pencil lines at the edge. But what you can also do with laid work particularly is very carefully and very gently. Bring your needle up between the stitches, trying not to cut through them if you can. And you can actually make your to stitch cast on between the stitches. You can just bring the needle and snip and it's covered. I'm now going to work the lower half in some more green per lei and stranded cotton. And as I said earlier, I'm going to use three strands. Generally speaking, when you do an area of laid work like this, you change color, but you don't necessarily change fiber. So I am doing something a little bit strange by going into the stranded cotton. But again, this is a sample. I'm looking to work with the different thread types. I have to see how well they work with the stitches. If I discover that the stranded cotton doesn't work so well, I can make a note of that somewhere in here. And just simply not do it again. 24. How to: Secure Laidwork: So my latest example is complete. You can see I've got all of the threads in there. I filled in the little gap. And again, the angle has turned somewhat, but not so much that I'm really worried about it. And obviously, the more you practice this stitch, the easier it becomes to maintain those angles. And you can see them drifting off a little bit easier as well when you become more familiar with it. You can see down here the three strands of stranded cotton has gone in actually very nicely. I didn't have too many problems with that at all. Again, I've used that same shading principle to blend through and you can see it quite clearly there. But you can see that some of the threads are lifting, some of the threads and more prominent. You can see that it is all very loose. The whole point of late work is to have these really long stitches on the front of your work and have very small stitches on the back. Because remember we're plunging down and coming back up on the same side. And what that means is you're using your thread most efficiently because the majority of it is on the front. You have this knock-on effect of the stitches being too long and very movable. So we put other stitches over the top essentially. And we can actually use any of the stitches we've already learned. So we could use backstitch, stem stitch, chain stitch or fly. And I'm going to do some fly stitch. I think fly stitch coming right across the shape will be very nice. And I might fill in with some stem and chain on either side. When you do the surface stitches over the top, you want to make sure that they go and opposing angle. If I were to do the fly stitch this way, I'm the threads really wouldn't be caught down in the same way. And particularly if you imagine an outlining stitch such as chain, that would probably lie between the later work stitches. So you want to do an opposing angle and to literally do the 45-degree is the optimum. But you could have shallower angles if you needed to. But as I say, the best one is to do a 45-degree. I'm going to use my green per lane to do the first line of fly stitch. That's gonna be a really good way of seeing the differences. So it will be highlighted against the blue. It will somewhat disappear because obviously it's the same color in this green section. And again, it will stand out in the red because you don't have to necessarily be obvious about your couching stitches with laid work, you can make it a detail that enhances the area. Or you could go with a very discrete line to catch it all down and you could even mix and match the two. So if I wanted something to stand out, I could do it in a contrast and color and then have stitches surrounding it in a matching color that disappear somewhat. So you can kind of play with the effect. So to start with, I'm going to plot those laid stitches and cost on. When you do this, you have to be very, very fastidious about ensuring you do not stitch through the late threads. If you stitch through them, you can pull them down so that the line sits not straight. It will sit strangely and it will be eye-catching. That being said, the cast ons do leave behind a little bit of a bump. So you can just kind of tease those threads back into place over it. You just have to be careful about it. So I'm going to work in open fly stitch. When I'm doing this, I often get asked, do you paste the threads are not. Well, I have in the past, here's my threads of late work. And they have parted to reveal fabric. I have stitched between the threads of late work and they have plotted to reveal fabric. So I tend to now just place my needle where I want it to go. And what I'm doing is checking to make sure that that does not reveal any fabric from underneath. If it does, regardless of whether I slip stitch all come up between them, I move it so the fabric can't be seen. I think I've come a little bit wide on that stitch, so I'm going to lift out and place it again. Again. I'm trying to follow all of those principles that we looked at with the fly stitch. Keeping the points of the v are parallel if I can. I'm trying to keep the middle stitch consistent. Now I think I've wandered off the 45-degree somewhat, but that doesn't matter. Again, we're sampling, we're testing things out. I will try and do better on my actual piece if I, if I choose to use fly stitch on the actual PPI, so try and do better. So I'm starting to notice that the fabric is being revealed that I just want to see. Now, I've got that stitch in place. I can just see it pulling here. So I'm going to take that out. And probably in this instance split the stitch to stop the fabric being revealed. Okay, I've gone super wide there, which is going to look strange. So we're going to unpick that one as well. I'm bringing it in as a fraction object. We're going to take a little bit higher up. That's a bit better. Now, as I get to this lumpy thread, I can just smooth it into position and the stitching over the top will hold it in place. As you get more stitches in. You will find the threads settled down a bit more and it's easier to work. Again, I'm seeing a bit of fabric there, so I'm going to take that pasta. I finished my sample. I have fly stitch, chain stitch, stem stitch and backstitch. Worked in her life for the first 22 strands of stranded cotton for the stem stitch, and a single-strand of the fine wool that I have. This spacing is just about right to hold all of those threads in place. And it is for formyl apart roughly, I could have taken it out to five mils. I could've made it fractionally bigger, but that is three-sixteenths of an inch. So I could have taken out to the quarter of an inch there. There could be slightly more spaced. Now, technically, I should be working the same stitching in this area as well, but this is a sample, so I want to have an area that's been worked so that I can see what the layout looks like without anything over the top. These are by no means the only stitches you can use to hold down laid work. Anything that is classified as an outlining stitch will work. And many filling stitches, not all of them, but many filling stitches will work as well. And I will try to mention them as we go as to what will work. 25. Van Dyke Stitch: Our next stitch is Van **** March like fly stitch. This works really well over narrow areas and it isn't open stitch. So if you draw on pencil lines like I'm about to do, you will need to find a stitch to cover them. But I'm going to draw on a narrow channel in the center. My shape. That channel is six or seven mile wide, which is about quarter of an inch. I find it easier to work Van **** with some sort of outline to plunge your needle on. It is straighter than fly stitch, fly stitch you can bring out and make that lovely kind of curved shape. Van **** tends to be relatively straight. I work it in this direction because I'm right handed. So I always come up on the left to start with and you'll see why in a moment. But essentially what I'm gonna do is make a straight stitch. So coming up just below the tip of my pencil line, plunging just off of center. I'm then going to come up on the right-hand side trying to make these exit points parallel, if I can. I'm going to make another straight stitch crossing over the first just off-center. I'm then going to bring my needle backup on the left hand paint line. Again, pulling all of my thread through. So this time round, rather than plunging the needle through the fabric, I'm actually going to bring the thread across the shape and using the eye of the needle, slide under the two stitches where they crossover. And I'm pushing from right to left. And this is the reason why I always bring my needle up on the left-hand side. It is easier for me to push the needle across from right to left equally. You can do it in the reverse. So you could be bringing the needle up on the right-hand side, taking the thread over to the left and pushing from left to right. If you are left-handed, that's probably going to be the easier way to do it. So I am going to pull all of my thread through and plunge parallel with where the thread comes out. I'm plunging on the right-hand side to try to keep it parallel with the left. Again, pulling all the thread through. And I'm just going to keep repeating that. I'm always bringing the needle up on the same side and I have obviously have chosen the left. I'm going to slide under using once again the eye of the needle. The eye of the needle is rounded and blunt. I'm using a shinier needle because I'm passing my thread through the fabric. I need a sharp needle to make that whole for me. If I were to take the sharp end through, I run the risk of piercing these threads. I swing my needle around my use the rounded blunt tip that the eye creates. You could switch to a tapestry needle at this point, but you would then need to switch back to the Schnell to plunge through the fabric to bring the needle up again and then you would switch again. It becomes time-consuming, messy. It's actually easier just to use the eye of the needle. Again, I'm going to pull that through and plunge roughly parallel. Now you can see there this top stitch has opened up quite a bit and flattened out. These two buttons stitches are still quite diagonal. So you will notice as you go along that the stitches above will start to flatten out rather than be angled. You can also see how the center plots is starting to drift off to the right because I've pulled it a little bit too hard over to the right. I'm going to bring my needle up to the left. And what I can do, again using the eye of the needle, just pull a little bit more of that thread through. Just arrange the stitch, just poke it around until such time as its center again. But that's perfectly normal for it to drift off like that. It's more about managing the drift rather than preventing it. Now, what I'm trying to do as well is keep the gaps between these stitches consistent. And I think this last one is probably going to be a bit narrow, but that's fine. I'm going to keep going. Because again, this is a sample. I'm learning to regulate my spacing and my tension. So my stitches look like they're drifting a little bit more. I can just push them a bit with the needle. And when I try and pull the thread through, rather than pulling to one side or another, I try and pull the thread to down the center. If I can. I like to track it in place with my fingers before pulling all through on the right-hand side. So my thread is starting to get quite short and feel like the twist is going a little bit. So I just want to make sure that that last stitch sitting nice and centrally. And then I'm going to cast off with my two tiny stitches on my paint line and take another thread. I'm going to continue this sample in green. But it's important to note that I could use the same blending principle we use on late work and fly stitch if I wanted to. 26. How to: Van Dyke Stitch: Now because this is an open stitch, whenever I start a render thread, I really do want to stick to my paint lines because the paint lines will be covered at the end. We know that. And I can think about what kind of outlining stage I might want to put down the sides. If I were to cast on in the middle, there's potential for that cost on to be seen. So we put cast on the edges which we know are gonna be covered with my new threads. I'm just going to continue as I was before using the eye of the needle to slide through the last stitch and work my way down my last stitch there and my channel fall. You can see the very last stitch is still angled and I want it to sit like the rest. I want it to be flat. So what I'm gonna do is coming up on the left-hand side of the middle. I'm going to bring my needle out, slide through one more time, and plunge down just to the right hand side of middle and pull all that through it. And you can see that that straightened that last ditch out quite nicely. Then I can cast off on the edges. So this time around, I'm going to use a chain stitch to cover that edge. And I, again, I'm using two strands of stranded cotton just to keep it nice and simple. And much like when I was outlining the fly stitch. I want us to regulate the size of my stitches as to what is appropriate for the stitch, not the spacing of the Van **** itself. Because I've got a thin thread. I'm going to try and keep my stitches quite small. I'm trying to place my chain stitches. So they just sit over the edges of the Van **** and cover my pencil lines. So that's my line complete. I'm just going to write to see at the top here. I quite like the top section of this. It's nice and petite. It gives some somewhat heavy effect, but kind of is on par with this plotted effect down the middle. It's going a little bit wonky down the end. And actually in person, I can just see a cost on there. So maybe two strands of stranded cotton was not the best choice. If I had gone with three, I think I would have gotten better coverage. I've drawn two shapes on into my square. One of them is slightly broader than the other and both of them curve. This one. I'm going to work in wool. I'm using a slightly wider shape in wool because wool is a thicker thread and a narrower shape. You can see here I'm going to try with stranded cotton. Now as I say, they both curves, which means I'm going to have to work the stitches very carefully to bring them around. Because again, this straight line that you can see in the original sample, I want to achieve, but have it fan around as it follows the curve. A little bit like we did with fly stitch. And I'm gonna be using that same principle of stitches closer together on the inside and further apart on the outside. So I've added my two cast on stitches. Cutoff might not. And with this first stitch, because my shape goes into quite a narrow point. If I stitch to that point, it's going to get even more congested than it will do. Anyway, because it's such a narrow shapes, such a small shape is going to feel a little bit congested with the first few stitches. So what I'm actually going to do is plunged just on the right hand paint line, just below the tip. I'm going to bring my needle up on the right hand paint line. And one challenge on the left hand paint line just below the tip. And again, where the thread has come out on both sides. I'm trying to keep them parallel if I can. I'm then going to come back up on the left-hand side. My stitches are a little bit closer together. They were then this previous sample. So I'm gonna see if I can keep it a little bit more closed than the original sample. Much like the feather stitch, you can work this in an open fashion. You can't quite work it fully closed though. You need to have a little bit of fabric showing that the stitch just doesn't quite work in the same way, but you can have less fabric showing. So I'm going to slide my needle under the cross as I've done before. And again, trying to plunge parallel if I can. And again, keeping the needle quite close on the inside and the gap just that little bit further apart on the outside. Now, because the stitches are so close together, it can be quite difficult to see where you lost stitched. So it's important to take your time and double-check you're going in the right place. You don't want to wrap higher up, then you need to, you want to go into the last stitch you made. For a little bit of context. My stitch there is just about a millimeter below. The last one, which is about 16th of an inch, just under, I think when I slide through, slide under that last stitch and plunge, you can see that's a slightly bigger gap in order to bring the stitch round because again, we're looking for that gentle progression. So in fact, I think I can probably go fraction bigger there as well. So that is actually about 16th of an inch closer to two mil in the metric system. Now, as I'm working this, I do feel like the center line is starting to arr2 much towards the left-hand side. So again, you can just shift everything around with your fingers and just trying to push it over a little bit more and keep going. You can see there with that little stitch is all starting to open up a little bit very dense and closed up here. And it's just starting to open a bit more, but still narrower than in the purlin. 27. Van Dyke Stitch Review: So I've just completed my sample and I have decided just to cast off beneath the shape because for the purposes of the sample, I want to keep the edges open because immediately my eye is drawn here where I've left too big a gap. I should have just lifted that up ever so slightly. I think the same thing is happening here. I'm just going to write on there too. Big gap. This can happen when you are learning and practicing stitches. And again, it's sampling. We want to make a record. We want to learn from the mistakes we have here. And just as a note, actually this side, looking pretty good. The spacing is relatively even and you can see the angle for the most part except for these two areas. The angle is actually come around quite nicely. So I'm quite happy with that. And as I say, I've got a couple of little notes there that I can observe and learn from a later date. So now I need to do the stranded cotton example, which I will prompt. I'm going to try and a single-strand because I've not done that before. So I think that might be nice. As I am working this sample of stranded cotton, this is a single-strand stranded cotton. I've noticed, particularly with delayed work next to it. When I go to slide my needle under, what I've noticed I'm doing is I'm pushing up from the back. This will help my needle to clear the stitches on the left-hand side here so that I don't run the needle accidentally under all through them. The one thing I would say with doing that It's a perfectly natural habit that I've developed over a number of years. I do for other things as well. But you do run the risk of reducing the tension on your frame as you do this. So you can see as I slide through, I'm just pushing up that will stretch the fabric out a little bit. It's not a huge deal. It's not going to damage my fabric in any way or overall damage my sampling. But it is one of the reasons why you do want to regularly check on your strings because as I said, that will be affecting the fabric and the tension the fabric is under. So just checking my strings every time I sit down to stitch is a good idea because of habits like that. So this is my finished sample. I have the original Pele sample down the middle, I have a curved in wool with a couple of issues. And in this one, it looks a bit lumpy, but I have actually gone from one strand is stranded cotton into two, into three. I haven't tried to blend them in any way. I've just plotted them up against each other. I could have blended with color, similar to what we've done here in the later work and with the fly stitch. But I decided not to do that. I'm just happy to do it like this in individual samples. This one here. I, when I work Van **** stitch, generally speaking, I will give myself some sort of outline to work too. So I thought I'd give myself a bit of a challenge and not only work without outlines, without a central line to follow, but I've also decided to vary the width of my stitch to create more shaping. And it was actually quite a fun thing to do. It's gone in quite well. The spacing down here has gotten a little bit big, but that's fine. The top section has gone in nicely. Shapes are mostly consistent with each other. I'm quite happy with that. And it's the fine wool has set it off quite nicely. And I could see something like this particularly laid work would be quite nice. The only thing you have to be careful with is working this stitch over something like late work is because you have those threads are already in place when you come to push your needle underneath the stitches in Van ****, you run the risk of catching the later work stitches as you go. So that's the only thing I would be concerned about is working Van **** overlaid work is just placing those threads as I slide through onto the stitches. But other than that, I'm quite happy with the way it's gone down in the different fibers. I have to say it was very challenging in the single-strand, very challenging. I've never done it that finally before. But the two and the three have worked quite nicely. Admittedly, they would have probably been better in slightly bigger shapes. But again, this is all a learning experience. Whilst I haven't written those things down, I know I can look at these samples and go, well, that's a little bit congested. So something slightly broader, certainly for the three would have worked better. The two fractionally wider, maybe not too bad. But this, this top section, particularly the narrow bit, much better for the single-strand. 28. The Middle Row: This center row stitches of fly stitch later I can Van **** can all be collectively thought of as filling stitches. I'm going to write that on the side of my sample as well. 29. How to: Seeding: Our next stitch is going to be seeding. This is a really great stitch fulfilling relatively large areas and putting in a small pop of color without filling them and making them solid seeding, you can create a light area. Now, we're gonna look at four different types of seeding. So I'm going to roughly split my square into four zones to practice those things in. Seeding is an open stitch. So casting on your thread, on a paint line at the edge of your shape is important. Cast on stitches will not be covered with the seeding. So you can't cast on in the center of the shape. You also want to think carefully about where you start the seeding with something like this. Ideally you want start from the middle out so that you get an even spread of stitches across your shape. Unfortunately, if you do that, you're going to leave a long thread on the back which can be seen. So you want to come in from the edge without actually trailing your thread too far. What I'm gonna do is make a series of straight stitches at random angles to each other, but are equal in their spacing and length. So you're looking for random consistency, which is actually quite challenging. So for context, in the pearlite thread, my stitches are not millimeter in length, which is about 16th of an inch. Again, if there are minor variations in the length of my stitches, I'm going to try not to worry about it too much. Realistically, if you were to sit down and measure every single stitch in an area like this, they would vary in very small amounts. They would not all be exactly the same length. So again, I'm learning my stitch, I'm learning how to do this. I'm going to try and go easy on myself if I get it slightly wrong. One of the best ways I've found of doing this as well is try to be slightly distracted. I find when I'm demonstrating this to students, I actually have a better chance of being random. Because I'm slightly distracted by what I'm doing. It is a great mental relax. And again, because it's open, you don't want to trail your thread too far. So I'm trying to work in a fairly logical fashion. Making my way around the shape. I'm also making sure that my stitches don't touch the edges of my shape. If you find your thread is starting to deteriorate and you need to cast off. You need to work in the direction of a paint line so you can cast off without training your throat too far. So generally speaking, when you start an area in one fiber, you would complete the whole thing in the same fiber. I might actually go back and try something else in there. I might fill it with some stranded cotton or something like that. This isn't the only form of seeding you can do. You can play with it a little bit. And the other one we traditionally see is two parallel lines. Now this becomes a little bit harder because not only are you looking to keep the stitches equal distance from each other and the same length, you then have to space the other pairs are equal distance from each other. Whilst keeping those stitches equal in length to each other. And the rest of the seeding you've done, it becomes, and of course everything is also scattered at random angles. I do find this one slightly more challenging. I haven't done it that often. As a result. Basic good one to know to have a flexible option. I find you tend to get denser areas of stitching. When you work this pattern. You also want to make sure they sit distinctly as pairs and not end up looking like this sample here. I think as I do this, my stitches are getting slightly longer, which is not particularly desirable. But this is what happens when you don't use a stitch for a long time. You have to sit back down and work it a little bit to practice it and regulate your attention. It's better to get the bad sticking out on a sample than it is on your actual piece. My thread there is starting to wear, so I'm going to cast it off. And again, when I come back to finish this sample, I should finish it in the wool. Because when you start an area, generally when you finish it in the same fiber. But since this is a sample, I can use other threads to fill in the shape. 30. Seeding Alternatives and Review: I promised earlier we would be returning to fly stitch. And we are going to because fly stitch can be scattered around as a form of seating. So you've seen a little bit of me do that in the fly stitch sample. I'm gonna do a few more and this is gonna give me space to try other fibers as well. But I could do either the long arm or just the plain detached fly. And I think it looks best if you keep it relatively small. Again, keeping your sizing and random angles is going to be important. So just another chance to practice that stitch and its different forms. You'll find even more. So see that stitches a bit big. But you know what, I'm going to go with it. I was forming a sentence in my brain. I didn't quite noticed the sizing, but it's fine. It's just a sample. You will find when you are working particularly larger stitches such as this, you know, thread really does dictate how big or small you can go. If you go too small with a thicker thread, it will just look lumpy and congested. If anyone is worried about that popping noise you can hear from my needle. I think it's actually because I've been to the heat from my hands has caused the needle I'm using to bend. I'm using a size ten with two strands have stranded cotton, which should be okay. But as I say, I think there's, there's a noticeable bending the needle and I think that might be causing the problem. So I'm going to cast my thread off there. And again, when I fill in, I will probably use another fiber just so I've got a different sample. This one was more challenging. You can see through here, my stitches got bigger and then probably back to about the right size, top and bottom. But that also gives me an idea. Could I do a cascade of stitches like this slowly going from small to big to create sense of perspective. So as a sample, it's not lost because it's actually giving me another idea to play with this stitch. If you were to do something like that, go from small to big. You just want to make sure that you're doing it with a nice flow. You don't want, like I've done here. I've got two gigantic stitches next to three small ones. Then two slightly smaller than the two gigantic ones going back down into small. If you were to have a gradual progression from small to large, you can do things like that and they actually create a really beautiful effect. I'm just going to write stranded. So you've probably already guessed, but we can do the same thing with the detached chain or lazy daisy. So in this instance, I think I might go with a long arm chain rather than just the detached. This will allow me to create a sample that has both detached and along our versions of my two stitches. So I've completed my sample of long arm chain. I'm going to write fine wool next to it. Again, I will fill in the rest of the shape, probably with the different fiber. One of the things I have noticed in both of these two samples, and to a degree, this one is when you're working on that larger scale, whether it'd be a pair, just a longer or wider stitch. And getting the spacing is actually quite a lot harder. So it's good to practice things like this, to know the challenge that you're taking on when you do something like this. And also when you play with stitches, you start to get ideas as you work with them. So for this one particularly, this would work beautifully for leaves falling off of a branch or petals falling off of a flower. Whereas these could be used to represent seed pods falling from a tree. So I finished my seeding sample. I've got seeding in long-arm and detached chain, long arm and detached fly. And I have the double seating in wool and six strands of stranded cotton. Here. I've actually done in the single seeding, I've done a single-strand stranded cotton and you can see my stitches down here. I've gone absolutely tiny because I'm using such a thin thread. Up here. I've used two strands of stranded cotton in the needle, which means my stitches are just fractionally bigger and obviously quite thick in comparison to the single-strand, but smaller and thinner and in comparison to the six strands. So you can play with the scale depending on the thickness of the thread you're using. Again, consistency is the key and there may be places where I'm not hugely consistent, but that's fine. I've actually found as I've worked the remaining samples, my consistency has improved, which is why we sample to build that consistency. I think here I've managed to inadvertently create a small gradient from small chain, small detached chain, through up into larger detached chain. And again, it's happening in that very graduated manner. So it's not quite so obvious at first glance. The one I think has gone in the worst is definitely the double seating. I don't use it very often myself. I think more practices needed with that one for me. 31. How To: French Knots: Our next stitch is going to be French knots, which can be quite a contentious subject. French knots, the debate rages. How many reps? Well, I was taught one and only one. If you want bigger nots, you go to a thicker throat. Or in the case of stranded cotton, you add more threads into the needle. You can do this in 2 st of pearly. I'm currently using one and again, I'm probably going to try and make a scale of different number of threads in the needle. So I get a scale of how large my French knots can be. But you should not be doing anything more than one wrap. If you do more than one wrap, your knot will become unstable. The issues I have seen students have in the past almost entirely come from a couple of things, two or three things, too many raps on the needle making everything unstable and causing loops. Working too quickly, rushing the process and pulling too hard on their threads so they're not actually disappears through to the back or using to bigger needle. So again, much like all the other stitching your needle should be relative to the size of your threads. So I'm using my size eight perlite with a size 20 fortunately all needle. And to make the stitch, I'm going to take my thread. I like to pull it taut so it's coming out of my fabric. These are my two cast on stitches here. It's coming out of my fabric. I like to place my needle underneath the thread and wrap around. Okay. Equally, you can place the needle on top of the thread and wrap around. But it's important to pay attention to how I'm doing this. The needle is held stationary and the thread is worked around the needle. I've seen far too many students trying to wrap the needle around the thread and getting frustrated, make life easy for yourself. Wrap the thread around the needle. I've made this motion quite frequently now. And that is my one wrap of the thread around the needle. When you see this stitch in books, you often see it like this. And people look at that and think, oh, that's two ramps. It's not. If you were to hold the needle from a different angle, you can see that the thread is actually only wrapped around the needle once. The thread itself has crossed over once. If you were to wrap twice, you would actually have what looks like three reps on the needle. So we are looking for only one. We're looking to cross our thread over once. With that motion done, we've wrapped once. You then want to place your needle back next to the whole not in the same hole. You want at least a threads distance between the two. And that's because you don't want your not to slip through to the back of the fabric. You go through the same hole. That's more than likely going to happen. Now, the next problem we have is this excess thread. We don't want that at all. So I'm just going to gently pull on the thread I have coming off the needle so that that wrap lays nice and snug at the base of the needle flat on the fabric. Now, the trick to a French naught is to take the index finger of your non-dominant hand. So in my case it's left and you want to place it right there so it's right on the thread, butted up against the ramp, making sure that's nice and tight. And then from the underneath, I'm just going to very gently pull my needle through. This is the second problem. I see people have. They rush this process. They yank hard on the thread and then not just pops through to the back because even if you have a gap between where your thread has come out on your needle has gone in. You can still sometimes have it pop through to the back. So we're just going to very gently and calmly pull that needle through. The thread is coming through as well still I'm still breathing. I'm not turning blue. I'm being very common zen about it. And you can see the thread has almost disappeared. Well, it's actually laying under my finger there, but my fingertip is still in place. I'm still holding the tension on that thread. As I pull a bit more, you can just about see the thread, it slowly pulling under my fingertip. And I can feel it pop out from underneath my needle. And when that happens is formed. It is actually that simple. And I think people tend to over-complicate French knots. The trick to it is to become to be zen and don't over wrap your thread. So I'm gonna do that again. I'm bringing, I'm pulling my thread taught. I'm not yanking on it. You can see I'm not pulling on the fabric so much. They opened up a great big hole, just holding it taut so there's no slack. Bringing my needle up underneath the thread, working the thread around the needle, and then taking my needle in next to, but not through the same hole. Going to pull out all that Slack, makes sure it sits nice and snuggly against the fabric. And I'm going to put my fingertip in place. I'm then going to very gently and slowly and calmly pull that thread through. Once again leaving my fingertip in place, I can feel it sliding under my finger. It pops out from underneath the needle. Perfect French knot. 32. How to: Larger French Knots: So I've just made myself a little cluster of French knots. They can be scattered around much like seeding, so you can use it as a form of seeding if you want to. Now, I have a particular habit with my French knots that a lot of my students call me out on. And they think I'm putting in extra twist onto my stitch. And it's because once I've wrapped my needle like this, I always deliberately go down and place my needle on the right-hand side of my threat? Well, that again comes down to me being right-handed. If I were to put the needle anywhere else, say on the left-hand side. Now you can see that my thumb and my forefinger, or beautifully out-of-focus, you cannot see my French knots. I can't see my French knot. If I do it on the right-hand side, we both have better visibility. So essentially this extra twist that I'm putting into my stitch is not anything to do with making the stitch or creating that naught is just so I can down we'll see what I'm doing. Anyone else watching me can see what I'm doing as well. So there's that to consider. I think some people will often obscure what they're doing as well, which can hinder them in making the French knot. And so I encourage you to look at your hands and think about what you're doing is you're doing this. If you are left-handed, you may well want to bring your plans, your needle down on the left-hand side so that you can maintain visibility. Now the other thing that you can quite clearly see here is my two little cast on stitches are still visible. I could work over the top of them if I wanted to, and I probably will because you can actually pack French knots together to make a solid texture. And the way to do that is in a backstitch fashion. You want them to hug together. So this time having just talked about placing my needle always on the right hand side. This time I am gonna go on the left-hand side because that motion is actually going to pull this French knot closer to the one that I already have in place. That way, I know I am covering my cost ons and my fabric. So when you do this, you want to do it in a backstitch like fashion. But practice, first of all, being able to see what you can do. So my thread is starting to wear, so I'm going to have to cost off soon. The reason I did do the proper cost on this time is because when you work French knots, because you're going so closely to where your needle comes out. If you were to put a note on the back of your work, more than likely you would be stitching through. Said. That is very difficult. It's very unpleasant and I don't recommend it. So using a proper cast on either that you're going to cover like I've done here, or on a paint line that will be covered is essential. So I'm now going to work a few more notes. So I'm just putting in some more French knots in two strands of pearlite. And you can see they are much bigger. They sit not only higher, but I'll just generally wider as well, which means when I'm spacing them, I have to give extra space if I want them far apart and scattered, I have to think about moving my needle further away, which is kind of odd. Something to adjust to. You also have to just make sure that both of your threads are coming through at the same rate. Because sometimes threads can not sit well in the needle and pull through differently and leave you with loops as well. But the process is working exactly the same way. I'm still making that one wrap. I'm still holding the tension with my fingernail. I just got more threads in the needle and I have consequently a bigger needle as well. Can get much tighter as well. I'm going to try and scatter them by leaving bigger spaces if I can. Sometimes you can pull the thread to title the base of the needle. French knots are a great stitch for making the eyes on an animal. Or when you pack them together, they make a really interesting texture, which can contrast with other smooth stitches such as the late work. And I'm going to write per lei two next to it. One of the most common mistakes I see people make is they don't go in close enough to the thread. Remember you're not going through the same hole, but you want to be next to it. So some people go a little bit wide and they end up with this kind of weird jutting out stocky bit on the end of their French knot, which just makes the French knot look a bit weird. What happens if we do that? Deliberately? I make a feature of that stock. Well, you actually do a pistil stitch, which is essentially a French knot on a stalk. Now, this again can be used as a really lovely form of seeding. It's it can be used to make fine detail. So you can again, much like the detached fly that detached chain, you can use it to make those extra little details such as the head of a bird or statement of a flower. And they can just be scattered around as an interesting That all kind of shape or detail. But when you do this, you want to make sure that you are not just going a little bit away from the exit point. You want to go a lot away. So my stitches, there are three sometimes 4 million length, which is just over an eighth of an inch, just shy of three-sixteenths of an inch. But the process is the same. You still want to hold the tension in the same way. And again, it can be used in place of the seating that we looked at in the previous set of videos. So I'm going to write pistol above it for pistil stitch. 33. French Knot Review: So I'm just going to add in French knots and pistil stitches in the different fibers that I have. And I might try in two strands of work as well, so okay. So this is what I was talking about. I because I was talking I wasn't paying my full attention and I probably should have done. And what's happened there is I've pulled too tightly on my thread. I was trying to rush it a little bit and my not has gone right through to the back. But you know, it's fine. It's left a little mark in the fabric, but that's fine because I'm going to bring my needle up. I'm going to make my French not just over the top of it. I'm going to be a little bit gentler this time. And they go cut the mark is covered the French noise in place. I can move on and just carry on with what I'm doing. I tend to find when I'm working with well, because this is the two-ply Crowl, all that I have here, tend to find that with all the wrapping and twisting, my thread deteriorates a little bit quicker. So I want to be careful about that and probably use shorter lengths that I might actually cast off my thread. And as I said earlier, I might try it with two strands. If you are using an even number of threads in your needle, you can use the loop cast on that we looked at, folded my thread and half. The cutter enters through the eye of the needle. I take my thread down through the fabric, that loop appears. And I can just pull the needle through it and take the excess through to the back and that's cast on. But that does still leave me with a small mark in my fabric. So what I'm gonna do is bring my needle up next to the mark. Wrap my thread. Plunge down either through or next to that little section of thread. With my French knot mode also covered my costume. I can then just continue making French knots. My finished sample, I have done, once again the chart of standard cottons from six all the way through to one. I've played around with some of the fine wool down here. I've done pistil stitch, French knots. They're scattered and packed together. And I've done some wool samples as well. Overall. It seems to me that in terms of the French naught, it doesn't matter what the sizes they all go down pretty well. In terms of the pistil stitch, I really feel like the thicker threads have got much better definition. The single-strand of stranded cotton is looking a little bit weak, to be honest with you, there's the not doesn't really have great prominence. So it feels like it's blending in to the stalk itself. And there's a little bit of that happening in the fine wool, but the final is slightly thicker than the single-stranded, the stranded cotton. So overall, I think my preference would be to work pistil stitch in a slightly thicker through it. 34. How to: Whip and Weave: So our final stitch is actually going to be two a stitch embellishments. We're going to try whipping and weaving. And to do that, I will need to start with a short line of backstitch because these are based around a backstitch. So I'm going to put those in and then come back to you to show you how to do whipping and weaving. So I have my short line of backstitch. And again, I'm going to work the stitch in this fashion because I'm right-handed in a similar way to the Van **** stitch. So I'm going to bring my needle up the top of my line. On the left-hand side, I'm currently using a size 2014 Neil needle and I'm going to swap to a 24 tapestry needle. The reason I'm doing this is because until I finish the line of stitching, I will be working entirely on the surface of the fabric and I will not need to plunge through the fabric. And we know that a blunt needle is more likely to push fibers out of the way rather than piercing them. I'm less likely to catch my stitch with my thread coming out on the left. I'm going to take it over to the right and slide my needle under the stitch. Pulling all of the thread through. This puts my thread back on the left-hand side. So I take my needle over to the right and slide it the next stitch. So I'm going to keep working my way down the line. And as I'm pulling my thread, I'm trying to pull in the direction that I'm traveling in. If I pull sideways, you can see that pulls my stitches out of line. So I try and pull in the direction I'm traveling in. I am going to slide my needle under the last stitch and to finish off the line, I'm just going to plunge on the right-hand side of the last stitch. To do that, I'm going to switch back to the shinier needle. And I'm going to keep my needle tucked in at the base of this stitch and that just finishes the line off nicely. And yes, once again, I was pushing fabric up from underneath because I don't want to catch those pistil stitches on the left-hand side of my whipping. This is a really great accent stitch that you can add, which introduces a small pop of color and can break up a line. If you feel you have too much of one color and area, you can add in some whipping just to break it up a little. I have cast on my length of blue pearlite and I'm ready to start weaving. Again. I've used the shinier needle, so I'll need to swap to the tapestry needle because much like with the whipping, we working on the surface of the fabric and are more likely to need to push the fibers out of the way rather than pierced them. So in this instance, I'm going to work on the same side. My needle has been bought out on. And I've actually bought my needle up on the right hand side just because I can I'm going to pass the needle under the first stitch, but I'm not going to pull all of the thread through. I want to leave a small loop. So you need to be very gentle doing this because you don't want to pull all of the thread through. If you do, the effect will be lost. So I want to leave something there this time rather than taking my thread over the stitches, I'm going to slide my needle from left to right under the next stitch and pull that through. And then I'm going to do the same thing from right to left. A third stitch. You're just working your way backwards and forwards around each of the stitches. If you do happen to pull a little bit too tightly, you can tweak some of the thread back through because that does happen occasionally. And then with this last stitch, I'm going to pull my thread through and then switch back to the shinier needle, plunge the thread level with the base of that last stitch and then I can just cast off on the edges. Again, taking a lot of care to not put them on my thread too tightly with those cost of stitches because I don't want to pull all of the thread and those loops through. Much like the whipping. This will add a touch of color and a little bit of extra texture into an area. Particularly if the area in question seems somewhat empty or bear. You could also potentially go back and add another thread in the gaps just to fill out that little bit more. So has it occurred to you in the time we've spent together that the center of Earth, why stitch looks very much like a backstitch because it does. Weeping and weaving can be worked over most outlining stitches and some filling stitches. So what I'm going to do next is take the stitches we've already done. We've already ticked off backstitch, brilliant. I'm going to work stem stitch, chain stitch, fly stitch and some Van ****. And then we will look at whipping and weaving them as well. 35. How to: Whip and Weave other stitches: I have added to my sample, I have a row of stem stitch and outline stitch for whipping and weaving. And I just wanted to have an example of both on my sample square. So I've done both. I have some chain stitch for both. And I've also done a rope detached chain. I've tried to learn them up as best I can and keep them relatively even in size. This one didn't go so well, but this one's a bit better. And down here with the fly stitch in the Van ****, I'm actually planning to split them both into and work one-half and whipping one-half in weaving just to see how they work. So you can see I've already cast on a single strand of cotton to go with. My two strands are fine wool. And when I come to do this, what I'm looking to do is slide where the stitches overlap in stem stitch. And try and make sure that that extra threads sits between the twist. And you can see again, I'm having to push up from underneath so that I don't catch surrounding stitches. So actually working each one of these samples individually might have been a better idea. So this weaving sample, what I might do is graduate the loops so they slowly get bigger as I go down. Because that's another lovely effect you can create is having the loop slow grant size. Now there's a limit to how big the loops can be. And again, that will vary depending on the thickness of your thread. But the key indicator really is when they start to go and loosen floppy, they don't sit straight, is usually it's too big. Here we go. I have to say on the whole, I think I'm a bigger fan of the weaving on stem stitch than the whipping. It doesn't seem to want to sit in those groups between the stitches in the twisted section at the stitch itself. So it just looks a little bit cramped. I don't like it so much. I feel like the backstitch create some more elegant diagonal there. But that is just personal preference. So I'm now going to finish the rest of these off-camera. 36. Whip and Weave Review: I finished my sample. And there's a few things that I've noticed about it that will really help to inform what I do at a later date. So for instance, we've talked about how I don't like the whip to stem. The woven stem isn't too bad. I quite like that and you can see I've lost my loop down here. I was a bit aggressive in my cast off, so I've lost my lip a little bit at the bottom and that one stilted. So we're just tease it out. There we go. So there's some concerns I have about the whipped chain, woven fly and whipped Van ****. And they all have something in common, particularly the Van **** in the chain, in that you're losing the texture of the stitch, you can't really see that it's changed stitch or Van **** underneath the whipping. And yes, I could have used a thinner thread, but that's not always an option. So I must admit I much prefer the woven chain to the whipped chain because you can still have that lovely texture of the chain stitch and have this little kind of darting color around it. Similarly, you can see how the weaving down here on the Van **** has actually framed the texture of the stitch. You're losing the spiky bits, admittedly. But that can be combated with working a slightly wider portion of the stitch. But you don't lose it entirely in its entirety. You still have some of that texture that's visible whilst the weaving frames, the plaque down the middle. Now, with the woven fly stitch, you are at risk of losing the texture of the fly if you make these two, these loops too big. So you can see I've kept them fairly close to the middle. I haven't left big loops like I have done on the chain or the stem stitch here. I just pulled it in quite close because if they sit too loopy over the texture of the fly stitch, you could either have it end up looking confused or lose the fly stitch entirely. The whipping however, I think enhances it quite nicely. But it's just the weaving to possibly too much texture if that's a thing. So if we move on to the detached chain, I really love how the whipping sits nicely between those detached chain. I think you create a really lovely rippling effect. But remember, whenever you're doing something detached or open, you run the risk of paint lines being seen. So if I were to put in some detached chain and then whip it like that I have done here is actually possibility that I might be able to see those paint or pencil lines when I'm done, I would have to guesstimate the line, essentially work it by eye and then whip it accordingly. The woven chain next to it, woven detached chain. It's okay. I feel like you're losing those cute little loops. They've become a little bit too elongated for my taste, so I might stick to whipping rather than leaving the detached chain, although it's not as bad, you still have that lovely texture. You haven't lost it like you have done in the whips chain or Van ****. So having a reference point like this for future work is actually a really great idea. There are many options for using outlining stitches. And if I know in advance that I want to whip a line, I might be inclined to work a backstitch more than I would do a stem or chain stitch because I feel the whipping really enhances the backstitch. You are losing that segmented texture that the backstitch hairs, but I feel like the whipping enhances it rather than detracts from it, which I feel like you're getting it's not adding anything extra to the whipped chain or whipped stem. I feel like you're losing something when you do it with those two. Again, with the weaving. Obviously, all of the different options have worked quite well. I might be less inclined to use the woven detached chain, but these options or work quite nicely. So having a reference point like this can really influence the choices you make at a future date. So I do encourage you to play with the stitches in the same way that I have done the textures and the fibers. Just so that you have something to look back on. All of this, of course, is my personal opinion. You can see how whilst I may not particularly enjoy the aesthetic of what I've achieved, I have actually achieved it. I have successfully whipped Van ****, so it is possible. So when I tell you that it's not something I will use, that's actually my personal preference is not a technical thing or something that you shouldn't do. You should be making your own choices as to what you find aesthetically pleasing and not. And you can see here just as a reminder, I've put a little x next to the whipping, their little tick next to the weaving. 37. The Bottom Row: Seeding, French knots, whipping and weaving can be considered accents. So I'm going to write that on the side of my sampling square, very badly, very badly in that instance. But they can all be added in as little pops of color or as I said, with seeding to fill an area that you don't want completely dense but you want a little bit coloring. And the whipping and leaving can be added to fill out an area so the weaving you can see a slightly bigger that can add a little bit more bulk to an area or just to break up a line if you think there's too much of one color in an area. 38. Homework Assignment: So your homework for this topic is quite simple. Complete the sampling square and then choose incomplete one of the motifs. Now, when it comes to the sampling square, if you had other fibers available to you, I encourage you to play with them, working these cities in different threads, particularly different thickness threads actually can give you a real awareness of the stitch, stitch length and so on. If you only have one type of thread, that's absolutely fine as well. Keep going with it. Fill the square as much as you can with as many stitches as you can, the more you practice the stitch, the better you will be at it. But also be mindful about what you're doing. Take care over stitch length, loopy threads, stitch size, that kind of thing. And the more accurate and consistent you can be with that, the better again, you will be at stitching generally. Then on to your chosen motif. Again, if you can play with the fibers, That's fantastic. It's a really great thing to do and it'll create a nice range of textures in your piece. If you don't have different fibers, again, stranded cotton is a really key one to go with because you can put multiple threads in the needle, which allows you to opportunities for blending. All of that we're gonna go through next. Now, as always, stitching the samples, I did think of one extra piece of homework for you all and I would like you to go and check out the Bayeux Tapestry. The link is in the description below. The Bayeux Museum has a wonderful website which has an absolutely fantastic re-creation or digitization of the Bayeux Tapestry itself. Now, don't let the name for you. It is in fact a piece of embroidery, not a tapestry. It is in fact one of the oldest examples of CRO work embroidery that we have in existence these days. And we all know that cruel work is surface stitches worked in a two-ply wool thread, traditionally on a linen background and the Bayeux Tapestry ticks all of those boxes. Now, interestingly enough, the Bayeux Tapestry was stitched to tell the story of the Battle of Hastings, which happened, I think most historians generally agree it happened around 1066. We don't really know when the Bayeux Tapestry itself was stitched or who did it. But there is speculation and the theory is that it was stitched some time in the ten years after 1066. So 1066-1077, which puts it around 950 years old, somewhere in that ballpark. So I'd love you to go and take a look, read up a little bit about it. Enjoy the digitization, because the digitization is absolutely impeccable. The images, the quality of the images they have achieved is simply fantastic. You can zoom in and really see those stitches, but have a reader's to some of the details of it and let me know in the comments below if there's anything that seems a little bit familiar because I think it might be. Just be careful if you look at the borders. There's a main scene down the center of the piece and then there's borders. Borders. Yeah. Just be a little bit careful with them. 39. Stitch Plans and Order of Work: Now that we've practiced and perfected those stitches, What are we doing with them? Well, I've been tinkering with a couple of designs and your homework for this course is quite simple. She's a design and stitch it. But where are we putting those stitches and what colors are we using? There's actually a whole raft of preparatory stages and we go through before we start a piece like this. So we're going to review those processes together now. And all of the design templates and stitch plans are available for you to download in the description below. The next thing to do is to download the documents in the description below, particularly the design templates. I strongly recommend printing these out because I think it's easier to transfer on from a paper copy. But when you do, just make sure that they have printed to the specified dimensions, I work in centimeters. So the centimeter dimensions are going to be much more accurate. The inches, they're gonna be more of an approximation Of size. So you just want to make sure that they have printed out at full size. From there, you'll also want to download and not necessarily print out the files labeled SP for stitch plan. This will tell you where all of your stitches are going to go across the different designs. And remember you're only choosing one. You don't have to do all three. In addition to that, you have a file labeled W, which is order of work. And this will tell you the order in which you're going to put in the stitches. These are comically quite colorful and it's not necessarily a recommendation of where to put the color is a color code of the order in which you will do the stitches. And it's a very simple thing. Essentially, if you look at the number one, if you look at the first area, there's actually a description of the areas that the blue covers. But essentially, we're working from the back. If you look in anyone that designs, it's the areas that sit further back in the design that are stitched first and then you work your way through slowly moving forward. There's a very good reason for that. When you do surface embroidery like this, you're looking to create a sense of perspective. If I were to stitch this hillock down here on the right-hand side. If I were to stitch it last, it could potentially overlap the tree that it sits behind, the plant that sits on top of it, that would distort the perspective. It will make this look like it's sitting forward and I don't want that. I want it to sit behind the tree trunk. So if you work the background first and slowly move forwards, you will get that perspective where areas overlap and physically sit in front of each other to make the background areas particularly fall away. 40. Choosing Colours: So having downloaded your documents and printed your templates, these templates are what you will use to transfer on your design. So if you go back to our original course that looks at the different methods of transferring on. You can see how you would start with this paper template and work through those processes to transfer on. In this instance, because I have used a lightweight fabric, I was able to simply trace on my design, which was very handy. If you use fabrics that are different to me, you might need to use a different method. I would recommend tracing or the pants and painting method. With your design transferred onto your fabric. You can go back to this template and use it to do the next thing which is a coloring in a coloring in a design like this, is really useful because it gives you a starting point, an idea of where to go. And it allows you to troubleshoot the balance of colors on paper. So it's really an essential stage, but you don't just have to do one if you have multiple ideas of where the colors could go or multiple color palettes that you are considering working with. The coloring in Canal help you visualize the end piece so you can print extras if you need to do multiple colorings. The approach to this doesn't have to be particularly complicated or sophisticated. This is just regular printer paper from my printer. I have a very simple set of coloring pencils that I could use. Coloring pencils tend to be my preference. If I make a mistake, I can generally color over the top of them quite easily. I have a slightly bigger set that a little bit more sophisticated. I do have some felt-tip pen as you can use those as well. The permanent CEO of them is a little bit too much for me. I much prefer using the coloring pencils and as I said, it doesn't have to be a big set. A small set will work just as well, providing you have most of the key colors. How do I choose my colors? Well, you can take inspiration from the motif itself. Something like a jellyfish. I might be inclined to doing pale blue or purpley colors just to give it a little bit contrast against the fabric. You can have green seaweed, yellow for sand, green for hills, brown for trunks, that kind of thing. But you don't have to do that. And color seems to be one of the things that my students worry most about. I always say the same things to my students. You know, more about color than you give yourself credit for. All have items in our house that we have bought because we think they're beautiful. So you can look to the things that you have and see the colors in them. Simply use them as a reference point. So here we have green, blue, and a yellow. You can see it's predominantly green and blue with little accents of yellow. That's actually a really good tip. Choosing two key families and one accent color that you use very simply in sparingly across a piece is a really good approach. You can see this has a lot more colors in it. You've got greens and yellows and reds and pinks. Somehow they're all working together and they're all very bright and vibrant. Here we have clashing colors, contrast in colors that seem to somehow create this beautiful effect. Here we have some purple, yellow, and pink. And whilst pink isn't necessarily my favorite color, I actually hate it. I could turn the box over and go with purple, green, and yellow. They would work just as well. You can see the vibrancy of this color palette just works beautifully. I can even swap out the yellow, putting a touch of orange instead. Here we have felt picture with blue, red, green, yellow. I could choose any of those colors and I would put together a lovely color palette. 41. Using a Colour Wheel: So if you wanted to challenge yourself a bit more, you could refer to a color wheel to help you select the colors. Now, you can buy things like this which are really useful. You can see all the different colors around the outside. And often in, when you buy things like this, the middle moves and it has a few reference points for you. So simply choosing colors that sit opposite each other in the color wheel can give you a very striking effect. Similarly, if you choose a color and then look to the opposites, and then the two colors either side it making that triangle across the color wheel. You can choose three colors that will again, will work very nicely. You can choose colors that are separated equally across the color wheel. There are many, many, many, many ways of using the color wheel to select your colors, but you don't have to buy something like this. You could stitch your own if you wanted to. Do a coloring in, you could use paints, pens, pencils to do your own version of something like this on paper, which is always a useful thing to do. But realistically, you could just search for a color wheel on your favorite search engine. And it will come up on whatever device you're using. That's really handy to know if you're in a shop looking to buy threads or fabrics. So where does all this information leave us in conjunction to what we're doing? Well, you need to remember that we are working in that eight inch hoop. There's, the designs are sized to go in an eight inch hoop, which means we actually have quite a small surface area to cover. So going wild with our colors is going to make things crowded and confusing and can be quite challenging to do. So, keeping it simple is really the key idea. And if you want to work with the color wheel, looking at the complimentary, split complimentary or triadic way of doing things is actually a really simple approach. You could have potentially three colors. So here I have a pink, grainy blue, and an orange. And what I could do with those is choose two main colors and a small accent that I use infrequently. And you can see I've done something similar with these samples down here. Actually, if we look carefully, this first sample here in blue is just one color. I decided with this exercise I was going to choose a single color that I would use repeatedly throughout each of my motifs. The idea being that I could then build my color palette out from there. So this is just monotone. It's one color which I then chosen a couple of different shades off. Here, I've done the split complimentary, which is blue and orange. And I've just worked my way from there. Once you've chosen your colors, how do you proceed? Well, again, due to the small size, keeping your color palette small and limited is a good idea. So say for instance, I decide I want to use purple is one of my key colors. Purple is lovely color. It's one of my favorites. So if I look across, I could do a very simple color palette of purple and yellow. So I have my purple thread, which isn't exactly the same color as the color wheel, but that doesn't matter because I'm working in the ballpark. I have a purple and I have a yellow, which is slightly more golden in tone, suggests down here. And actually that's showing up on the camera screen as oranges, not in reality, it's more of a golden yellow. 42. Building a colour Palatte: So could I just stitch a piece in just these two colors? Well, theoretically, yes, I could, but it would look quite flat. Although the colors would work quite well together, it would lack dimension. So really what I want to do is adding a darker and a lighter shade. And once again, in-person, these colors work a little bit better than they appear on camera. But I also want to match those colors with in the yellow. So I have a slightly darker and a slightly lighter tone to those as well. Now, what this essentially gives me is a dark medium and light. It's a very, very simple color palette, but having dark, medium, and light in both of my colors will allow me to create areas of light and dark. So I am, I will have something that then travels between the two so that it doesn't just look stripy. So I can create areas where sunlight is falling and where shadow is forming, which will help me to achieve those dimension and interest and depth within my piece. With just these two alone, I can actually make quite an interesting color palette. If however, I wanted to expand my color palette, I could look to this triadic, these three color version. Look at my complimentary color and then looked at the two colors around it where I could introduce some green and some orange. This two would make a really lovely color palette. Now having nine colors in a piece, the size we're gonna be looking at might be a little bit too much. So I really want to choose one of these is an accent. The most vibrant is the orange. So I think I might be inclined to use that as the accent, which would just be used as a highlight in places to really make everything pop. One final thing to check with all these colors before I decide this is my color palette is you can see I've just lined them up there. What I'm trying to do is match the intensity of the colors. I'm comparing them to make sure that they are around the same darkness and around the same lightness and around the same medium tone. And they all look about right? The purple maybe as a touch dark. But it's not too much that I don't think I need to swap out. The orange here is a little bit lighter than the others you can see. But with my orange, I'm actually thinking of using accents. So your accent is a color that you add a new spec or through in places just to make everything pop and tie together. But you only need one of them. So the mid tone or the middle of your color palette, which is why having odd numbers is a really good idea because you can always tell what the middle of your color palette is. So often it's the mid tone, the middle color. That is the best option because whilst it doesn't exactly match the intensity of the light and darkens, it would blend quite nicely with the other two. So it's a sort of neutral, almost is like a neutral intensity of color that will work with the rest of your color palette. So I can now take these two away and put them to one side. So just before I sign off and decide this is it, this is the color palette I want to use. I just want to check that the colors work nicely through each other. If I want to shade, I don't want anything being too higher contrast because that will look stripy and it won't look right. So the way to do that is to take your threads and twist them together. And what you're looking for is contrast. So that wasn't too bad. What I don't want is something that almost looks like a candy canes stripes. So with the darkest and lightest colors, it is very stripy there. You can very easily see there are two different ones. But if you compare the mid and the lighter tone, it's a lot more subtle. There is a little bit of striping this there, but that's mainly because I'm using the host gain. Normally when I do this, I will split down into a single strand. And I will twist the single strands together because I more frequently used my threads individually rather than groups. And if I do that, it is a much more subtle effect. But unfortunately, you can't see it because the threads are so fine. So I have to do it in the whole scheme for in-person. They definitely run through each other quite nicely as did the greens. So I would say that's actually a lovely color palette that whilst won't look entirely natural or like it's from the natural world. It will all come together and pop quite nicely. The colors I've just chosen a very bright and vibrant and have these very pure clean colors, much like the top left-hand corner here. This would be referred to as a hue HUD, because when looking at something like this, you would go, this is blue. This is very much blue. It's that pure clean color. If you come down here into the bottom left-hand corner, you have the tint, which is the same color, but it's just been mixed with a bit of white to make it slightly lighter. So you might describe this as Postel. Over here. In the top right-hand corner, we have a much darker shade on screen. It looks almost black, is a very dark blue, but this has been mixed with some black. This is the shade to make this darker. But again, it is the same blue. It's just had this touch of black added to it. If you look down here in the bottom right-hand corner, this is a result of tinting and shading or mixing gray into the hue to create this color. Now in person, this looks almost green. This one is very much a pale pastel blue and this is almost gray. In fact, this one here, I would, if I were to just look at this without knowing that this has been stitched deliberately to represent the hue, shade, tint and tone. I would look at that and say that's definitely great. It's not blue at all. So what's happening here is this corner, this top left-hand corner in the hue is actually affecting all of the other colors and it's draining them of their vibrancy there, their color value. Essentially. If I were to cover that up, the colors in person particularly do change. I don't think it's coming through on the camera, but the colors will actually change. So with that in mind, Do we have to study everything in these very bright colors? Well, I would say that's a personal choice. I have, as you can see, a preference for very bright colors. It comes through a lot in my work. I tend to think of these as dirty, dusty colors and the pastels always seem a little bit. I don't, I just kinda weak to me, but again, that's a personal opinion. If you have a preference for things that are slightly more antiques or vintage, these two would be the two to go to. If you wanted something softer, the pastor would be a good one to go to. But what I would never do is take a primary hue color like this and mix it with something that is toned, shaded, or tinted. I would not necessarily have a bright color in a range of pastels. Again, personal preference. It's not necessarily you enroll and if it is, rules are made to be broken so you can make your own choice on that. But I have a preference for working in either one of these types of threads and not mixing them together. If in doubt. Start with your favorite color. Just as I did. Purple is one of my absolute favorites. And using my color wheel, I've been able to establish that I can use either a yellow or green and orange. 43. Planning Colour: With my colors, decided, what I can now do is go back to my stitch plan and decide which one I'm going to use those colors on. So I think it might be this one here. Then I can look to my coloring pencils and find myself. I've actually got two purposes here. I'm just going to check the colors just on the edge. And actually both of those might be useful. I can then look to my oranges. Checking the color again, you will not find an exact match for your threads in pencil. You're looking for an approximation you're looking for as close as you can. So the two purples, the dark one will work very well for the darker color in my range, and probably the medium tone if I press lightly. But it's probably not going to go light enough for my lightest color. So I've taken my loci one as well. And what I can do is if I need to approximate the color, I can mix the two together a little bit. For my green. A couple of options. That one's not too bad, but I think I might need a second one. Because that's quite slimy. Again, I can probably mix those two together to get the color preference I want. So I can now sit here and coloring my piece in my chosen colors. So here's a little trick for you. If you do this coloring in process with your stitch plan, you can actually refer to the stitches and almost draw them in. So for instance, up here in the top leaf in this thin section, I've actually suggested Van **** stitch. So rather than just coloring in that area solidly, I can actually draw a solid line down the middle and have those spikes coming off of it. That will give me more of an idea of how the stitch will sit in that area, how much color will go down in that area? Because if I color it solidly, I'm actually not representing the stitch. So if for instance, I want to use my purple range up in this top area, how do I make the choice as to which one? You really want to think about where light is falling in the design. Which seems like it could be a quite a unnerving. 44. Colour Plans for the Resolved Motifs: This is my completed coloring in. It's not a perfect work of art, but then it doesn't need to be. I have blocked in the solid areas and try to draw in my stitches where it's appropriate to do so. And I've got to say, I don't love it. I really don't. I have done the classic thing that around 50% of my students do in, I've gone away. I've had a play with the colors on paper. I've had to think about it. And I just don't love those colors. Theoretically, they should work, but I'm just not feeling it to be honest with you. I have decided that I'm going to look at something else so we can get rid of this one. And I have been playing around with some other colors. And whilst it doesn't look particularly impressive, my coloring in isn't great. But again, it's just about blocking in the major colors and seeing how they're going to fit together and balanced as well. You want to make sure that you're getting a nice distribution of the colors. In this instance, I have actually gone back to my ideas for inspiration and I have taken the colors from this piece. So this is just workbooks student very kindly gifted to me, which is very clever. And I like the colors, I like the pattern. So I have gone with blue-green and a touch of yellow. I'm going to use this green wool, which is a lot lighter in person than it is. On camera. I have three shades of this stranded cotton which look again on camera it looks gray, but it is actually more of a blue-gray in-person. I have two options for the yellow. And I think I'm leaning towards this one because this is a little bit too bright and vibrant. I think, I think this one is kind of matches the subtlety a bit more. But the last thing I have to do before I start stitching with these is to compare it to my fabric. The fabric I'm using is a beige, yellow color. So I'm a little bit concerned that this might be too close to the fabric itself. So I just want to check to make sure you often find if you have particularly like colors, even though they may not be the same color. So as I say, my fabric is beige, but this blue-gray could be pale enough that it matches the tonal quality of the fabric so it doesn't actually stand out. I'm going to lay them across my fabric to make sure that all of the colors will be seen against the fabric itself. I thought I would show you the other two color palettes. I have. This one. I've tried to go more natural, so I've got green for the seaweed, yellow for the sand. The jellyfish was quite a challenging one because they tend to be white or transparent. But if I were to use white on my fabric, it would look quite odd against that Beijing yellow fabric. But they often have something of a purply lavender hue to them. And it's all to do with the way the light is passing through them and so on. I've actually decided to go with a soft gray. It's kind of a slightly blue purply gray, which I think is going to look really nice. But I want to introduce touches of that across the piece. So I've definitely got some down here. These little dots are gonna be clusters of French knots to break up the texture somewhat. So I'm going to have some gray dotted through there. I might do some whipping or weaving through some of these stitches in the gray just to draw it down a bit, I may need to look at introducing touches through here or possibly through the seeding. But I've tried to go more natural, as I say, green for the seaweed, yellow for the stands and so on. It's not 100% natural or from nature because sound is not really this color. But I'm kind of leaning in that direction as it were. This one I really struggled with. I'm trying to work from my stash of threads if I can, because not to brag, but I've got quite a big stash and I'd like to start working my way through it. But this one, I was looking at lots of different colors and I just didn't feel like I have the right ones. So I tried returning to my color wheel. I'm putting together a nice color palette from that. And to be honest with you, this process of choosing a complimentary or equally spaced, I have used this process so many times that I'm kind of enamel necessarily with the color combinations I'm coming up with because I guess I'm just used to it. So I wanted to find another way. Hence why I've gone with a semi naturalistic. I've taken inspiration from some home furnishing. This time. I decided to go quite off pieced because I have always wanted to work in the gray scale. It has been on my mind for quite some time now. I have the chance to do it with, so I've got five shades. This dark is one on camera looks black is actually not. It's a very dark charcoal gray because much like brilliant, bright white, I don't tend to use like jet-black or real black in pieces. It can be a little bit harsh. So I'm going to work on the gray scale for this. Which means making sure that I get the light falling in the right way is going to be imperative. So this is going to be a little bit of a challenge for me and I'm quite excited about it. You can see I've gone with much darker colors and threads down the bottom. My light's coming in from up here. So these areas are going to be much lighter across the top. I'm quite excited for this one. It's going to be quite interesting. I've laid out all of the threads that I will use for each of the three projects. And obviously they're not all going on this one my teeth, but you can see I'm straightaway. The gray scale not gonna be a problem with contrast against the fabric. That is all dark enough that it's going to stand out. The Blues could be an issue, particularly this lighter one. Although I'm actually intending to use the stranded cotton in more than just a single strand for the stitches I have planned in this color. And when you have multiple strands, you end up with a deeper, darker, denser color. So it shouldn't be too much of a problem. Also, the contrast, again, is better in person. The lighting, I have the camera kinda blowing out these as paler than they actually are. But again, with multiple strands, it should be fine. This one up here. Purply gray, blue-gray that I have for the jellyfish. Again, quite pale, not as bad as the blue down here. But again, multiple strands and needle shouldn't be an issue. The yellows appear fine. Yellow's going down into a kind of creamy beige on this type of fabric. Probably the biggest issue I would be facing. So overall, this quick comparison, I'm quite happy that they're all going to work against the fabric and I'll just have to keep an eye on the very pale blue and the gray. 45. Reviewing and Comparing the Colour Palettes: You may have noticed across all my coloring in that I haven't really specified the colors for the outlines. So along I think it's this hillock down in the bottom left-hand corner. I think I'm gonna be putting in a stem stitch is some sort of whipped chain. I think you're going across the tree trunk. Now the reason I haven't done that is because a coloring over black lines like this is really difficult. The color often doesn't show up. So it's more obvious here where I have put in the fly stitch on these two bigger lines. I've actually colored to one side of the black lines so I can see the green striped going down. My drawing actually looks a little bit messy as a result because the line has broadened and it just looks not very nice. The other reason for doing it is because I can actually make those decisions after the larger blocks of color had been put in place. And actually that's a useful trick to know because this is a guide, this is a starting point. It's supposed to get you going on your stitching. It's actually not hard and fast. If you start putting down color or in this place, in this instance tone, you might find that it's not actually quite working. It doesn't, it doesn't feel right, you're not happy with it, that kind of thing. Making adjustments as you go can help you create a better piece. Saving the outlines and details such as the couching stitches for late work. Possibly the French knots tends to be an accent stitch up here you can see I've actually drawn some chain stitch flowers in each of the scallops. That's an option. I don't necessarily have to do it, but it's an option. Having details like that, that you can make a judgment call when you've got large blocks of color in, is actually a really good idea because it can help with the distribution of your colors to make sure that they are evenly applied. Or in this instance, the tones are applied in such a way that it gives you the appropriate light fall. So I'm going to hold off on making those decisions. And you may notice that many of the outlining stitches, such as the helix around the jellyfish, the Van **** stitch there. They come later in the stitch plan. They won't necessarily happen straight away. There are instances where you will not need an additional outlining stitch. So anywhere you have an outlining stitches are filling stitch. So that's chain, stem stitch, backstitch, that kind of thing. Essentially, the filling is outlining itself. So my first line of stitching here, we'll go onto the pink line. Well, with it on the paint line, the pink line is covered. There is no need to add additional stitching. So there will be times when an outlining stitches unnecessary when you start making decisions about adding in color for the outlining stitches across your piece. I will show you how I do it, but I like to make decisions quite fast and snappy. If it doesn't seem to me straight away, I tend to dismiss it and go with something else. And that's a good way of approaching your color palettes as well. Making decisions quickly and confidently will get you to a better result. If you start to question, think about second-guess, you can end up confusing yourself. So on a personal level, I really liked to make those decisions quite quickly. And as I said in a previous video, providing you haven't started stitching, you can change your colors right up until the last moment. So as I said, the color plan is an essential step. It gives you a starting point to place your color, but it is also flexible so you can change things as you go. I tend to block in the bigger areas first, and then that will influence how the other colors. You could say something quite similar about the stitches. So for instance, down here in the bottom left-hand corner, I think I am planning to use a stem stitch equally. A backstitch or chain stitch could work there. And it would look quite lovely. Up here in the jellyfish. I think I'm actually using a backstitch. Now my alternative up there would be a stem stitch. The reason why I would choose a stem stitch over a chain stitch is because chain tends to be that broader stitch. It tends to sit quite wide, can look heavy and chunky. And for a light, soft objects like a jellyfish, that might just be too heavy and hard. There is potential for it to work if I were using a very fine threads. So maybe one or two strands of stranded cotton. But I think realistically my only alternative would be a stem stitch. There is some flexibility in the stitches, particularly outlines. Again, your stitch plan you should be sticking to. But you also have some movement and leeway with as well. 46. Placing Colour in Stitch: So with this motif, I'm going to be starting in the hillock down the bottom here. And it's quite a large area. I know from my coloring it in that I'm going to be using the green palette that I have. Because I have such a large shape there, I can actually get all three of my colors in. If I were working in this smaller area, like a bird, I would have to look at user using either smaller threads or fewer colors. But in this bigger area down the bottom, I can definitely get all three in. But where did my colors go? So my light source is coming in from the top left-hand corner. You can see as you get further down, there will be less light coming into the bottom area. So having a touch of my light through this bit where more light would be hitting, it makes sense. Moving through to my mid tone somewhere around this section underneath the bird makes sense because the bird would be costing something of a shadow. Down here in the corner, is where the least amount of light is getting too, because we have all of these other things that would be casting a shadow. So it makes sense in this instance because my light is coming from the left, go from light to dark across here. As I say, I know given its large area, I can actually fit all three of those colors in. So we also know from framing up, a really good approach to starting anything is if in doubt middle out. And that actually applies in here as well. I told you that car for a couple of times. And this is a really good example of it. By starting in the center of my shape. I can actually set a really nice angle that I can then mimic. Either way, I'm going to start by casting on in the middle of the shape. And again, if in doubt middle out, I'm using my mid tone. I'm going to use my two stitch cast on. Bring my needle up in the pencil line. And when I do this, I'm actually looking to bring my needle up in the middle of the pencil line. That way, I know I am going to get coverage of my pencil line. I will put an outlining stitch on this. When I put that outlining stitch on, is going to cover the rest of the pencil line for me and the two are just going to slightly overlap. So I know that I'm not gonna have any issues at all covering my pencil line. Now, this first stitch is going to cover the tale of my bird, but that's fine because the stitches I put in on the tail will actually help to hold the laid-back down. And the line is quite simple. It just comes off of the bird's wing and down. I can, if I need to as well, hot my laid work to see where that line sits. If I want to follow it accurately when I come to put those stitches in. I like to hold my late thread across the shape. And in this instance, because I do have a bottom line, I want to make sure that I'm roughly in line with this section here. Now, I've said before, I don't particularly like hard lines on a piece like this. So I'm actually going to do is move my needle up away from where I just plunged. So there's a fairly decent gap for five mils, something like that. Then I'm going to take my needle backup and plunger in the center of my pencil line. I'm going to keep working like that. This time I might go a tad longer. So what I'm going to end up with is an edge that is slightly varied, but all falls roughly around this imaginary line along here. Well, I don't want to do is have a few stitches around here and then have one of them come right down to the bottom where you can see my finger that is centrally the bottom of the frame. If I have one stitch that comes all the way down here, if I were to melt this or frame it in some way, I would have to take that into account. And then it could look strange in the frame because I'd have a bigger section down here than I would on the other sides. So keeping your stitches varied, but around the same ballpark is quite important. So I'm going to work my way across filling in the late work shading using that laid work principle that we've seen before. And as I say, just varying this bottom edge and probably the side edge, but sticking quite rigidly to the top edge of my hillock. Making sure that I plunge the needle and bring it back up in the center of the pencil line. So the shape is now complete. And you can see I've varied the bottom edge as I described earlier. The median line, lines up with the edge of my pencil line here. And you can see at the edges on the right-hand side, I've repeated that process. I've buried where I've bought the needle up and punished it and brought it to a squared off effect. It's not quite squared off, but that's what I'm going for. It gives you a semblance of an edge without it actually being a hard straight edge. Along the top here, I have plunged my needle to the paint line in the middle of my paint or pencil line in this case, and try to be as accurate as possible. Now, you can see I've got a little bit of a dent in there and it's a little bit weirdly up the top here as well, but that's fine because I will outline late work later. It does look better with some sort of outline. Even though I know going into this, I knew I was going to outline this stitch. I still paid close attention to where I was plunging my needle and how it related to the stitch next to it. I've actually worked quite hard to create a smoother line as I can, which in late work is not easy. So if you don't get a smooth line first-time, don't worry about it. But taking my time to be as accurate as possible in this stitch, even though I know the edges will be covered, actually helps improve my stitching. Generally, if I pay attention to needle placement with every stitch, the next stitch will be better. The stitch after that will be better. And that's true of technique as well. If you pay attention to what you're doing, you will just get better at stitching generally. So even though this line is always going to be covered, I'm always going to pay great attention to it to try and make it the best I can, because that has a knock-on effect on the rest of my work. 47. Working a Tapered Shape: I've started work in the bird's body and I'm actually going to be treating this as a, what we refer to as a tapering shape. Now overall, the shape is fairly consistent in width, but it's more the angles that are concerning. If I were to start up here on the head and follow this shape, I would end up with this kind of strange thing happening all the way down. So what I'm actually going to do, and you can see I've made a start. I'm going to work one side and then I'm going to switch and work the other. Then I will go back and work the original side and then come back up here to the head and work a second row. And you're just going to flip flop between the two. You're gonna go back-and-forth working a single row at a time. Remembering in this instance with the stem stitch to throw your loop to the same side each time. And you will slowly fill in and you then kinda deal with any gaps when you get there. This is most commonly used on branches or tree trunks or something like that. But that's what I'm gonna do with not only tapering shapes, but this type of odd shape as well. As I'm placing my needle, I'm actually using quite a fine thread. And I have concerns about covering my pencil lines. I'm actually, when I place my needle, I'm actually airing to the slightly outer side of the pencil line. I'm not stitching outside of the pencil line itself. I'm still actually following it. So I'm not stitching outside of my shape. I'm just when I place my needle, it's erring more towards the outside of the pencil line. I'm not trying to place the needle down the dead center, if that makes sense. The reason I'm doing this is because I want to cover my pencil line. I worked down the very middle of the pencil line. I may not. So if I slightly towards, in this instance, the right-hand side of the pencil line, I've got more hope of covering it. Now the reason I'm doing that is because I'm using such a fine thread. I've got two strands of stranded cotton. If I were using the wall down here, it would be no issue. The wall is much thicker. So I could just work down the middle of my paint line and it would be fine. Now I've got quite a sharp bend here in the top of the head. So what I'm actually going to do is finished my line of stitching with a half stitch because I'm working in stem stitch at this point, I'm going to restart the stitch. And that's purely because stem stitch and won't come around a sharp angle like that. So I'm finishing off one row with the half stitch and starting a new one with a half stitch and whole stitch. And you can just see there where it's ended. When I'm butting up to align, I'm going to work right up to it and just encroaching into it very slightly. If I plunge too far away, I could end up with a gap. If I plunge just slightly into it, whatever stitches I put in shape eventually should either meet it or cover it. And then again, you've got an outlining stitch that will cover the join as well. What you don't want to see once the stitching is complete is little bits of open fabric where the lines haven't quite been brought together properly. With this done, this side done, I'm going to come back and work another row on the bottom. And then I will go back up to the top of the head. 48. Adding New Rows to a Tapered Shape: So at this point, I have worked six rows, three on the bottom and three at the top. I started on the bottom pencil line and work that in its entirety and then worked at the top pencil line in its entirety as well. I've just keep flicking between the two. I'll work one down here, one at the top, and slowly filling in. So along this top line, particularly it's completely full. And then as you come further down, you can see there's a gap here. But where does that gap stopped? Well, in-person, it's much easier to see then is on camera. So I can tell you definitely up the top, it is full. But what I'm actually doing now is just very gently running my needle between the rows. And there's a distinct point where the needle flips down about here. So that's probably three or four stitches from the top. So I think I can actually slip in a row starting about there. So I've got my needle and thread ready to go. I'm using two strands of the same color, so I can use the loop method, start on the cost on which is quite useful. I'm just going to take that through to the back, pull all of that through so it's disappeared. And then I'm going to bring my needle up between those rows. And if I bring my needle out at quite a steep angle, slightly higher up, I'm going to bring my needle up at our slides steep angle to make my first stitch. Then I'm going to carry on making the stem stitch is normal. And it should just locked down between the two. And if I need to, you can see I'm just using my fingernail there to pull the stitches out of the way so I can get the thread in, my needle out. And I will just slip in an extra row, which is going to sit along the bottom. So it's actually going to follow the green down. You can see there it just slots in quite nicely. And you'll just have an extra thread of color coming down. So you have to do that periodically. You have to look, see where the line starts. Because realistically the first gap QC is actually down here, not up here. But I know from experience that there's often more space than you realize between the threads. Then actually as I say, looking at in-person, you can see there's some sort of opening here which is not coming through on camera. And I know again from experience that that opening tends to start slightly higher up. I'm going to work the line of stem stitch down, throwing my loop in the same direction and just filling in that gap. Now with this done, let me scroll down a bit further. With this done, I absolutely will not need to put in any more rows in this top section above. My wandering tendril here now is complete, so I'll be concentrating my time on the lower section. So you can see I've added more rows into my tapering shape. My start point, it's difficult to see, but my start point is now about here, having dropped a couple of levels as I filled it in. And I can continue adding rows. And again, like my start point will drop as I fill in and add more. And they'll get to a point where I have a small triangular section down here. I can continue adding in rows working one side and then the other going back to the original side, adding in another and so on until that's full. And it will, should leave me with essentially a line down the middle. It will not be particularly distinct at the top because the start points are so staggered. But as you get down here, you will start to see a kind of indentation, essentially where the lines meet. And that's a perfectly good way to fill in an area like this. So if you do end up with this triangle here, you could switch to another stitch. So I've had little hollows like this filled in with clustered French knots. There's another stitch you can do called bullion knots. I've seen seeding or you could switch to another stitch entirely. You could do some pistil stitch or some chain stitch. You could fill in in rows of chain if you wanted to. You don't have to fill this whole section in. And when you have larger pieces that have broader areas like this that make up a tree trunk or similar. Actually breaking up the textures like that can be a good thing. It can just help to vary the texture is a little bit and add more interest. You can switch out colors as well. So you could go darker to make this look like the hollow in a tree. You could just use a contrasting color to make interest As all sorts of ways you could treat it. I think for this example though, I'm probably just going to keep filling in with possibly the same stitch I might switch to another, but it will be something similar just to fill in the last of the shape. So my first row of chain stitches in. And it actually looks quite sweet. It slowly becomes more prominent as you come down the trunk. Now my intention was to work chain stitch on this side and then working chain stitch on the other side, much like I've been doing with the stem stitch. Unfortunately, my gap starts up here and doesn't really broaden until about here, which is the ideal place to be putting in the chain. This gap, this tiny, tiny gap up here, down and it probably actually extends a little bit further up. This is too small for chain stitch until I get to about here. So what I've now decided to do because of that limitation, what I've decided to do is work alternating sides, chain stitch, stem stitch. So I will put stem stitch in down here. But then when I come back to this side, I'm going to work stem so that I can work chain on this side. So I'm going to alternate between the two sides and the stitches to fill it all in. My first row of chains stitches in and it looks quite sweet. It's slowly emerges from the stem and becomes more prominent as it comes further down, which is really nice. I have a very slim gap next to it, which is only really broad enough to accommodate chain from about here downwards. Unfortunately, that would leave me with a gap of fabric. So what I'm going to do on this side, the top side of the tree is work a rough stem, so it probably actually extends up to about here. I'm going to work a rough stem on this side down to the right and then work around stem on the left-hand side before I go back and work chain on the right-hand side. So I'm going to be alternating sides and stitches. So I can slowly bring the two together and accommodate the different widths because the chain stitches we've discussed before as much broader than the stem. So I can switch between the two to fill in the shape. 49. Working around an overlapping line: So in this area, I have two things going on. I have a tapering shape. You can see it's getting wider down here and it gets wider as you go further down. This is actually the main trunk of my tree. I'm going to treat it like a tapering shape. In that when I complete this row, I will work the outside row. And then I will come back and work the next row on the inside of the one you can see I'm working on there. The added thing to this shape particularly is I have this overlying line that will move from behind and in front of my branch. So ideally I want to leave space for that. So what I'm actually going to do is plunge my needle up to this pencil line. As it comes across. I'm not actually plunging in it and plunging up against it. And because I'm working a stem stitch, I'm actually going to end my stem stitch there and bring the needle up on the other side of the pencil line, leaving a very small gap. And I'm going to recommence with that half stitch. Remembering to pull my thread the appropriate side to make sure I have a continuous angle on my stitch. If I were working a chain stitch, I would do essentially the same thing. I would drop my needle down over the last loop to catch it in place and then just again restart on the other side. You want to leave enough of a gap that whatever stitch you are putting in can sit neatly in it. If you were to fill this shape solidly, you could end up with the stitch looking like it's stepping up and over the stitches. Now it depends on what stitch you're putting in. Sometimes that effect doesn't appear at all. I think I've had it with a stitch called coral not stitch, which looks like French knots with a bar in between. If you place the boss strategically. It can often disguise the fact that it's lifting up and over the stitches. But we're gonna be doing I think a chain stitch over this one. So you don't want it to look like it's stepping up. So we're going to leave that little groove. And we do that by stitching up to the line and coming up on the other side of it, leaving a very, very small gap. Because the gap is so small, you can actually just travel behind and you're not going to have to worry about long stitches stretching on the back. 50. Blending using securing stitches: I've worked a segment of Van **** and I decided I wanted to do a color blend. So I'm going to make one more stitch and plunge as normal and bring my needle up a short distance away. So that keeps it out of the way. I just want to check to make sure that my Van **** is sitting centrally and it is before I make the next stitch. Now the problem I have is that this stitches still loose. Which means as I'm trying to include this new color that you can see I've just cost on here and he's sitting here out of the way. This stitch could pull loose and I might have to keep tweaking it. So what I'm actually going to do instead, instead of doing that, which can be kind of annoying, I'm going to bring my needle up on my paint line, make a small stab stitch into said paint line. And we park my thread. And what's happening is this little stab stitch is securing everything. So this isn't going to pull anymore. I can still slip my needle underneath it, but the stitch is not going to pull out, which is very useful. Now you don't have to do this for every blend. You'll notice when, if you go back and look at the fly stitch tutorial, you'll notice I didn't have to do that because the fly stitch is complete in itself. It holds itself in place so I don't have to do little stub stitches like that. But in this instance I do. Now, if you were doing something similar in chain stitch, you would actually complete the chain. So you'd do that couching stitch to hold the last loop down and then bring your new color up to make a single stitch, which again you would just catch down. So effectively you work a series of Lazy Daisy is all connected to each other, and then you carry on in your new color. So to do that, I'm going to unpack my needle, come up on the correct side, slide the needle under as I would do normally. Plunge. I would do normally so about there. And again, make that couching stitch on my paint lines because this is an open stitch. It's open at the sides, will be covered. So it was an open stitch. This paint line will be covered and I know that that couching stitch will be covered as well. And then I can continue making as many or as few blending stitches as I want to. Catching each one down as I make it. 51. Starting in a tricky area: So here I have a tricky line. My thread comes out from underneath the tree trunk and then goes over the top and then disappears underneath. So working this can be challenging, like fitting it into when it happens in your stitch plan can be quite challenging. The easiest time to do it is after the main shape has been filled. Mostly because you have this longer section here that you'll be working across. If you were to try and plan your needle against that. Each, with each row of the stitching here, you've got greater opportunity to catch and distort your stitches if you were to put the stitching in ahead of time. So the better way to do it is to leave just a small gap across each line so that you can then stitch over the top of it. So this section, which is more prominent and more obvious to the viewer, is going to sit nicely over the top of this stitching. It's already in place. But we want to make sure that where we work here, we're bringing your needle out. We're not going to distort the stitches that are already in place. Now, you can see I've just cost on just here. Now when I normally bring my needle up, it comes pretty much straight up out of the fabric because I'm coming out from my line, comes out from underneath the stitching that's already in place, but I actually want to do is bring my needle down quite steep angle, usually about 45 degrees to the fabric. That way. When I pull my needle out, it is, the thread itself is just coming out from underneath the bed of stitching. It's already in place. So there should be no gap here. My thread actually is coming out just under this row stitching. I shouldn't be able to see any fabric between the trunk and the chain stitch. I'm I'm just about to work. Now when I take my needle back in, again, I want to take it in at 45-degree before I make my stitch. Now I can put it all through. And it's not just the chain stitch. This will work for any stitch. You can if you're gentle, get your fingernail in and just pull the threads out of the way as well. If you want to. Now, when I come down to here, I'm gonna do the same thing in reverse in that when I take my needle down, it's going to go in at that steep angle again, just like I did when completing the chain up here, it's gonna go in a quite steep angles. So again, the thread is disappearing under this bed of stitching, so there'll be no gaps. So I've just finished this row chain stitch and tucked my needle nicely under the bed of stitching that's already in place. And ideally, I want to come up here and carry on, except this space is too big to travel my needle over. It's probably just over a centimeter wide, so it's too big. My thread is actually quite short, so I probably want to cast it off anyway. Now, I have two choices. I can angle the needle out from underneath the stem stitch very close by to where fish just here. Or if I'm very careful and I don't pierce the chain itself, I can actually make my stitches within the chain. Again, you just have to be careful that you don't stitch through what's already in place. And leave to cubic hole. And I can then just trim my thread. 52. Overview of the finished pieces: So you can see I've now completed all of the motifs and my sampling square. I'm actually going to take you through each of the individual motifs, how I did them stage by stage. But just at this point before you guys start stitching, I wanted just to say that you don't have to use the same color palettes that I've used. You don't have to use stranded cotton in a natural color palette in the jellyfish motif, you could take inspiration from the natural color palette using wool threads and work in the two can design. Similarly, I could take the monochromatic color palette, work it in stranded cotton. In the two can or any of the other motifs you can mix and match. I encourage you to do that. I encourage you to select your own thread, select your own color palettes. Realistically, what's easiest still available for you is going to be the best bet to work in. So I encourage you to look past what I've done and take inspiration from the methodology and the principles we've talked through. Similarly, I just wanted to make a note that in all instances where I'm working with wool, I've used a single-strand. I've used multiple strands of stranded cotton in the needle. And I've roughly used for strands of stranded cotton to equal one strand of wool. With the exception obviously, of the sampling which you saw me do in all of the previous videos. 53. Jelly Fish Stage 1: This is the sample I'm gonna be working entirely in stranded cotton. And again, I started in those back or underneath areas. First, up here in the jellyfish. I have worked Van **** in the two outer and middle tentacles. And then I've got a bit heavier in the middle with the two broader ones. And I've used the plants is stem stitch, but I've actually alternated between stem and outline stitch. And then down the middle, I noticed I had a fairly sizable gap in this one and a slightly smaller gap in this tentacle. And what I've actually done is just thrown in some backstitch down the middle. I I couldn't decide if I should put stem or outlined down the middle because either one I did would match its neighbor on one side or the other. So rather than lose the patterning I was making, I decided to use the back stitch instead. And of course, I encountered that problem because I was treating it as a diminishing shape. So I worked the outside edges, the top one and then the bottom one first. And then I went back and work. The second row is in the same way. So I was working from the outside in, as I say, I made the decision to throw in some backstitch. In this instance, I've used a single-strand for the Van **** and two strands for the stem stitch. If you are using thicker threads or thinner threads, you may find that you can work extra rows of stem stitch and you won't encounter the problem I had. If you're working with thicker threads, you may find you only need one row each on either side. And then a row of backstitch down the middle. Filling in shape flux shapes like this will come down to the threads and the quantity of threads that you have in the needle. Down here in the back sand dune. I have worked seeding quite densely, work together. I have worked in two strands, two colors. So along the top edge is my medium shade, and down here is the darker shade. I do have a little section through the middle where I've blended them. So I've worked with two needles and just randomly worked the two different colors next to each other. And it roughly works out about the roughly the top third is in the pale color. The middle third is the mix, and then the bottom third is the dark. I've also outlined it in backstitch with the middle color. Because I want to save the lighter color for this front hillock. I'm actually going to work all three shades in this front, not hillock, sand dune. So I think in a couple of areas, my seeding stitches have gotten a little bit bigger and I think it's through these narrow sections here, which is actually perfectly normal. I've experienced this before and I think it's just a kind of unconscious effort to try and fill the space because you have such small spaces to be working in that you unconsciously make your stitches a little bit bigger? I haven't measured them. I'm I'm quite sure that they are bigger here and here in comparison to the other two. If I start measuring them and looking to take them out and rework it, I'm probably going to get myself a little bit paranoid and I don't want that, I want to enjoy the process. I also think that once I put in the stem stitch through here in the seaweed, I think it's going to diminish. I don't think it's gonna be noticeable at all because the stitching in these three shapes is going to be probably higher. I'm thinking, I'm thinking I'm going to use more threads in the needle for these areas. But it also the shading in it will just hopefully cause this to fall into the background. So I think it should be less noticeable. And sometimes even when you're doing a result motif and you're doing your best, you still have to be willing to let some things go. And it is seeding. It's a background element and it's probably gonna be overshadowed by these three. So I'm happy just to let that go. And just again in the future, just really try and work on keeping that as those seedlings stitches as consistent in length as I can. I have at this stage chosen not to outline the Van **** stitch instead, what I'm going to do is work, the layed work and the securing stitches for that. I'm actually thinking of using my lightest yellow for the securing stitches. And I may use the same color to do the outlining of the Van **** that yes. I'm unsure. But I would like to get this information in with the securing stitches before I make that choice. As long as I work the outlines in the correct order. So the Van **** first and then the outlines on the top of the jellyfish. I shouldn't have any problems. They should overlay each other quite nicely because it's the outlines that really are going to help to create that sense of dimension. So I'm going to fill in the later work next. And then I'll make choices as to what I'm doing with color in the tentacles. And again, it's only going to be the Van ****, the three thinner tentacles because the stem stitch outlines itself. 54. Jelly Fish Stage 2: I've now finished the head of the jellyfish and the seaweed. The head of the jellyfish, I worked in two strands. Now this point I could outline both the tentacles and the head of jellyfish itself. Obviously, I would do the Van **** tentacles only because the stem stitch tentacles outline themselves. I would only be doing the sides of the Van **** tentacles because the top will be outlined when I do the rest of the jellyfish head. Now, I could do that next if I wanted to. But because it doesn't over or underlay any of the other elements, I can actually hold off on that until the end because I'm going to now put in a big swath of color through this area, which can actually change the balance of the color across the entire piece. My feeling at the moment is that I might use the very pale yellow, which will be quite a subtle color to have against this gray blue, but it will start to bring in some of the other colors of the piece into the jellyfish so that you have that crossover of color to tie it all together. There is even a small possibility that I might use some of the very pale green. Do the chain stitch across the top of the jellyfish to secure the layed work. At the moment, they seem like good ideas, but again, with the balanced changing through here and here. And then putting in more of the yellow here, I've got a feeling the overall balance will change quite significantly. Particularly through here, I'm gonna be doing a fly stitch, which means I actually can change color. So I will probably go through on this one, particularly all three of my colors. Given that this one is lower down, I might not use as much if any, of the lightest color because obviously it's lower down in the peace, there will be less, less liked getting to it. That could influence the balance of color, which will then influence my choice of outlining colors for the jellyfish. So I'm going to put that off until later. And probably as I say, the very last stitches I put in. Because once again, this shape is not overlaying or underlying any of the others. In this area. I have shaded through all of my greens. On the two outer seaweeds, I have used three strands are stranded cotton in the needle. This center one, I wanted it to fall back slightly. So I've used two strands in the needle, and I've actually used a process called blending in the needle. In cross stitch. It's known as tweeting. So what I've actually done in various places is had more than one color in the needle. In the outer two seaweeds, I've started with three strands with the lightest color. And then the next row, I've worked two strands of the medium color and a single-strand of the lightest color. Then worked a row of three medium, then too dark and one medium. And then dark, just filling in until the shape is full. Obviously with two strands in the needle. I've done two of the lighter color, one each of the light and medium to another medium and so on. So I've just changed the quantities somewhat because I'm using two instead of three strands. But I've actually had two colors in the needle. And it's stitched just fine. When you're using multiple strands, they can often not pull through at the same rate. So I've had to go through and just pull those strands separately on a few occasions just to make sure that everything is nicely together. But overall, I'm quite happy with the final effect there. I think it's getting quite nicely. 55. Jelly Fish Stage 3: The areas of fly stitch on the two longer sections of seaweed and now completed, I've worked them in two strands of stranded cotton and I've used all three of my colors. And I have also used the blending in the needle technique that we saw on here. Because I've only used two strands though. It's two of the color a woman of color, a, color B to a color B, and so on. So the blend is much simpler. I haven't had to worry about ratios so much because it's just swapping out one thread for another. You can see it creates this lovely gradient all the way down. So I've got light at the top, dark down the bottom. Because you're mixing the colors. You don't have to blend them like you would do in the later work. You don't have to Stripe them together in the same way. I have just bought it the sections up against each other. And it still creates quite a smooth affect. That compliments is enhances the way the angle has come around quite nicely on these relatively steep turns. I'm really happy with the way this has gone in to the point where I'm contemplating putting it on the other three because I've just really enjoyed the process. The plan for these is what's next and that's gonna be some backstage with whipping and weaving. So I'm going to put one of those in. See how I feel about it. Might alter or deviate from the plan. Someone will say, I've just really enjoyed, I've sliced it is a favorite of mine anyway, so I just really enjoyed putting that in. But you can see down here in the corner where everything is meeting has the potential to get quite congested. I have in the past worked rows of overlapping fly stitch, so you just kinda keep putting each one in where it needs to go. And it doesn't matter if they are over the top of each other. It can look a little bit congested. And although I have done it, I'm not a huge fan of it. So at the bottom as a compromise, I brought the fly down as far as I can. And in the last three or four stitches, I've actually just rather than work the fly stitch, I've just worked to backstitch because that mimics the couching stitches that go down the center of the fly. So it thins it out a little bit, which means I can bring the whipping and leaving down a bit further without this area getting quite so crowded and an untidy looking. 56. Jelly Fish Stage 4: So step four is now complete with the whipped and woven backstitch in the center here. And I'm actually very happy with this. As I said in the previous video, I was thinking about adding in the feather instead. But I really like the effect this has created. And I like how it's open and the jelly fishes lifting up out of it. It gives it a license, plenty of space to breathe. Now, if I were to do the fly, I would pretty much do it in a similar way I've got here. I would be looking at where the lines sit within the design with these sitting further down in the piece, I might omit or dilute the lighter color. Starting with the mid and going into the dark. So providing you don't make the stitches, the first stitch here too long. And coaching on these shapes here as well as there's a bit closer here. So you've got more danger of it happening here. But as long as the stitches don't encourage too much onto the jellyfish, you could absolutely put the fly-in if you didn't like this effect. I actually really do. I think it's gone in quite nicely as I say, it gives a variety of texture and makes it nice and open. So starting with the backstitch down the middle, I have worked in two strands of the yellow. Up here. On this longer section, I've actually started with two of the lighter shades, mixing 1.1 of the light and the medium, and then going down to the medium down here. And that's because this one sits higher up and more light will be getting to it. This one down here has more shadow from the jellyfish. So I've actually started with combination of the mid and the light tone going to just amid on the back here that is furthest away from where my light is coming in from this top right hand corner, I've actually gone with a combination of the mid and the darkest tone. The darkest tone at the bottom. I've then, which each one of them in a single-strand of the purply gray color I have for the jellyfish, It's a very subtle effect and you can't really see it on camera, but it is there, an in-person, it is a little bit more noticeable. I then gone back and woven all of the lines of whipped backstitch. I've actually used for strands in each instance, the stitches here, the backstitch is a little bit larger, so the Ripley effect is more open and you can see here it's a little bit more compressed and this one kind of sits somewhere between the two. So my stitches down here with very small up here they were bigger and this one they were somewhere in between the two. The colors I've chosen for each of these areas is reflected in the yellow. Through here, I've used a mixture of light and medium. So in the green I've got four strands in total, two of the light to medium color. I've done the same down here as I said, I started with a mix of the light and medium tone going into the medium tone. So I've reflected that again in the green. Two strands, each of light and medium, just together in the needle and woven through here because this is the darker side. I've used two of the medium and two of the dark, which again is reflected in the yellow peas. I started with a mix of the medium and the dark up the top and the dark down the bottom for the backstitch. In all three instances, I have tapered my weaving because it starts very short and very shallow here. And slowly the loops have gotten bigger and across all the tops it's the same. You can see I've graduated them so they slowly get bigger down the bottom here where it's all coming together and getting more congested. I've gone the opposite way. I've pulled the loops tighter and made them smaller. So that all comes together nicely in the middle, with the exception of this one. On the very left-hand side, I have started off with the taper going to larger, but as I get down here, I wanted to leave the loops on the open side here on the left, but I didn't want them to overlap the fly on the right-hand side. So I've actually pulled the loop slightly tighter on the right and left them slightly longer on the left, just so that it doesn't get too crowded in this area. 57. Jelly Fish Stage 5: I've completed my area of chain stitch in the front sand dune and I have just worked from the top-down rather than treating it as a diminishing shape, I've used four strands of stranded cotton in the needle, and I've worked my way through all of my three colors. In each instance, I have dropped out one thread of the original color and substituted in the next. So for instance, in this very top row, I have four threads of my lightest color. And the next row down, it is three threads of the lightest color, one of the medium. In the next row after that, it's 2.2. So two of the lightest to the medium, and in the next year after that, it's one lightest and three medium. Having completed that, I realized because that comes down to about here. I realized if I carried on in that fashion working one row in each color combination, around half of my son June would be a block of the darkest color and I didn't want that. So I started working multiple rows in each color combination, which has helped me to fill out the shape and give me quite nice graduated effect, which I quite like. It is overall darker. But then that's fine because it sits at the bottom of my shape. Now you may also notice that there is in-person, I can't tell if it's the fabric pulling or if there is a paint line or pencil and visible here. And down here, it's quite obvious that the ROE is quite nibbled or irregular. It's not as smooth as I would like it to be. That's actually fairly typical of working a chunky stitch like this in a thick thread. It can be difficult to pull everything together to give a smooth line. Do you stitch over the line and not follow the curve? Do you stitch to the line and end up with these ridges? I prefer to do that because my intention was always to run a stem stitch all the way along here and up the side to the other most extended point on the right-hand side. I'm gonna do that in the darkest color. And what will happen as I lay that down, it's the lighter colors were actually become enhanced because they sit in contrast with the dark so much. Over here in these little circles, you can see a couple of little dots of threads. And what has happened is, I've decided that this shape is too wide to travel my thread across the back of what I've actually done is made my stitch here on the left-hand side of the shape, made a small staff stitch in the center of the circle and then come up in the middle to continue making the chains. Then I've done the same again, making a small stab stitch in the middle of the shape before continuing the line. Now by doing that, I've actually half the length of the stitch on the back, so I don't have particularly long threads on the back that can stretch and go slack. My reason for using four threads in the needle was that height difference. I've used two strands here in the fly and three in the stem stitch in the tutorial bits of seaweed, and two in the smallest, one in the middle. And what that means is there's actually a physical height difference. So if I were to touch here, I can actually feel this ridge. It's not particularly pronounced with three, but it is definitely with the two. And it very much sits in front all of the seaweed over here because obviously this again is worked in the two. There's a physical height difference which adds to the dimension and is enhanced by the shading. 58. Jelly Fish Stage 6: So the piece is now complete. I have added in the French knots down here, and I've used a combination of the light screen in the top two and the medium green and the bottom one with a smattering of this purply color through, you can just see the small highlights there. I have worked the stem stitch in four strands all the way along in my darkest color, where I hit this point where the front ends, I've actually split out my thread, taken two of them and cast them off and then continue the stitch with the remaining two to thin out the line a little bit to make it smaller and lower the background. In the jellyfish, I decided to go with a backstitch around the tentacles, which I've been whipped. So I use the lightest yellow and the lightest green backstitch in the yellow whipping in the green. And you can see it's really interesting effect of making it slightly darker and pushing them into the background so that these two larger tentacles seem to sit forward a bit more. Here in the head of the jellyfish. I've gone with rows of stem, then chain, then stem stitch. And you can just see there the texture changes little bit in the middle. I've used a single-strand and when I was comparing my colors to the piece. So it's just taking out a single-strand of my colors and laying them across the area to see what popped and what worked. I realized actually that the best way to do it with self color. So I've just used the same color that I've done the later work in this kind of purply gray. And then I've outlined it in the same two strands at the same color. I think it's really set it off. I have these quite distinct different areas trying to achieve the naturalistic or semi naturalistic effect in that I've got green seaweed and yellow sand and so on. But just enough of a crossover of the different colors. So I've got the yellow and gray here, gray here, and green in the yellow dust sand dunes. And just a touch of the yellow and green in the jellyfish. And that just helps to tie it all together. So overall, I'm really happy with the way this piece is turned out. It's absolutely exceeded my expectations. I have to confess, I've never quite worked with stranded cotton in this way before. I've usually used it in a single-strand. I haven't played with the different quantities like I have. And that has been really, really enjoyable. It does just go to show, you can create an awful lot of depth with a very simple color palette. Remember, I had seven shades, seven colors overall. And I've created a lot of depth and dimension by using multiple strands in the needle and playing with the colors. So you can buy all of the threads under the sun. But you can still achieve quite amazing effects with just one type of thread and the most common type of threads. So that's really interesting and nice to see. So could I add anymore? I did contemplate putting in some French knots to kind of outline and emphasize the different shapes of the seaweed. Um, I could do a smattering of seeding through here. You often have particles floating around in the ocean, so it would be reflective of that. But overall, I've decided to draw a line underneath it here. I could keep going, you could keep adding. But I'm really, really enjoying the very simple, clean lines that these shapes are making and the lovely color transitions. So I'm going to draw a line under this one and call it complete. 59. Cacti Landscape Stage 1: Step one is complete. I have worked not only delayed work in this area, but you can just about make out the stem stitch couching stitches holding everything in place. I've tried to find them out to give some shaping to the area. I've also worked Van **** and fly in the two-sided leaves, managed to successfully turn and shade the Van ****. And where I've worked closed fly stitch. I haven't had the need to outline it, whereas I obviously have with Van ****. And because I've got a larger area, I can actually take a bit more time to blend through two colors there. So if anyone has looked at their order of work, they will have realized that this area here, the lead work in this hillock, I have done entirely the wrong time because I looked at my order of work and then apparently I ignored it. I got over-excited and just start putting the later work in here. It's not ideal. I would rather have not done that, but my choices are to leave it in and try and work around it, or cut out the stitches and waste the thread. And I've talked before about how I don't like waste and I actually do like the way it's gone in. I like the shape I've made. The shading has gone in quite nicely. So I'm going to try and work around it. And to do that, I'm just going to gently shift the later work stitches out of the way so I can but they're filling stitches in here up against the bottom of it. Now, the risk of doing that is stretching the threads and having stitches go flat or fluffing up the area. So I'm going to have to work quite carefully around this area. I have debated whether I should put this outlining or not because later work should be outlined. And I've gone back and forth in my mind about this because I'm going to have more stitches butting up here. Then I will do butting up here. So if I put this in, which is my next step, when I come to put the outlining stitching, I'm going to have to tuck my needle under the rows of stitches here. Which is going to be interesting because what I don't want to do is catch the stitches that I've got here in place and pull them out of shape. But if I wait, if I outline this and then fill in this area, I'm going to have more stitches that will catch against this outlining stitch. This seems like there's more potential for this area to become distorted than just one stitch here at the edge. Because the filling stitches for this area will actually come down and cover over this slightly irregular edge you can see here. So there's only really one small opportunity to capture the store stitch, whereas there's multiple opportunities here. I would rather fill this in and fill this in and then tuck my needle in here and cover this area. This is actually a tricky section because this overlays the tree. So this area over the tree needs to be done first. So that can be overlapped. But obviously this then overlaps the hillock here. So what I'm trying to do there is balanced the potential damage that I might do to my stitches. And as I say, this area is going to be smaller and easier to manage than the broader area with more damage can occur. In order to manage this branch, I've decided to seal off the shape by just drawing a pencil line following the two lines either side. So I'm going to work this area first and then place the tree trunk in front of it. This is something you can do if you have odd, awkward little areas like this, there are other ways of treating it, but deliberately pushing it into the background is a simple way of dealing with it. As I say, simply drawing on with the HB pencil can give me a guideline on that. 60. Cacti Landscape Stage 2: Step two is now finished with the chain stitch around the left-hand cactus and the tree trunk, done. With the tree trunk, I have shaded from the lightest to mid tone. So if you think about your color palette, I have five shades of gray in this piece. And if you think about them as one to 51 being the lightest, five being the darkest. It doesn't really matter what their actual color numbers are or where they sit in their color family. You can take your color palette and break it down like that. So one is the lightest fibers, the darkest. I've actually use shades 12.3 in the trunk because the light's coming in from this side. So this would be my lightest. I've done the same here and I've worked it using the later work shading principle, starting on one side, putting in a row on one side of the shape, and then putting in the row and the darker color in this instance on the other side of the shape. So I've continued working side from side, filling in the shape all the way down at the bottom here I've been left with this gap, which is quite natural as the shape flares out. I could keep filling it in in the stem stitch. I will be using shade to, to fill it in, in this area. But when you have sections like this, you can actually go back and fill in with other stitches. So I could put in seeding, I could put in French knots. Either one of those would work. I'm actually going to leave this as one of the final things I do. If you look around it, There's nothing that's really impacting on it. It sits far enough below this line, the wandering tendril that I can put it in at any stage. So I'm actually going to complete my stitching and then see what I'm going to do in this area. So then I moved on to the right-hand cactus where I have worked three rows of chain stitch on the top and the sides. On the top. I started with tone one, then move to 2.3 and then the sides, because it sits lower end would be darker. I have worked tone two, then three, then four from the outside in, so the inside is slightly darker. In each instance. For each row, I worked the top line first, then the sides starting on my pencil line. With each subsequent row, I've brought it up to the last row, working again the top line and then the sides. 61. Cacti Landscape Stage 3: I've now completed step three by filling in French knots in the left-hand plant. And I have gone lightest second, lightest, midtones. So that's shades 12.3. I've worked the chain stitch on the left-hand plant, and again, this top row, I have worked the first three shades, 12.3. Then on the sides, I have actually worked at differently. So the left hand side where the light will be strongest, I've done the same, worked in shades 12.3. Then on the right-hand side of the shape, which would be in a deeper shadow. I've actually gone with 23.4. So the right-hand side of the left shape is darker than the top and the left-hand side. 62. Cacti Landscape Stage 4: So I have now filled in the French knots in the left-hand plot and the seating on the middle hillock, the left-hand French knots. I have done my final three times, starting with the mid tone in the top. Circle, moving down through tones 4.5 to my darkest tone at the bottom. And then I've used shade or tone for to fill in the seeding three to outline it. And then I've just quickly whipped it into just to bring a little bit of lightness here, the whipping has worked really nicely. I don't think it's probably coming through on camera, but it's just added a very small touch of lightness through the area without it being overwhelming. You can see I've taken just a kind of circular line or a curved line that sort of mimics the top line. Looking at this section here now on the camera, I'm not quite happy with it. So I might cost on another thread just under the layed work and just fill in a little bit more seeding just to level off slightly. And then I can start work on this hillock and the chain stitch on the tree as the final flourish. I still have the option to put in some French knots here. And I'm thinking about seeding in these two with the French knots. I think I will go ahead and do them because I just don't like this blank area. A tree is something that should be solid even when you're looking at something in a very stylized manner, it still should be something quite solid and full. So I'm thinking I'm going to fill this in. But what I might do is keep it quite concentrated at the top and then scatter it to more open French knots. So bit like seeding is just gonna be crammed together at the top. So there's no fabric, just like I've done in the circles. And then as I say, just opening up slightly so that it's more open with fabric seen at the bottom. So I'm just starting to think about colors for the various areas. And my feeling on this section is when I do fill it in, I want to go quite dark. So you can see I've got all my threads out. And what I'm going to do is lay my threads on there to see which one cops. And just looking at those first three shades or tones of color. So my feeling is that this darkest shade that I have is going to be too dark. I think I'm gonna be better off working in the second darkest color and then peppering in possibly some of my mid tone, which will actually tie in because the mid tone is just over here. So I think that's gonna be the better way to do it. So I now need to make the same choice with this little tendril that wraps around the tree. Now, if I go too light, which would make sense because this is light at the very top of the design. I run the risk of losing it somewhat. So do I go slightly darker? And the idea of this is I am laying a single thread on the piece comparing the shades I have to what I've already got in place. And the reason I'm using a single-strand each time is because I stitch in a single-strand. Generally speaking, for the most part, I separate my threads out to a single-strand like you can see here, and I stick with it like that. So if I were to put the bundle over the top, I would have too much color or shade in this instance to really inform me of what was going to go on. Because this looks, this is more concentrated than this. So if I take a single strand at a time, I can look at these things. And actually, this second tone looks like it's blending in too much. It's very little distinction and I do want it to be distinct. This one's not too bad. This one is too dark. This one the darkest I'm, I think would look to stripy. I'm looking at all of these colors against this section. And the one that's popping, the one that's really catching my eye is actually the lightest color, believe it or not. I was not expecting that. It makes sense that you would have the lightest color at the top, because the light is coming in from the top. But with this concentrated color here. Particularly given that the lightest color is actually on this as well. I was not expecting the lightest color to be the most standout. So I think I'm going to work the chain stitch in this one. I am intending to whip it. Well, I have planned to whip it. I could weave it. I will need to do the same process to see what I whip or weave it in. I'm a little bit concerned if I go a shade darker, it's not going to stand out because this is the second tone which is the main thread I've used in this area. But then again, if I go too dark. So my best course of action is to use the light to put the chain stitch in and then make the choice from there. 63. Cacti Landscape Stage 5: My monochromatic landscape is now finished. I have added in my securing stitches and outlining across this right-hand hillock. As we've already discussed, I got overexcited and put the layed work in far too early. But that seems to have gone in quite nicely. And the outlining stitches has covered the edge quite well. So I'm quite happy with how that's gone in. Over here. I did decide to fill in the trunk. I started with my second darkest or shade for I guess, right at the top and I filled it in. It's not coming through on camera brilliantly well by filled into about, I guess just shy of halfway. And I've put in a combination of the fourth shade and the third shade. So the mid tone. I've kinda blended through a little bit cramming all those French knots together. And you can see here I've just put in, I've opened it up a little bit just to blend it through and opening out to finish off that bottom line. It's just broken up the texture a little bit and added a little bit of darkness. So it's almost like a hollow in the tree going in. Then my final flourish has been to put in the wandering tendril, which is worked in a very small chain stitch. I have on my plan to whip it and I put that down because I am trying to challenge myself to do things I don't really like whipped chain has never really been my thing. I much prefer whipping on backstitch. But I thought I challenged myself to put it down. And to be honest with you, I just don't think motif needs it. And maybe you are making excuses because I don't like whip chain, but I really don't think it needs it. I like the simplicity of the line. In one of the lighter colors. I think it's shade one. It shows up nicely against the tree trunk, which is mostly the shade two and shade three. I just don't think it really needs anything else. I could weave it which would look quite pretty and give a little frill. But again, I like the smooth simplicity of the line, so I'm just going to leave it as is. I think I had an option to do seeding in the center of these two as well. And again, I'm liking the clean shapes, I'm liking the overall simple aesthetic of it all. I think I'm just going to leave it as is. And again, I could do the same thing. I could add some seeding or some scattered French knots through here to make it look like dust or pollen floating in the air. But i'm I'm happy not to do that. That's obviously an option that you guys can pursue if you want to. 64. Toucan Stage 1: Step one is complete. I have worked the hillock inlaid work. I've worked three colors. Over here. I've got a very small amount of the very pale color and I've done quite a quick transition to get into it. Over here, I have a slightly longer transition. Starting here with my dark thread. I've just taken my time to move through into it so that the transition is much slower than the more subtle. The method I showed you in the how-to video is very constructed. It's counting your stitches and mirroring them when you move into the next color. It is a good method to use, but you don't necessarily strictly have to stick with it. You can do quicker or longer blends if you want to. I've worked that across the hillock. As you can see, I have varied the edges so that I don't have to worry about committing to a straight edge or the straight edge pulling the fabric so it leaves gaps because that can happen with a straight edge as well. And then here in the body, I have worked my three shades of this instance, stranded cotton, so this is wool. So I've used a single-strand of wool down here. And up here I've used two strands are stranded cotton in all three of my colors. I've done what is referred to as blending in the needle or in cross stitch, it's called tweeting. So I've started with two strands of the same color on the outside. I've actually worked, I think two rows of that. And then what I've actually done is taken a strand of the mid tone and combined it with a strand of the lights. I've still got two strands and then eagle, but they're two different colors. And I've worked a couple of rows in that combination as well. Now I've just worked my way through. I'm adding in the next color and removing one of the one or all of the previous. So you'll slowly blending into the dark section, which is down through the middle. Now in this section, I have tried to work alternating rows of stem and outline stitch. I started with stem stitch on the outside. I actually worked two rows of stem stitch and then work to Roosevelt wine stitch. And to be honest with you, it doesn't really show up that much of an effect. So whilst I'm not going to take this out on every worker, it's maybe not something I would work again, I might try it in singular rows, row of stem, era of outline, working it in the double stranded cotton into and particularly such a small shape as well. I don't think it's really done me any favors. I don't think it's enhanced the shape or the area in any significant way to have kept track of all of that. So just working plane rows of stem stitch might have been the better way to approach that. 65. Toucan Stage 2: I'm about halfway through filling in my trunk at this point. The top section is completed. My start point now for the next row is gonna be about here in this second section down. And I'm quite happy with the way it's going in the colors are falling quite nicely. I've got a little change in both texture and color with the green here, and I've got just a single row of the dark on the outside. I'm thinking that might be a good idea at this point to introduce a different texture. So I think I'm going to start filling in the chain and I think it'd be nice to have it coming up from just above the mid point down and to one side. And then obviously I'll fill in the other side with some chain stitch and probably go back to the stem. And I will slowly blend through this hollow down here, is actually filled in in chain stitch to vary the texture is a little bit. I think that will look quite nice. It's not because I completely forgot I was supposed to be alternating rows of chain and stem from the beginning. So I have finished my tree trunk using a combination of chain stitch and stem stitch. I started with a very quick blend from the palest green I have thrown to the palest blue. I have a stripe of the darkest blue down the outside and the middle is mostly a mix of medium and light. I've introduced some chain stitch coming down and where I've got this triangle forming as I have worked my way into the middle of the shape, I've decided to go darker to create almost like a hollow. As I've previously said, I could have changed up the texture. I'm putting French knots or seating or something else. I decided to keep going with the chain stitch. So this triangle you can see is pretty much exclusively chain stitch. And I've just used my darkest color to occur to create that depth, to make it seem like as a split in the trunk and there's a little hollow in there. I also completed the beak in seeding. You can just about see it in there. I was worried that the color wasn't showing up because this is my lightest blue, so I decided to outline it and in person the outline has helped to emphasize it realistically, I could have waited to put that in. I'm still unsure if I will put a line across here. Now, my stitch line from the stem stitches pretty smooth. I've covered all of my paint lines, so I don't have a need to cover it, but I'm still debating whether it would finish it off nicely or not. So I might save that till later because again, this area doesn't over or under lap anything else so I can put this line in whenever I want to. If I want to. There's actually no need to. As I say, I've created quite a smooth edge with careful placement of my needle when working the stem stitch. I have also filled in the wing. Now my original intention was to do this in blue. Keep it quite open. And I did try a little bit of that and I just wasn't happy with the results I was getting. So I've decided to do it closed and in green. And I've actually used my darkest color at the tip, migrating into the medium color. But what that means is I'm going to have to work this stem in the background quite carefully because obviously I have solidly filled this area when it was going to be open. And with this area being open, I was actually going to put an outlining stitch around it as well. So that's the less likely now because again, I've made quite a nice edge using careful needle placement. So I'll have to work this Section quite carefully to make sure I don't disrupt these stitches. Now that being said, I have been playing with my threads because although I don't have to outline this area, I still can because I have the tail that comes off of the wing. And it might be nice to have a continuous line that goes up and around the wing to the other side. And I'm quite liking the idea of it being my accent color. Again, I've got work to do in this area and up here that might change the balance. So I'm going to hold off on this. But even though I have worked closed fly and I don't have to outline it, I still have an option to and as I was saying, I think the yellow might be a good one. You'll also have noticed that I've stitched across the eye. I had a small circle there for the eye and I decided to do that fairly last minute. I've decided I want this to be a small discrete I, which will be a singular French knot rather than a small cluster of them filling in that hole. So even with the marks made on the fabric, you still can work over the top of them if you want to. So now on to tackling this area up here. 66. Toucan Stage 3: So the Van **** is finished. It comes nicely around that curve is created quite dense area, which is nice because this whole section is going to be open. So that's gonna give me some nice balance. I have lighter up here, going to the medium tone down here, or worked in a single-stranded the wall. And you can see in places it does look a little bit irregular, but that's where I've caused my threads on and off and putting those couching stitches as I worked my way through the blend, that should all be covered when I outline it. So my next job is to fill in this area. And these bits. 67. Toucan Stage 4: So my key areas are now completed and filled it and I still have outlining and securing to do in various places and I've got some accents to add. The only areas I haven't filled in yet at these, up here in this top leaf, I've got my little lazy daisy flowers in the blue. And I've actually started with the palest up here and then work through the different combinations. So lightest, light and medium, medium, medium, dark, dark, two strands of each. And then with two strands in the needle, I've worked a French knot in the center of each one for the center of the flower. I've then filled in the remaining area with my palest screen seeding. The Lazy Daisy is aren't showing up that well on camera, but they are more prominent in person. The graduation through the colors is very subtle, but it is there. And again, the darkest colors sitting on the underside of the leaf. I've worked this section and the rest of the wandering tendril started with, this is in chain stitch, started with my darkest color at the bottom and transition through into the medium color. And then up here I've gone light at the top for medium, underneath, light again at the top, median underneath. Here I've gone with medium and about Harish, I've transitioned through into the dark. I still think I'm going to whip this. I'm contemplating whipping it in my accent color the yellow. I definitely want to do the I in yellow. But what I'm actually going to do is work the remaining outlines. Before I do that, i've I've got securing stitches to put here, which I think I'm going to do in the blue. And I've got outlining up here to do overall, the whole piece feels a little bit too green to me. So I'm probably going to do I'm definitely going to do that. The securing stitches in my blue range. And now I've wanted to do that from the start and I'm thinking about using all three of the colors. The idea is the stem stitch will mimic the top line of the hill. I'm thinking probably two or three strands. But I will get progressively darker as the threads go down the hill, which I think would be nice. Then up here I'm probably going to stick with the light in the medium tones. At the moment. I don't know quite what I'm gonna do for the top of the hillock. Because as I say, I need to get these outlines in before I decide if I'm going to whip or weave the chain stitch in the yellow, It's going to be a gutsy move if I do, if I use my accent color all the way through here, weaving or whipping, that's gonna be a lot of yellow. And I'm just a little bit concerning might be too much, but that will then dictate the colors I use in here. Because if I do too much green through here, I'm going to tip the balance further in the favor of the green, and we've already decided that there's too much green. If I do too much blue, I'm a little bit concerned. It's going to make, is kinda weird. Line through the middle, matching up with this section here. So you'd have blue, blue, blue. And that will dissect the piece, separating it into two halves of green rather than drawing the colors together. So at this stage, I need to think quite carefully and quite seriously about what I do next. 68. Toucan Stage 5: So I have added the weaving into the Van **** along the top here, I've used a single-strand of my palest blue stranded cotton. And I'm really liking the effect. I think it breaks up the green just enough and obviously ties into the other areas. And you just got this really petite and very pretty a woven effect. So I really like how that's gone in. I've also filled in the weaving on this first section of the tendril. I've yet to do the rest of the tendril and I haven't actually cast off my thread. It's just off camera up here. Because I wanted to have it in to see how it looked. I was worried that it would be too much of the accent color. And because I've pulled the thread quite tightly, I actually quite like it. It's a very, very discrete effect, not only with the actual weaving itself, but the color combination as well. So I think I am going to put it on in the rest because I think that's going to look quite pretty and I'm going to again, try and keep the loops quite tight and small so they don't really pop out. Down here. I've started to put in my stem stitch. I've put in the first row and I started putting in the second. And I'm just a bit concerned that it's going to look stripy. So you can see I've stopped and kind of work these other areas to get a better color balance and I will actually add in the yellow before I do anything here. But I have been looking at colors. And I'm thinking that a whip to backstitch might be a better approach. Now I have talked about this before. Whipping a stitch overlaid work is possible. You've just gotta be really careful because as I slide my needle under the stitches, I don't want to be piercing the threads that are already in place. When I pull that thread tight, that whipped thread tight, I could actually distort the stitches which I don't want to do because my bed of laid work's gone in quite nicely. But I was looking at my colors. So in order to look at this and make my choice, what I've been doing is taking my colors in turn and laying them on the fabric. And I felt that the green was too much solid green. And the blue, as I said, was to stripy. So what I've been doing is taking my threads and twisting them together and then laying them onto my fabric. And I think that's going to work because I'm going to have a touch of the blue coming through without it being too much. So I will get a touch of the blue, but not overwhelm the area. And I will do light, medium, dark, much like I intended with the stranded cotton. I'm just going to do a backstitch that I then width. So I think that's going to finish it off nicely. I've always intended to do a yellow eye on this little guy. I've obviously got to do the backstitch for his tail. And I'm still undecided as to whether that will come around the wing or not. With those things done, I can look at adding in these French knots. At this point. I'm thinking I might graduate the colors from green to blue, because I've got quite a lot of green at the bottom. Got blue going upside and blue at the top. There's obviously a mix-up here that the blue, it feels predominant to me. So if I start with green at the bottom, I can actually do a gradient through the two colors. And the shades that I have, starting with probably a touch of the dark is down here. And then slowly introducing more of the lighter shades of blue as I go up. 69. Toucan Stage 6: So the piece is now complete. I have filled in the last items, so I finished the weaving. Across this tendril. It's very subtle. The loops are quite small, so the yellow is not really popping on screen. And over all the colors are actually much more vibrant in-person. It's still slightly more subdued color palette and I'm usually working, but the colors overall a stronger in person. So there is this pop of yellow that extends all the way through down to the bottom here. So I've put the backstitch you in, in three strands of stranded cotton and then whipped it with the corresponding wool thread. I've got lightest at the top, top, medium in the middle and darkest at the bottom. Then work to stem stitch across the top of the hill just to finish it off nicely in the mid tone, which creates a nice finish, but it doesn't particularly stand out or catch the eye at all. It's just a subtle finishing off to cover all of those lines and just hide the join between these two. Because when I was finishing this line, I was placing my needle along the middle of the pencil line at the hillock. And when I was placing the needle for the later work, I was doing the same thing. So there's butting up of the two sections. The stem stitch just sits nicely through that channel with all three of those sorry, all four of those lines done. I've ever been able to put the lines of stem stitch. I originally scheduled backstitch this area, but I've actually put it in stem stitch. Stem stitch has gone over the layed work a little bit better because obviously there's some odd angles through here. So the stem stitch is just cope with that a little bit better. Plus the point of putting in backstitch because it gave me the flexibility to whip or we fit well with the weaving here. Weaving the tail would have probably looked a little bit strange. Instead I decided to whip the center line of the wing. So again in two strands of stranded cotton. And this is two strands are stranded cotton swab the tail. I decided to whip the central line of the closed fly. This was a last minute addition and it just draws a little bit more of the blue through. I found because the stitches, the couching stitches that hold the fly stitch in places so small that only did I have to work very carefully that I wasn't talking too much on them because they didn't want them to snap, which is a possibility if you're a particularly aggressive with it. But I found that again because the stitches are so small. If I whipped every single one of them, I got quite a small. Perfect. So what I've actually done is whipped every other one of them. So I've kinda slid under the first one, skip the next, and then gone on to the next one after that. So I've got a slightly elongated effect. So that's again something I've never done before, but you can do whatever you can see I've achieved at here. I've whipped every other one rather than every single couching stitch. Again, you just have to be gentle because the stitches are so small. I've used my accent color the yellow to do the eye. That's a French knot in four threads it's trying to cotton. And then around it I've taken my darkest blue stranded cotton and just worked very thin. Simple, lazy daisy or detached chain, however you want to call it in a single-strand, as I said, the darkest color. I have bought my needle up and down at this top section and the couching stitches just slightly below it. The threads themselves have just settled in around that French knot. Just to give that more definition. Again, a very subtle detail, but one that does enhance the piece. Then started with three strands of stranded cotton in my darkest blue in this bottom. And second, Barry, I guess the top edges of both, then intermingled with some of the medium color. I then use the medium blue again in three strands in thes to peppering in some of the green, medium green wool in a single-strand. Then in here, I've done medium green with a speckling of the paler screen and the palest green and leads to the berries themselves have ended up in some places touching my line of woven chain, which is not desirable. I'd rather they didn't do that, but I wasn't anticipating weaving the chain. I actually had scheduled to whip it. So I've successfully avoided whipped chain, which we know I don't like, um, but there was a last minute decision to actually shade the chain. And if I were to then whip it, I would lose that shading so that all of that effort has gone to waste. So it would make more sense to weave it. Because that protrudes out a little bit. You can see it's just touching. So what I've now done is gotten adjusted the design. So these very sick just a little bit further out to give the stitcher flexibility to weave this if they want to. Now, my original intention had been to weave this top line of chain stitch, which I've done before in this shape, it looks really pretty woven. I didn't do that in the end because of the seeding. I felt that the weaving could just sit over the seeding obscuring it. And again, I've got these little lazy daisy details that have sat closer to the chain than I originally anticipated, which is fine. I can just omit the weaving because again, I don't want that weaving to sit over this cute little detail that I've made. So instead I've woven the Van ****, which has gone in really nicely. And I could have whipped the chain if I wanted to along this line. I really like the kind of plotted, thicker effect it makes on this kind of really flowy, lovely lime. So I decided just to leave it as is, again, successfully avoiding whipped chain, which I know, we all know I don't like. But with that, I'm happy that the piece is done. Again. I could throw some seeding through here to give that kind of dusty pollen latent effect. But again, I'm just enjoying the clean lines of all of the pieces that I've done so far. So I'm happy to leave it as is. Overall, the colors are okay. Again, it's not really a color palette I've worked with before. I think if I were to do it again, I might lift the blue slightly further up through the berries, maybe have the blending between the stranded cotton in the wool happening here rather than in the lowest set. But other than that, I'm quite happy with how it's all panned out. 70. Final Thoughts: Well, I hope you've enjoyed our first stitching adventure together and it just gives you more confidence to move forward with other embroidery projects. If you do have any questions on anything we've covered in this course, do ask it in the comments below and I'll do my best to get back to you. We will be returning for surface ditches level two. And for that, I have placed a piece of Normandy Lenin once again onto my slight frame. The Normandy linen I happen to have in the drawer. I don't use it very often and it is a densely woven fabric that will support the surface stitches quite nicely. I have transferred on using the pre-cum pounds method. But this time I've drawn on with a pen rather than paint because I just didn't feel like painting on the day I came to do this. Now that I have linen on my frame, I will be working one of the motifs exclusively in wool because this will give me an example of CRO work, crew work being surfaced, stitches worked in a two-ply wolf threat. Now you don't have to do that if you don't want to, you can use the same materials that you've used for this class. I will be doing that myself. I'll be returning to my stash and choosing many of the same threads to complete the other two designs and the sampling square. That being said, if you do want to expand your repertoire threads, I would recommend a cotton pearlite. I like a size eight. It's relatively easy to source and it has a good color range, but it's also a nice, sturdy thread is quite thick and it's very satisfying to work with. Before I sign off, I just wanted to say something quite quickly. I've been teaching hand embroidery to adults now for about seven or eight years. The most common mindset I see is, I've never done this before, but I want to do it perfectly. Now, the sad news is that's unlikely to happen. But it's okay because learning is about failing. It's about failing, evaluating what you've done, an actively trying to be better, denial. So space to do that, we deny ourselves the learning curve to in order to start at point a and finish at point B. So if your work isn't where you'd like it to be, don't worry about it. We've got more courses to come, we've got more practice to do. So, take a breath, evaluate what you've done, and think about how it can be improved. One of the key things I found to improving and learning and growing is to not be obsessed about every stitch. The people I see that do become very hung up on making sure that every stitches perfect, often stagnate. And then they get frustrated with their lack of progression because sometimes you have to let the minor things go. And I can absolutely guarantee you that your work is 100% better than you think it is. Another way to gain confidence in your abilities is to share it with the people around you. Share it with family, share it with friends. If you want to share it with the wider world, post on social media. And if you do that, please tag me in it. I'm known as a stitching line across Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. And I would love to see your work. Until then, happy stitching.