Mastering Hand Embroidery with A Stitch in Quine: Surface Stitches Lvl 2

1. Introducing the course: Hello everyone and welcome back to mastering hand embroidery with the stitching Quine. My name is Becky and I'm going to be your hand embroidery tutor for surface ditches level two. In this course, we're gonna be looking at nine brand new stitches that will build on what you've already know and learn from surface ditches. Level one, if you didn't join us for that course, do go back and review it. We had a great deal of fun with some lovely surface stitches and produce some beautiful work in the resolve motifs. If you didn't join us for the preparatory course, do go back and review that as well. We go through all the materials and equipment transferring on techniques that you will need to complete the course. So just to review, I have put a piece of Normandy linen onto my slate frame. Normally linen is a densely woven fabric that's going to do a lovely job of supporting those surface ditches. And I'm using this light frame for much of the same reasons as I did last time. It's just better for me to keep everything together because I will stitch everything. And it's easier to do the filming on a larger frame like this. I will be using the similar threads, so stranded cotton wool. But this time I'm going to add some parlay into the mix as well. Size eight pi, variegated color this time, which is gonna be interesting. That being said, you don't have to use this type of frame, this type of fabric or those threads. All of the pieces in this course are designed to fit in an eight inch hoop. And you can reuse the fabric and threads that you have used for the previous course. For this topic, you will also need a circle template. The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that were actually reusing the same motifs as the first course. That's because when you change the layout and you introduce new stitches, you can really change the piece quite dramatically. So if you, for instance, stitch the jellyfish piece from the first course, you can actually raise stitch it and see how those new textures come into play. That being said, if you don't want to do that, there are two other motifs that you could choose from and just stitch those instead, you will still get to play with the same wonderful stitches. We will also be including some of the stitches from the first course in the result motifs for this course, so that you'll get to revisit those core skills as well. 2. Annotating the sampling square: So in our last course, I realized that the annotation I was doing actually was taking up too much space in my sampling squares. So this time I've done myself a little chart across the top, noting down all of the different fibers that I'm going to be using in the piece. Again, I'll be sampling all in the pearlite. And the SC there stands for stranded cotton, which was obviously too long to fit in my space. 3. How to: Running Stitch: Our first stitch is going to be running stitch. I'm going to start by drawing a line on the side of my square. It's gone a little bit bumpy, but that's fine. Running stitch is quite simple in its concept, but I think actually quite challenging to execute. So we're going to have lots of practice in here to get used to how it works. Once again, for the purposes of demonstration, I will not be doing the two-stage cost on. Instead, I have a note on the back That's so that you can see clearly what I'm doing and you won't be distracted by those cast on stitches. And you can see there I bought my needle up at the base of my line. Equally. I could have bought it up here at the top of my line. It doesn't matter which direction you work the stitching. I'm going to plunge the needle onto my paint or pencil line there and pull the thread through. My stitch is about just under three male two-and-a-half to 3 min long. It could be that fraction longer, which puts it at just slightly under an eighth of an inch. Again, it could be slightly longer. I'm then going to attempt to leave a gap of about the same size before making another stitch is the same size as the first. Now, the gap, I think he's okay. That second stitch I think is a fraction short but I'm going to leave it and I'm going to keep going and make the next stitch. Again. I'm trying to bring my needle up and take it down on my paint line. Keeping the distances between the stitches, consistent. Stitches themselves consistent in length. This is the key challenge I find with a running stitch is the spacing. I think couple of my gaps are two big gonna write down here, but this gap is too big. The stitches, I think pretty much there. It's the gaps that I'm clearly having issues with my line now. I'm just going to extend a bit longer so I can get that last stitch in. And then to cast off. I would just slide my needle out from underneath the stitch and take it back in underneath it. So take it out on that angle. So you can probably see two key issues. Well, probably three key issues actually because I don't think that stitch took I'm going do is I'm going to do that again. But hopefully you can see some of the key issues I've had with running stitch and why I think it's more of a challenge than it appears to be in principle. First of all, getting the stitches and the gaps consistent in length is actually quite challenging. If I do more of this, I will probably get better at it. So that's not too much of an issue. But the other inherent problem I've had is you can see my line in-between the stitches. So when you're working running stitch, you might want to think about this at the transferring onstage. If you have a line that you know, you want to be running stitch, do not draw on because you will be able to see the line in-between the stitches. And one of the key tenants that we have in embroidery is you cover all of your paint or pencil lines, or removal of your tacking. Whichever method you are using, the markings that you make to transfer on your design have to be covered or removed. And this one obviously isn't cutting it. So not drawing on that line would have been preferable. The other issue I've had is where do I hide my costs on and my cast off. I've tucked it just underneath here. If I hadn't have used or not, it would be down here. The costume will be down here underneath this stitch. So you've got to be really careful about a neat cast on and making sure that your first and last stitch cover those. That wastes not cost on the two tiny stitches. Now that I've had to go and had a demo, I might make a note just here saying no line because that's obviously going to be a reminder that a paint line is not a good idea in terms of running stitch. I'm then going to take the other fibers that I have and play with it as I have done previously. Just seeing the different effects I can get with it and hopefully practicing my spacing and my stitch length so I get a little bit more consistent at it. 4. Running Stitch Review: You can see I've almost finished my running stitch sample. I've got a few additions I want to make to the sample over here. I've done my regular stranded cotton chart going from 6321 strand. And then I've done some sections of two down into one cruel and two down into one final. I noticed that my lines were getting very straight and angular. So you can see I've attempted to do a wavy line and where the line curves gently, it's not too bad. It's worked okay. Where I've tried to spiral it in, the center, hasn't gone so well. Part of that I think is because I don't have a line to follow, which we've already established is not a good idea with running stitch, but partly the segmentation of the stitch means that when you have it worked densely like this, it ends up looking a bit more like badly work seeding rather than a line that you can follow with the I. So I think either I need to have a much more open, separated spiral so it's much more distinct or go with another stitch. To be honest with you, I don't use running stitch very often. I would probably be inclined to go with another stitch if I had a spiral we've seen before that backstitch or stem stitch, chain stitch would come around much more nicely. So it's interesting to see that happening on a sample like this. One thing I wasn't expecting though, is I really like the diminishing effect in the stranded cotton samples. This was somewhat unexpected. It makes me think of the ocean a little bit and I'm wondering for creative effects. So in my mind, obviously this is the foreground, this is the horizon. I can imagine a son just over the top here, setting behind the ocean. And so if I had darker colors at the front, blending through to lighter colors at the back. I could also vary my colors through the run of running stitch. It would allow me to create this idea that the water is fading away from me. That looks like it can be quite fun. And using this method of slowly dropping out the number of stitches I have in the needle. So that's an unexpected creative opportunity that I hadn't anticipated. In these instances where it's very straight here in Australia, continent here in the pearlite, I have deliberately staggered my stitches so that the stitch on the next line sits next to the gap on the previous line, if that makes sense. I felt that that would be good practice. It also gives me a good opportunity to see if my stitches and my gaps are the right length. So comparing this stitch to this stitch is easier than comparing this stitch to this gap. I think I have improved. I think my spacing and my stitch length are much better than when I started with this one. And that's just repeating the same process over and over again. That being said, I have unpicked more on this sample than I have with pretty much any other. Over here. I'm going to whip and wave the first two lines, these two lines of running stitch. Now that we've done that, we actually completed that in our previous topic set of stitches level one, I'm going to try and include that wherever I can, wherever I think it's gonna be appropriate. So I want to have a width and a woven line just so that I have a record of it to see what it looks like. I also have something special I'm gonna be doing with these two as well. So we'll look at that in the next video. 5. Embellishing a Running Stitch: So what happens if I forget about my no line rule with the running stitch and I accidentally put in a running stitch and end up seeing my pink line underneath. Well, your first option is to unpick and go with another stitch. Alternatively, you could work what's called a double running stitch. Now, often if I do this, I will go back in the same color. And essentially what you're gonna do is just fill in the gaps. So you would work the running stitch as you see it, turn around and just go back and fill in all the gaps. So as I said, normally I would do this in the same color, but you can do it in an alternative color if you would like to. And this is known as double running stitch. It actually comes into play into other techniques, not just surface stitches or CRO work. It can be worked in white work as well. And it's often used for securing edges of the fabric. But simply, you just go through and fill in those gaps. You're trying to create a smooth line if you can. And you can see in a couple of places, particularly here it's gone a bit wonky, but again, it's only a sample. This is just a record to remind myself that I can do this if I want to. But in order to remind myself, what I'm actually going to do is work my way down a few stitches on this one. And then with this stitch, rather than putting it all the way through, I'm just going to come up and catch it at the side since it's out of the way so that I can see that I have, well obviously I can see I've introduced another color, but I can see how it's been worked. I have the basic running stitch and then I can see where I've come down, left this one off to one side. So that when I come back to look at this, I know that the two things are work separately. I've now finished my running stitch sample. I have whipped the right-hand line of running stitch and I'm really liking this gentle ripple effect that's been created. I have woven the second line of running stitch and as I was making my way up, I realized I could actually come back as well, which is something I didn't do in the previous sampling. I can actually double wave, essentially, I quite like the effect that this has made as well. I just plunged my needle at the top here and came up on the other side and just worked my way back down. You have to be careful about disturbing the weaving that's already in place because as you slide your needle under that stitch, it can disrupt the threads. So you just want to make sure that your tension and the size and loops is held nicely. But other than that, you can see it works quite nicely. And then I've just got a simple woven sample down the bottom. So I've only double wife and about half of it. I realized as I was whipping this running stitch that you can actually whip the double running as well. I've gone in with the fine wall. Again, just whipped half of it so that I've got a sample and I know that in future that's something I can do. And it kinda gives you the impression of a three ply cord of the three different colors wrapped together, which I quite like. So I just want to write double running here. I think that sampling is done. 6. How to: Quaker Stitch: So our next stitch is going to be Quaker stitch, which may actually seem somewhat familiar. So I'm going to draw myself a straight line. And to ensure the idea, I'm going to draw myself a wavy line because I sort of forgot with the running stitch. Once again, I have started at the very top of my line. This time I'm going to walk towards myself equally. I could have started at the base of the line and work away from myself. The stitch works in both directions. So I'm going to start by making a short straight stitch along my paint line, which is about an eighth of an inch, so two to 3 mm in length. And I'm going to bring my needle up on the right-hand side. Same point as the start of this initial stitch. And the stitch I'm about to create, I want to make about a third longer, so I'm plunging it. This gap of fabric here is going to make this stitch. I'm making about a third longer than the initial stitch. I'm going to hold my loop in place because I don't want to put it all through yet. I'm going to split my initial stitch in half. Now up until that point. So this process of bringing the needle up, throwing the loop to one side, should be familiar to you rather than bringing it up at the base of the stitch, as I say, we're going to split the stitch at the halfway mark. I'm going to pull all of that through and make another stitch. This time I'm going to try and keep them all the same length if I can. So it's gonna be the same length as the last one. I'm again going to bring the needle up, splitting my stitch. Previous one, advancing forward, splitting. And I'm trying to make the split point at the base of the previous stitch so that there should be no gap. Can just about see there. There you can see the shine of the metal next to the green underneath the stitch. There should be no gaps, so it becomes a complete row. And what's happening is the splitting is causing the new stitch to sit raised, to sit higher. So this will be familiar. It should feel like a stem stitch. But with this splitting action and it just is going to make them more pronounced stitch. If you were to compare stem stitch and Quaker stitch, the Quaker stitch will sit higher than the stem stitch. It also creates a really nice smooth lines, so it makes it ideal for monogram ing or lettering and stuff like that. Much like the stem stitch, I'm trying to keep my stitch length the same if I can throw my loop to the same side each time. So to end the stitch, I'm just going to plunge in the same place as you would do a stem stitch. The texture looks very much like a stem. I think my stitches are overall a slightly shorter. So the twist is a little bit more pronounced. And as I said, if you run your finger over it, you don't obviously want to rub it or disrupt it too much. But if you place your finger over the top, it does sit much, much higher than a stem stitch. 7. Joining a thread in Quaker Stitch: So I've just been working this line of orange. We'll here and you can see I've cast off my thread because it got a little short. I've actually cast on a new thread as well, so that's what that tailors. And you can just see here my cast on stitches. So I'm just going to test that not it's good. It seems secure so I can take it off. But because I've had to end my stitch, I thought I would show you restarting it because what I'm actually going to have to do is move my last stitch. The way. I'm just going to do that with a needle. I could do it with my fingernail, but it's, um, going to be difficult for you guys to see what I'm doing. So I can just see the second to last stitch down there at the bottom. And what I'm doing is just gently trying to bring my needle up in the middle of it because obviously I want my stitches to be consistent. So I'm not splitting this last stitch you can see because I will split that next. I'm actually splitting the previous one. With that done, I can continue working the Quaker stitch. Just as a note, given that I have now swapped my thread, I've ended want to start a new one. I've decided to use a thinner thread, so I'm, I'm using a single thread here. This was two at the beginning. So I'm just going to make a point of writing that down to there. And then I go to one there, just so that I know that I've reduced my thread count. So if my next few stitches look a bit thin in comparison to this is because i've, I've taken the opportunity to do that. So I've got a sample of both thread waits both 2.1 on my sampling. 8. Quaker Stitch Review: So I've now finished my Quaker stitch sample. You can see I've worked in a single-strand of wool and two strands of oil here, two strands of the pearly here. And then I've gone from two into one of the firewall. And I've done my scale of stranded cotton. Overall. The stitch I feel works better with thicker threads. I had real trouble with the 6.5 strands. This stitch. I had to stop quite frequently. So we know that sometimes when you have stranded cotton, they don't pull through and you end up with loops. So they don't pull through together at the same time. So you have to take the bundle, splits it out, tweak each one individually. I had to do that so frequently with the six and the fiber, it was just really irritating. Things got better with the four, the three and the two. Overall. They've gone in quite neatly. They look quite smooth, but they feel quite soft. They don't have this pronounced raised effect at the other fibers do. And quite frankly, the single thread at the bottom here, my stitches got progressively shorter. We know this from other stitches. The thicker thread, the biggest stitches, the thinner thread, the smaller they become the stitches down here. And to a degree with the fine wool was so small that it was just really time-consuming, tedious to do. So I don't think I'm gonna be using a single-stranded again, that was just 40 boring. As I say, the fine wool was, wasn't too bad, but those stitches got quite small as well. And the little b, this is the stitches supposed to be really good for monocropping and for lettering. So I thought I'd give it a go. I started here whether the bottom of the B hits the top and work my way around, finished the line and restarted it up to the side here, and then finished and resorted to do the top. And it's not bad. It's quite a clean effect is quite raised. Realistically, I think it needed to be bigger for the thickness of thread I was using. And it'd be nice to have a few kind of fancy curly cues to make it a bit more elaborate, but I didn't have any kind of template or design for that. So I just quickly drew on a B. Overall, this the threads and it seems to work better in a single-strand. Although I have to say, whilst the double parlay cotton did the same thing as the stranded cotton, it's separated a little bit. It actually is quite satisfying. It's not too bad. It's a little uneven in places. The wool seems to have gone in better and actually the two strands are the final. I've gotten better as well. It's still a bit of a pain to play with the different threads. Overall, I think it goes in better in one and I think thicker thread as well. I particularly like the cotton pearlite and I think it's because it's such a thick and stable thread, you get much better definition. The wool, the regular cruel war is not bad. And as I said, the final is not bad. But I think overall I prefer it in the pearly. You can see I've successfully whipped it as well. I'm not overly keen on the effect. The weavings not bad. That's quite nice. And again, that's around a single per lei. You can see most predominantly here on the double wool, which you can't really see in any of the pearlite samples. But you can see it's almost a braided effect because this is worked on a curve. The stitch tilt slightly so you're revealing where the stitches being split. So you can see this kind of plateaued effect down one side. It's quite tiny. It's much more obvious in person. But you're getting this braided or plotted effect and that's where you're splitting stitch. So that's interesting to see that the threads, the stitch kind of curls over to one side and you get this braided effect. So what I'm going to take from this sample is that my preferred threads are definitely a per lei and a wool would probably be secondary, but a thicker wall, not the final. But that's why we sample. Sampling like this is a really good idea because you start to learn things like this. I would not have liked to have been working on one of my resolve motifs to discover that I don't like the six threads of stranded cotton in the needle. So it's better to work these things out. Now, the other thing that I have noticed is if you put your fingers, I'm just pressing down on the samples are I'm not rubbing because rubbing will disrupt, disrupt my threads. But I'm just pressing down. There is a distinct height difference between the single pearly and the single wool. And they're on par with each other. They're about the same thickness. You can substitute a size eight per lei for irregular, cruel, they're about the same, but interestingly enough, the wool is definitely higher. And in the past, I've used in other stitches, I have used four strands of stranded cotton to sit on par with a single-strand of wool. Again, much lower. The stranded cotton sits much lower than the rule itself has become quite raised and quite prominent, which is quite nice. Although the definition I think is better in the pearly in-person, the wool is a little bit fluffy, but then that's because it's a fluffy thread that happens. But it's interesting to see how the stranded cotton is much, much softer and lower than the other samples. So one final thing, when working Quaker stitch, you really do have to pay quite close attention to what you're doing. Because it's really easy just to drift into stem stitch and have the line suddenly change in texture somewhat. It's not a big change. Generally speaking, it just goes a bit flatter and the stitches become longer. But it's really easy to switch off, go on to automatic pilot and just start putting in an entirely different stitch. 9. How to: Heavy Chain: Our next stitch is going to be heavy chain stitch. This is a variant of chain stitch itself, which we will learn in our last course. And it's actually a really beautiful variation. It creates a lovely feather-like effect. So again, I bought my needle up right at the tip of my line. I like to work this stitch towards myself. Similarly, theoretically you can work it away. I just think it would be kinda fiddly to do. So I like to work towards myself and this stitch. The first thing I'm going to do is make a straight stitch along my paint line. And it's quite a small stitch to start off with that is going to be around about a millimeter in length, thereabouts and just under a 16th of an inch. So from there, I'm going to bring my needle up probably about the same distance underneath the stitch again on my paint line. And using the eye of the needle, I'm going to slide under that first stitch. Now you can see I'm pushing the fabric there. And it's because I have stitching here. What I'm trying to do is push the fabric up so I can just get the needle through and clear these stitches so I don't disrupt them. The problem with that is it will affect the tension on my frame. So I've got to be quite diligent about checking my strings. Retention if I was in a hoop, I need to be quite careful about retention in my hoop because pushing like this is useful, but it will stretch out your fabric and diminish your attention. So you've just got to keep an eye on that. The reason I'm using the I or my needle is because the eye is blunt, more likely to push those fives out of the way. Whereas the sharp point that I'm using the Menil is more likely to pierce the threads and I want this to sit under the stitch that I've got in place, not through it. So I'm going to pull all of that through. And you can see I was working again from the right-hand side. That's because I'm right-handed. If you are left-handed, you can equally do this process from the left-hand side. You'd probably find it easier because you won't have this stitching here to contend with, because obviously this area is empty. So I'm going to pull all of that thread through. My needle is going to plunge down in the same place. It's come out often in exactly the same hole. Now I'm going to bring my needle up again to mill underneath this little loop. So what we've actually done is make the classic chain stitch teardrop shape. Just say on a very small basis, what we're gonna do is that same process. We're going to slide the needle under the original straight stitch. Okay. I'm not going through this tiny chain. I'm going through the original straight stitch. I'm going to repeat the same process. But rather than pulling this tight, I'm going to leave and some excess thread on the surface of the fabric. I'm taking my needle again down in the same hole that the thread has come out of. So from here, I am going to bring my needle up mil to mil underneath where the threads are coming in and going out. I'm not going to pull all of my thread through. I'm going to hold a little bit on the back because what I'm looking to do is slide my needle through this tiny loop here. I'm not going under the one that is forming that you can see here is loose. I'm going to go into this first chain that we made. I'm going to slide the eye, my needle underneath that. And then from the back, I'm going to pull this loop tight and pull the excess through. The reason I'm doing that is because I want you guys to see where I'm actually taking the needle. This stitch can very easily be worked as just a reverse chain rather than a heavy chain. Because what we're doing is taking the needle through not the last stitch you've made, but the one before that. So the second-to-last, it is really easy to mistake. That is this one that you've just made rather than this second-to-last one that you've made. So I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm going to take my needle down in that same hole, leaving a bit of an excess so that I can bring my needle up. Again. That same spacing wanted to mail beneath this point where the threads are coming out of the fabric. And then again, I'm looking for not the stitch and forming that's loose, but the one before it. So the second to last stitch, I'm going to place my needle underneath it. Pull all of that thread through on the back. Pull it through on the front, and continue on. Now, as you get used to this stitch, what you can start to do is pull the stitch tight, plunge in the same place. Bring it up as before. And you can start to recognize where you need to go. So this is the stitch I just formed, which I do not want to go under. I want to go under stitch before that. Which is this one. Okay. So that's getting fiddly. That is going to be easier. Me just tweet that out. There we go. I can tease that back. But after a while you will start to recognize where you need to place your needle until that point, I would say leave your stitches loose so that you can see what you're doing because you have to take the needle and higher up than you realize. Sometimes it can get quite tight. So at the end here, I'm going to bring my needle up just a thread away from that last stitch. Weave through the very last stitch. So I'm not going up and above. Just want to go through that last stitch and then go back down. I tend to find that gives it a nice finish. It. Otherwise it can look a bit skinny at the end. And then I can cast my thread off underneath the stage. 10. Heavy Chain Review: So my heavy chain is complete. My line was a little bit wonky, so my stitching, Sandy, that's not straight and that's fine. I don't mind. Overall, all the things I'm looking at. This top stitch can often look a bit skinny and long. So I've kept that nice and short so it makes quite a neat stopped. The small stitch I put in at the bottom gives quite a neat finished as well. And if you look, the stitches are relatively consistent. I think there's one through here that I went a bit long. I think I went a bit long. But other than that, my stitches are actually quite consistent because of my spacing was consistent where I was bringing the needle up and plunging it. You can see it's got this tight. It is a chain stitch, so it's almost like feather-like in its appearance because it's got this very tightly stacked the shape. It tends to be slightly broader than a lot of the other stitches, so you can't really see it very well, but the Quaker stitch next to it is slightly skinnier in the single-strand. Unfortunately, the whipping and the weaving disguise that a little bit, but it is skinnier. I can think you can see a bit better in person. So the heavy chain is broader and slightly heavier looking, hence the name. It acts really nicely as an outlining stitch. It can complement the tail feathers of a bird. If you're stitching a bird, throwing a couple of lines in this amongst other more open stitches like the fly stitch we looked at in the last class. It can actually enhance it quite nicely because it's got this kind of type V shape to it. If you have a particular heavy paint or pen line that you might want to cover that you don't think chain is going to do the job or Quaker stitch stem six, something like that. Heavy chain is your friend. The other thing you can see that with a chain stitch, the loops are quite open and you can see they're actually more densely packed in the heavy chain. So if you think your chain stitches too loopy and open to cover paint line again, heavy chain gives you a similar texture, but it gives you that more densely packed, slightly broader appearance. So now I'm going to finish off the rest of my samples. I am going to work the heavy chain on the curved line and then play with the other fibers I have. Again, I might see if I can bring it around in a spiral. I might actually put in some chain stitch next to this as a comparison so that you can see the two that might be a nice sample to have so that you can see how different they are to one another. 11. Heavy Chain Review pt 2: So I've now finished my sample of heavy chain. I've worked a little bit of a curvy line. I've gone from two into one in the fine, well, I've done my standard cotton charts. I've got to wool. I've whipped and woven it. And I've worked it into, and I did go ahead and just work a single short line of chain just next to it. And you can see that the texture is much denser, It's much more packed together. Then the chain, the chain is slightly more elongated so you're getting that slightly different texture from it. There's a few really interesting things. I thought working in the multiple strands. Australia cottonwood be just as painful as it was in the quake stitch. The threads kept separating. I kept having to kind of pull them through separately. And actually it wasn't that bad. I had a couple of issues, I think with the five, but that's settled down fairly quickly. And you can see you're getting the same texture is just more densely packed. The final Hugo, much like the quake stitch, the single-strand is so fine, it became tedious to work. So I don't think I'll do that again, but the two and the three were pretty good. You get fairly decent definition in the world, but it got very fluffy very quickly. So it's quite hard on the wall. The two strands of cotton poly there was relatively okay. The texture did worry me for a little bit. I thought I was losing definition, but it came right in the end. I think you can see the bigger or larger quantity of threads equals bigger stitches. And you can see that reflected in the texture next to each other. They're the whipping and the weaving. Once again, much like with the chain stitch, you can see that you're losing the texture when you whip it. It's also slightly uneven and the weaving is a little as well. And that's just because it's so thick that finding the right place to slide your needle and it is quite hard. So if you were to go through every chain for the whipping, it would be so densely packed you won't be able to see any of the color. And it will be so crowded with the weaving that it would just lose any elegance that it has. So you're kind of estimating the distances each time and I've mostly done okay, I think it's not too bad. I was certainly won't be whipping again, the weavings quite nice, but you have to be quite firm with the needle. It does get stuck a little bit at time, so you have to probe around with the needle to get it through. One of the things that really did interests me There's, given that the fine wool is so fine, It's interesting to note that in this stage, particularly that two threads of the final is equal to in thickness and height and weight. The cotton pellet, which I wasn't expecting, I haven't really noticed that in any of the other stitches. I have gone back and had a bit of a look at the quake stitch that you can just see here. The running stitch. If you look closely, two strands does appear in the other stitches to be about the same thickness, but it just stands out a little bit more. In this one it would seem. So I'm quite happy now that my sample is complete. And I'm going to move on to the next stitch. 12. Top row Review: So my top row is complete. And I'm really enjoying the different weights of the stitches. So they go from quite thin through too much thicker obviously with the heavy chain. One thing that has become apparent, which I guess is obvious but has never really occurred to me before. Is the density of color you achieve with each of them. With the bigger, broader stitch, you're getting more color going down. Here, you have some color, but obviously it's slightly less because Quakers stitches thinner. The one that really stands out is the running stitch. And again, it's obvious, it makes perfect sense. This is a broken line, whereas these are both solid lines, Quaker and heavy chain a solid lines. But it's really interesting to see them sat next to each other like this. The running stitch, we've already talked about how you don't want a line, so no line is required with them. But it's never really occurred to me that they could be used more as an accent stitch. So I've always considered this to be an outline stitch. We're going to write that on the sides. So if we do that now. So I've always considered this to be something either to be embellished or as an outline to something. But in reality, it could be used in a similar way to a French knot or seeding as an accent in an area because you get the smattering of color, but you don't get the density of color that other stitches will give you. So that's been a really interesting experiment to see the stitches all lined up and see that increasing density of color come through with the different stitches. 13. How to: Feather Stitch: So now we are going to look at further stitch. So with further stitch, I'm going to start at the top of my pink line and I'm going to work towards myself. I prefer to work this stitch that way. You can work in wavy lines, so I'm sure you can work in sideways and probably from here, up, from the bottom up. But I prefer to work it towards me. I think it works better that way. So I'm going to immediately place my needle a short distance away but parallel to where the thread comes out. And that distance is about three mil or so, which works out to about an eighth of an inch. So I'm not going to pull my thread through. I'm going to leave this loop on top as you can see. And I'm going to bring my needle up about the same distance away. So it's that three male eighth of an inch below where I've brought the needle up and plunged. It is actually roughly in the middle of those two stitches as well. I'm going to pull all of that through. And then I'm going to do the same thing on the other side out to the left hand side. Again trying to keep my plunge point parallel with where the needle is just been bought out. Keeping that loop on top, bringing the needle up just below and in-between those two points and pulling it all through. And you can see straight away that I've made a lovely v-shape with my stitches. I'm just going to continue doing that all the way down trying to keep the V-shaped consistent, if I can in shape, you can play with it a little bit. You can go from small to large and so on. But for the time being, I'm going to try and be consistent and because I'm talking that one there, I don't think he's quite as wide as it should be and it's a little bit too deep. But that's fine. I've recognized it. I'm going to keep going and just try and be a bit more consistent. As I'm pulling the thread through, I am looking to make sure that the V's sit flat against my fabric without being too loose or loopy, but I'm trying not to overpower them as well. So as I pull, if I pull too tightly, you can see the weave of the fabric really opens up there and starts to get quite strained. So I'm not doing that. I'm just trying to make sure that the V's lay flat against the fabric. At the bottom here just to catch this loop down, much like we've done before with SLI or chain. I'm just going to plunge the needle just over the thread. So I'm not making a big catching stitch that goes quite a distance and just placing the needle so the thread will sit snugly over that last stitch and hold it in place. Then I'm going to look for somewhere to cast off. Now you may have noticed there was a fundamental flaw in my plan. In drawing on my pencil line and starting at the top. It can clearly be seen between the stitches. Okay. So when it comes to working feather stage, you might want to either tack a vague line that you're going to fare the stitch along or just leave out entirely, do not draw anything on because as you can see, it will be seen between the different stitches. Also note that because of the way the stitch works whilst I've started at the top of my line. The line itself doesn't actually sit centrally down the middle of my feather stage. It's sitting off to the left a little. So I'm going to write no line next to this one as well. Because we're drawing on a paint line is not a good idea. 14. How to: Feather Stitch on a curve: I'm going to do this in wool simply because I don't think I'm gonna have a huge amount of space in this sample. You can see that feather stitches actually quite broad. So if I measure from the other arm, it's actually about six mil wide. So that should be about about quarter of an inch. So it does sit over a wider area. So I don't think I'm going to get quite the level of sampling that I've done in the other stitches, as you can just about see here with the running stitch. I'm going to attempt to work this on a curve. And this is going to be quite an interesting challenge. And I'm going to have to think quite carefully. So I'm going to start by trying to bring it around closer to the line and then come out. And remember I can't be on a paint line. So I'm going to lift my needle up slightly so it's going to sit slightly higher than the exit point here. So I started with just a regular v, like you saw me do over here. And this time, rather than making it level here, I'm just gonna go in above it. It turns slightly. But trying to keep my Mophie the same size. This time. On this side, I'm going to keep it lower than where I've brought it out to try and continue the curve. Now I'm going to level out because I'm getting a little bit too close to my paint line. So I've kept my exit point and my replenishing point level. I think that one has ended up a little bit smaller, but that's fine. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with it. And this next one, I'm going to plunge a little bit higher than where the thread is come out. I'm just going to keep repeating that process all the way down. So again, this one's gonna be lower in order to help kick it out a little bit more. It's gonna go higher. In fact, I don't think that's high enough. So I'm going to reposition that. I'm taking just one thread of the fabric higher up. And because it's curved quite nicely and kicked out, I'm going to try to level it off a little bit now. And then with this one, I'm going to try and start bringing it back into the line. Okay. So I'm just looking at this now. You can see I've brought the curve round. This bit is throwing out to me at the moment. I think that probably could have been slightly higher, but it's fine. I was going to start leveling out here, but I've got a feeling that's going to blend it off too much. So I'm actually going to do is reposition that needle sets. It's slightly higher up so that I can bring it around. And I'm going to end it there. So it started off. Okay. I'm just gonna cost off there eventually as well. So it started off, Okay. I've got this nice elegant curve coming through here. It's gone a bit bad at this point, but that's fine. This is what sampling is all about. I keep saying that, but this is exactly what it's all about. I've basically what I've tried to do is bring it in too quickly. I think. I probably should have angled this one down a little bit more, kicked out a bit more this way, and then had less per sweep here. Basically, I've tried to make too tight curve in these last four stitches. So up to here, it was fine. So what that tells me is if I want to curve further stitch, having longer, shallower angles works better. So I'm going to keep that sample because I have just realized something with it. I'm going to cast it off. I'm going to put in some annotation to remind myself of what I've just learned. So if this were a result piece, a piece that I might want to put on my wall or show people, I would be around about here, isn't it? I'm gonna put a tick there and across there. So if this was a piece I wanted to show people and be excited about, I would be unpicking this last section. But as it's sampling, I'm going to leave it there as a record. And I'm going to write at the bottom here, too steep. There we go. So I've just written shallow in here as well to remind myself that the shallow curve is good. The two steeper curve and not so good. And with those two samples done, I am going to try working it in the other fibers, so I get that scale. In some of the stitches. I have been working a spiral. I've done that. I think more in the previous course than this one. But a spiral is always a good idea. It shows you how stitch we'll come around to curve. This shows me that the spiral will not work in feather. There is a guess, a small amount of potential for it to work in a very thin threads, in a very wide spiral. But I don't think I actually have the space to do that in this sample. I also don't think I have the patients because I think doing something like that is gonna be quite time-consuming. You'll be unpicking as much as you put in. The question you have to ask yourself at that point is, is it really worth it? Is it really worth the bother? This should be fun, not frustrating. So I'm gonna do my stranded cotton chart. I'm going to play with some of the fine wool. And we'll see how we go. 15. Feather Stitch Reveiw: So my sampling is done. You can see I've got my chart and you can see again, it very clearly demonstrates this idea that the thicker the thread or the higher the quantity of the threads, the bigger the stitches. So you can see two. For Hagen comparison to six is smaller. Three is slightly smaller still too. Again, smaller. In a single-stranded RNA strand of cotton, I've gone absolutely tiny, ridiculously tiny to the point where I think there are about a millimeter wide. Yeah. The stitches are a millimeter wide. So it's nice to know that I can go to that scale with a single-stranded, stranded cotton if I want to. But that is a bit ridiculous, but it's so adorable, but I probably will do that again. You can see I've tried to find wool and these two samples as well. I've quite specifically tried to go from small to large because you can do that. And it helps you to create more shaping, more movement in the piece, because it's not just a very static straight line. Practicing it like this is a really good way of regulating your attention and your spacing. But playing with it like this and expanding it is really good for just improving on those things, I guess really because if you can gradually make your stitches bigger in a very controlled manner, you're creating more precision. So I've done that in both of these two, I've got the two strands of wool down here, which I didn't think I'd be able to fit in, but I have, which is really good. One of the things that strikes me about the two strands is again, I'm not rubbing my stitches. I'm just placing my fingers on top. If I go over all of these different samples, there is a very distinct height difference and it's very, very obvious here with the two strands. So I've always felt that this is a stitch that could be layered. It works particularly well for feather or leaf-like shapes or seaweed. It's a really good one for an underwater scene with seaweed. I've always felt that you can layer them so you could start with darker colors in thinner threads and slowly build up until you have much thicker threads on top. And by going from dark to light as well as small to big, you create a great deal of depth and perspective within a piece. Overall, I'm really happy, particularly having experimented with the curve and discovering that the shallow curve works quite nicely, but tighter curves are not a good idea in this stitch. So I'm really happy with the way the sample is as panned out. So I have a couple of extra feather stitch examples here. And you can see I've done the same thing. I've kept it nice and regular. I've expanded in size. And this one we haven't actually covered in the previous sample. So I wanted to have a quick look at that. But one thing I have noticed all of my samples, including the Ds as well as the previous square that you've just seen. I do the same thing in each one in the I always go to the right. So if you look at each and every one of them, I make my first baby. I come up in the middle and I always apparently without fail, swing out to the right. Now, that's probably because I'm right-handed equally. You can swing out to the left. So having come up here to catch my first baby, I could have plunged here on the left-hand side. There's no technical right or wrong answer. Other than how does it work in the shape that you're filling or the area that you're filling. If you have no exterior lines and you're just making a massive firms or seaweed or something like that to create a detail. It doesn't really matter at all. You can do either way. If you have a shape that you're filling in and generally when I use the stitch, I have it floating down the middle so it's not actually touching the sides of the shaper tool, it just sits down the middle. You want to look at the positioning quite carefully. So you want to decide if I swing out to the right? Am I gonna be touching, encroaching on overlapping the line? Would I be better to swing out to the left in that regard. So it's more about the space you have available to fill rather than there being a technical right or wrong as to whether you go left or right. So this one looks a little bit different. This one here on the right hand side. And you can see I've done my usual thing. I've made my stitch but swung out to the right. I've gone to the left, but rather than going to the right again, as you can see, I've done in the samples over here, what I've actually done is gone out to the left. So I have two V's going to the right to these going to the left, two V's going to the right. So you don't necessarily have to alternate. As you can see I've done here in either of these two, on the middle and on the right, you can put multiple. These are further stitches in the same direction before swimming back in the other way. And I think it's often referred to as double or triple feather. But I think that again varies from book to book and so on. 16. How to: Burden Stitch Foundations: So the next stitches, burden stitch. You can see I've drawn myself a look curved shape. And I have four little boxes there that I'm going to do a couple of different samples in. So in this instance, I have a paint line that will need to be covered at the end of it. Because bourbon states should always be outlined. It will go some way towards covering your paint lines, but it won't cover all of them. So you'll need to have some sort of outlining search on it. Which means I have somewhere I can cost on. So I'm just going to use my same to stitch cast on. And I've tried to arrange it so that my thread fools around about the middle of my shape. And I'm going to come up on my paint line. I'm going to try and follow the grain as best I can horizontally to the other paint line. And I'm plunging my needle. I am then going to bring my needle backup on the same side. So I've plunged on the left, I'm coming up on the left. You can just see my needle. They're equally in another shape. So up here on the curve shape, I've got paint line here. I could have cost on here, come up on the left and gone to the right. It's more dictated as to where you can cast on as opposed to left or right handed. You always plunge and come up on the same side to make the next stitch. So I am going to play with my thread. I've got a fairly obvious grain here, so I can actually follow it quite nicely. But you want to play with your thread a little bit. If you've got a more densely woven fabric, you can play with your thread because you want to make sure this stitch is parallel with the next one. I'm going to plunge down on my opposite paint line. Then in order to get the spacing which I think is going to be quite close. What I'm actually going to do is bring my needle up halfway up the fabric. You can see I'm just holding onto the I underneath. What I'm gonna do is push the eye of the needle up to the fabric itself and lay my needle along the fabric. And this is gonna give me an idea of the spacing. We do this a lot when we're trying to do parallel stitches where you can use the needle and actually I think my next stitch would realistically, yeah, see that's a better spacing because I think here where I just had it, it's a little bit too narrow in comparison to this gap up here, the first one. So if I were to put in the stitch, it would sit on my paint line. So there's actually no point in me putting it in. There's no point in me putting that in because I'm going to put an outlining stitch. If I were to put this stitch on here as well, it would all get too congested and silly, so I won't actually put one there. What I am going to do is make stab stitch into my fabric. Now I've talked about this before. I don't really want only long stitches on the back of my work. They tend to go slack and then everything on the front goes slack as well. What you can do is a stab stitch to help travel your threads along the back of your fabric providing you don't go too far. There are limitations and you do end up wasting thread just to move it from here up to here. I can do that. And I think that looks about right to me. So I'm going to make that my last stitch because again, I think if I were to put one here. Yeah. See again, that's the perfect spacing or is it cannot come down a little bit actually. So if you're not quite sure you can pull the thread through and again, play with your throat. Yeah, I think that's gonna be too narrow. So I'm going to stitch that. I'm actually going to cast off my thread just under my tacking here with my two stitches. So I've got relatively small spaces. I've only managed to get in three stitches, which is absolutely fine. Usually I do this over a bigger area. And again, if I were using a thinner thread, I could probably fit in more. So that's maybe something to experiment with, the fine wool or the stranded cotton. But in this instance, that's the only stitches I'm going to get in. So I'm going to work over those berms stitches made up of two parts. You have these long, in this case, horizontal stitches. I'm now gonna put vertical stitches over the top. I would do the same in a shape like this, but I think I might play with the angle somewhat because you could potentially do it diagonally. You could do them vertically. Generally speaking, these stitches that I've just laid down, the foundational stitches of bourbon stitch, generally speaking, will go across the widest part of your shape. And the reason we do that is because the stitches we're gonna put over the top, we're actually going to tie them down because you can see these are very loose. I don't want to play with them too much because I don't want to stretch my throat out. But you can see whilst they're sitting flat to the fabric, they do move around quite a bit. Long stitches like that, whether they be on the front or the back, have the risk of going over stretching and going slack. So we're actually going to put stitches over the top now to hold them down. 17. How to: Burden Stitch first row: And again, I'm going to cast on somewhere along the side. I want to aim for the middle if I can. Because if in doubt middle out. So I've just taken that knot off. Now, when you have these large areas, if I were to come up in the middle itself, you can see the OB training my thread a fair distance. It's not too far, but it's further than I would like it to be. So in this case, if in doubt, middle out actually means if in doubt, not at the edge. Okay. So if I were to make my first stitch here, I'm not traveling my thread as far. But also because I'm not coming up right at my age, my pattern will fall how it falls at the edge. There's no design there, there's no matching up the edges. Because if you match up the edge here and it works out perfectly here, it might not this side. So we tend to just start away from the center. So if in doubt, middle out comes into play, but you also have to think about that long stitch on the back. So I have brought my needle up just above this horizontal thread. I'm going to pass over the middle one and I'm going to plunge just below the top one. So my stitch should sit between two threads and over one. And what I'm aiming to do is make sure that none of the fabric is showing when I'm done. So the most basic way to do this stitch, I like to work two rows at a time because it sets my spacing. So what I'm actually going to do is now bring my needle up above the middle stitch. Take over the top stitch and I'm looking to plunge in this instance on my paint line. Then going to come back underneath the top stitch and plunge above the bottom stitch. And all the time I'm doing this, I'm trying to keep my stitches as straight as I can and cluster them together to cover the fabric. Now, don't think I measured this for you. But my stitches are about three Miller Park, which means that my stitch here should be around the five or six mil length. So that is in fact about an eighth of an inch. So the top stitches will end up about quarter of an inch if we just measure them. So that's more like three-sixteenth of an inch. So it's not quite. Not quite. And it's about the five-minute mark. That's as long as I would take them. If I had a thinner thread, I could do my horizontal bars closer together and my stitches will be shorter. I would not do them longer than that. So when you're setting your spacing for these, you really have to think about what you're putting on over the top. So I'm going to continue working my two rows trying to make sure that all of my stitches are vertical, clustered together. So very little fabric is or no fabric is showing. This stitch works really well to create a grass like texture. If you work in the opposite way. So if you shift it by 90 degrees, so my green bars would be vertical and my blue stitches I'm putting it would be horizontal. You can actually use it to make a water-like effect, which is quite nice. Depending on how you execute it, it can be quite time-consuming. This is going to take me a while. So you kinda want moderately sized spaces, not overly large. Although if you like, things like this, you can do overly large as well. 18. How to: Burden Stitch completing the shape: So my throat is starting to deteriorate and just tweaking the thread I've plunged there at the bottom. So casting on and off within your shape is not a good idea. You really want to stick to your paint lines. So my closest paint line that I can get into is just here underneath attacking. So I am going to just cast off there and I will cast on a new thread just above it and carry on. So at this point, I've put in my last stitch up here and I'm trying to decide if my shape is complete. And I think what's happened is my tacking has just popped to one side. So if I put that back over my cast on stitches in-person, particularly in my stitch looks complete. So I can say that this top row on this side is finished and the middle row is finished as well. But I have to start filling in the bottom row. Before I do that, I want to make my way across the top so I can finish off this section on the right hand side. And this is a really important thing with burdens stitch. There are very small gaps between each of the stitches across this top horizontal bar that are not complete. So what I'm actually going to do is come up above this top bar. You can just see above there. And I'm plunging on my pink line. This will help to complete the pile. And it actually ends up looking like it's woven, which you will see in later samples that I'm planning to do. If you don't fill in these stitches, it can look a little bit empty and an open. And you just don't want that because this should be a complete bed of stitching when you're done. This is actually quite easy because I've drawn my shape very deliberately on the grain. What happens when have curved shape? Well, you're doing the same thing essentially. You're coming up above your horizontal bar and you're plunging to your pink line. Just in the instance of a curved shape, you may have two stitches next to each other that are different lengths. You may have one stitch in and you won't need to do another. It will be determined by your shape, but the principle is the same. You come up above your top horizontal bar and you plunge to your paint line. So I'm just about to make my last stitch along the top here. And I can go back to coming up above the middle bar. Plunging. I can then actually switch to just coming up above the top bar and putting in those top stitches. Just really being careful about my spacing. I'm working my way along. And then I think one more that should take me right up to my paint line. My thread is starting to deteriorate slightly, so I will be casting that off. But now I'm in a really great position to fill in this small section here and then do the same this lower bar. And then I'm going to treat the bottom edge in the same way I've just treated this section in there. I'll go in-between each stitch and do essentially a half stitch to complete it. So I'm going to now go off and have a look at my other samples and what I'm thinking about doing there. And I will see you in a few minutes. 19. Burden Stitch Review: The burden stitch sample is finished. You can see the original sample here in blue. The top and bottom edges are both complete and you can just see little flashes of those foundational stitches coming through. On the whole. They have remained mostly straight when working with stitch, they can get pushed out of alignment. So what you can do is with the eye of a needle or shinier needle or a tapestry needle, you can just go in and very gently tweak them back and forth if you need to. Don't use a sharp point, if you start scratching your stitches there, you will scuff them up, they'll get fluffy and they won't look very nice. So something blunt to just gently move them. You're, you're kind of pushing, scratching them. But it's not always necessary. Alive then gone on to finish the last three squares. So I think I mentioned this earlier. You can work more than one stitch next to each other. So you can see here in this sample I've worked two stitches. And the idea is that you just put them in, in the same way. So you put in one stitch and then work another stitch directly next to it. And down here in the left-hand corner, I've got three stitches. I've got a very badly written three there and a badly written for because this is for stitches. What you can see where as you increase the number of stitches, you can see more of the foundational rows. So I've used the same green pearly in all of them, just because it makes a nice contrast with the other colors I've got. And you can see this woven texture that burden stitch gives you is a bit more obvious in the bed, definitely the bottom two and to a degree in the orange sample. In each of the first three instances, I've used a single-strand of the fiber and the needle. And in case of the stranded cotton, I've used two simply because one thread would just take forever and actually burned and stitch has been quite time-consuming sample to work. So it does take time, which is why a medium-size shape is often better for Bourbon stitch just because it takes a long time. And each of the instances you can't see any fabric, which is what we like to see. And as I say, these flashes of color you can see between the stitches. You can use to your advantage. So you can often go with a small accent color or something like that. So a brighter, more vibrant color that you use in small amounts. And you can see you get these small flashes of it through the better stitching. And it depends on how many stitches you put next to each other as to how much of the under stitching you see. So this is a really good thing to go back to. To say, Do I want large amounts of this color showing? Or do I want small or moderate amounts showing? Working these four combinations is actually a great scale for me to refer back to. So up here, I have worked multiple colors and because I'm using different fibers, I've had to alter the number of stitches. So up here in the very fine wool, I've had to put in four stitches to accommodate the gaps that are created by the three stitches in the stranded cotton, which is then filled in with two stitches in the wool. And that's just because the fibers are different sizes. Normally when I do this type of Stitch, want to do bonus stitch, I'm using all of the same fiber. So the foundational threads are the same as the threads that go over the top and it's just the color that changes. But it's quite nice to mix the fibers. So I've had a bit of a play with that as well. Now, this one you can see does not blend in any way, shape, or form, but it does highlight how you do the blending in this stitch. You can see this row here. I have intermingled blocks of stitches so that I get a mix along one row. And then I've gone to one row of solid stitches. And then down here you can see I've put in a little bit of the yellow in the same way, so I started mixing. If this sample were longer, I'd have another row complete. That's just all yellow with no blue in it tool. So I've learned a few things from this. First of all, you use the blocks to blend. Notice I haven't mixed the colors within the blocks. So I don't have a block that is blue and orange. It's just a block that is intermingled with blocks of orange, blue. So I'm equally, I've done it from the top-down. I have in the past on it from the side on. And I've had this semicircle almost or curved line of shading, which takes a little bit more thought. Also in this one, I've used the wool, yellow wool to lay down my foundational stitches because I really like it when your foundational stitches slowly disappear. So the next sample I'm going to show you is a shaded sample and you can see how the foundational stitches are very striking at the top and they slowly disappear or fade away as they go down. I particularly like that effect. Again, it's a personal aesthetic. It's not technically correct, It's just an option that you have. So if I were to have chosen colors that blend through each other better, that are slightly closer in tone. I would have a much more natural shaded effect here. But I would also have an example that people might not be able to pick out the colors in. So I like to work samples in contrast in colors like this. So it's easy to see how the blending works. So you're intermingling those blocks of color rather than intermingling with colors within the block. Then because burden stitches always outlined, I've just thrown a bit of an outline stitch around half of it to remind me. And then I can see quite clearly where on the other half where I have compromise the length of my stitch to marry up with my pink line. I've got both there. I've chosen a stem stitch equally. A backstitch would work with burden stitch. I prefer a more discreet outlines, so something that's a little bit smoother. When you start going with heavy chain, chain, Quaker stitch, things like that. They are quite raised and pronounced. Which again, on a personal level, I don't think really works with burdens to which they are legitimate outlining stitches that you can use. There's nothing to stop you. But I feel that with the height of the outlining stitch, the burden stitch sinks away and it starts to compromise the perspective in a piece. So I don't like to use them. I like to keep it simple. Then the lovely texture that burden stitch creates can come forward. You'll also notice that these samples I've done at different angles. Generally speaking, when I do burdens to which I lay horizontal stitches and put vertical over the top. So I thought it was a nice opportunity to play with different angles. And I have to say the two bottom ones are actually quite challenging getting that angle so that your stitches sit at right angles to the late foundational stitch was actually quite an interesting challenge. All round, quite satisfying sample. I wanted to show you a gradient or shaded version of burden stitch. The previous sample I've shown you that the colors obviously don't blend through each other. They don't merge in any way. But it does demonstrate the shading quite nicely. But you don't have to necessarily blend in that way. You don't have to intermingle the blocks in that way. You can just strike pure colors through. So I've got my lightest color up the top here. The second lightest here. Third lightest. And then at the bottom, just underneath those foundational stitches are actually done in the darkest color. So at the top, the foundational stitches are much more visible. At the bottom. They're still there, but they are not quite so obvious. So what I've done is achieved this lovely gradient through careful selection of my shades. That creates just a very subtle effect. So it doesn't have to be loud, it doesn't have to be stripy. You can actually do something much more discreet and subtle. 20. How to: Fishbone Stitch: Our next stitch is going to be fishbone. I have had some quite spirited discussions in the past with people as to whether fishbone is actually a stitch or not. Apparently it's quite controversial, which I did not know. There is an argument that is just a variant of herringbone. But for the purposes of this course, we're going to treat them as different stitches. Let's give fishbone its moment in the spotlight. I've drawn on a little leaf-like shape. And I have this central line down the middle. Fishbone is a solidly worked. So when I'm done, the central line certainly won't be seen. And if I'm careful about my needle placement, I should not need a outlining stitch. So I'm going to start by bringing my needle up at the tip of my shape. And just to make sure that I get a neat point at the top, I'm going to make a straight stitch down the center of my shape. That straight stitch is about formal or so in length and eighth of an inch in length. I am then going to come up on the left-hand side. Equally. You can come up on the right. It doesn't really matter. I'm trying to get my needle in as close as I can to the stitch I've already got in, but I'm not looking to come up level with it. So I'm not coming out with the same hole and coming up just next to it but slightly below the tip of it. And then when I plunge, I'm just taking it over that central stitch and plunging just on the other side of it. So I'm making a very slightly diagonal stitch. I'm not going to repeat the process on the right-hand side and plunge on the left. And essentially, I'm just going to keep doing that all the way down. I'm trying to make sure that my stitches nestle together neatly around the outside. And as I move down, I will be plunging either side of the line rather than the stitch because you can see I could cover the stitch there. I'm going to be plunging either side of the line. I don't want my stitches to get too short, which they run the risk of doing. So when I plunge my needle, I'm trying to make sure that I'm getting the right angle and making sure that I have an elongated stitch. Now, I don't think I'm quite covering my paint lines, particularly on the right-hand side. And I know from experience that being able to sit and look directly down over my stitches is key to making sure that you're covering those paint lines. And at the moment you guys have that view because my camera is in the way, so I'm just going to keep persevering so that you can see what I'm doing. 21. How to: Blend colours in Fishbone Stitch: So my thread is in okay condition at the moment, but it is starting to get quite short. So what I thought I might do, let's try a little bit of color blending. So I'm going to introduce another color. And just looking at it, the line down the center here has kicked out somewhat. You'd ideally want it to be straight and I think that's probably to do with the angle that my stitches are making. On the whole. I think the stitches on the right hand side is slightly shorter than those on the left. So I need to look at making them slightly longer. And again, this is a sample. I've recognized the problem, I'm going to try and correct it. And I have all this space over here to practice, so I'm not too worried at the moment that that hasn't quite gone right? So the first thing I'm gonna do is move this thread. So I've plunged here and my thread will be through lying somewhere along here on the back. If I start stitching with a new color, I'm going to trap that thread. So I'm actually going to do is institute. And since I'm gonna be working in this direction, I'm going to place it up here. Absolutely. They're going to take my next thread and I need to look in. This is true of whether you're just introducing a new thread or introducing a new color, which I'm going to do. But you need to look at where your stitches and my last stitch. If I just tweak my thread, my last stitch is plunging on the right-hand side, which means I've come up on the left. So I want to come up on the right to make the next stitch. I'm going to cross over. And then I'm gonna park this one at the way over here. Unpick. And of course I'm unpicking by just pulling on that thread, going back down the same hole and I'm feeling the pop. So as the thread goes through that hole, I can shoot it pop through. I'm now going to make another stitch in the green. And then one next to the blue. Again, parking at the way in that top corner. And then bringing the blue back into play. Now, the blending you do, it's a very similar principle to be laid wet blending principle that we booked in our last topics of stitches level one. You just have to be careful that all of the new stitches don't end up on one side or the other. So you can see I've put two green it in because that allowed the next, next logical stitch to come up on the other side. So I put my first blue stitching on the right. My next one goes in on the left. And obviously the more space you have, the more space you have to do bigger blends. I think at that point I'm going to call sum my thread off. I'm just going to make two stitches within my shape because again, this is gonna be densely work to my cast on cost of stitches will be a cupboard. And I'm going to take a new thread. I'm going to add in another blue. This time though, I think I might work too blue. Can see there. I just adjusted that last stitch. I want the stitches to sit next to each other, not on top of each other. And that one looked like it was just flicking up a little bit. I think I might work two more green. Now I'm not going to take that glass screen stitch out and I'm going to work one green and two blue. I'm going to just tease that one out. Pocket out of the way. We're going to replace it with two blue stitches. Another one. That's simply because I'm running out of space in my shape. And I think that stitch needs to move down just a fraction. So if you find your stitches are piling up on top of each other rather than sitting around each other. It's probably because there's not enough space, we need to go further down. One green pocket again. Think I might make that my last screen stitch. Cost of that thread and trim it. And then just complete the shape in blue. So as I get towards the bottom, I am going to run out of space to do the full fishbone. I can do is just diagonal stitches until the shape has four crossovers there. Then I think I've got one more diagnostic journey to fit in. I'm just going to tuck it in and under. Why is it will add bulk. And probably the same on this side. So if you ever have a shape like this that has, you can't complete the stitch all the way to the base. You can put in some diagonal stitches just to fill the loss of the shape. And you can see there as my stitches got longer, it's straightened out quite nicely down the middle and I've got quite an obvious blend. Again, these two colors are not going to blend well. They're two completely different colors. But that means the stitches stand out so that when I do this in closer shades, I know that that's my process now get a sudden the blend. 22. How to: Work Fishbone on a curve: So much like with other stitches, we're going to try and work it on a curve. And you can see I've given myself this leaf-like shape with the central line again, the first thing I anticipate is that my central stitch will need to be shorter because straight stitches do not come around curves. So we're going to need to shorten that. Which means the first few stitches I've put in will be shorter as well. So this time rather than stitching to just the side of my initial stage, what I'm actually going to do is plunge beneath it until the right-hand side of the central line. And that's just simply because my central stitches so much shorter. I'm going to have to be quite careful about fanning my stitches on the outside. So I'm not going to bring my needle up as close because if you remember from previous videos, we want it to be closer on the inside and slightly more open on the outside. Now, obviously this is a closed stitch so we don't want to see fabric, but there will be slightly more separation between your stitches if that makes sense. If this is something that you do not master first-time, do not worry. Try again and keep going until it doesn't make sense. Sometimes these concepts are more about repetition than anything else. Seeing what works and what doesn't work. So the angle seems to be coming around, okay. And again, it's that sense of short separation, so I'm not bringing my needle up right next to this last stitch. It's not tucked in. It's just a fraction below that to give breathing room, but not be able to see the fabric underneath. As I come further down through the curve as well. My stitch placement is slightly higher. So whereas before the last stitch I've worked and this stitch, we're level, whereas plunging was level. This time my pleasure point is slightly higher up and that's to accommodate the angle so that my stitches sit next to each other on this side rather than trying to pile up on top of each other. Again, we're in plunging, it is just slightly it's still to the left-hand side of the paint line. It's higher up than the last stitch. This point, my angle has turned quite nicely and my plunge points are starting to become level again. So to cast the thread off, I'm just going to angle my needle under those final stitches and then cut. So you can see the second attempt has gone in much better than the first. The central line is much smoother. It doesn't have this kind of kick out that the first one has. Although the exterior line does have a bit of a dent in it, which again is the sample is fine. The problem I have is that I don't actually have the bird's eye view. I am looking from this angle at it rather than the top-down angle that you guys have. My needle placement is not the best. But I know from experience with better visibility that will improve. Overall. I'm happy with both of those samples. So I'm just going to play with some of the other fibers I have. This one. They're probably all going to be fairly much the same. It'll be the solid surface with this kind of plotted line down the middle. The difference being height. So if I'm using a single-strand of stranded cotton, but that should give me different heights to play with. So if I'm working a piece and I have leaves, I want to sit in the background that are smaller. Do I use them in thinner threads or threads that. So if I'm working a piece that has smaller leaves or shapes in the background, I want to work Fishbone it in. Do I work them in thinner threads or a fewer number of threads in the needle to create that sense of perspective. Because these are actually quite raised. You can put padding underneath. There's a similar stitch you can do that will sit higher, but it is lifting off of the fabric. There is definitely a rich when I just run my hand, my finger, like that, it's definitely going up and over the stitch. So it's gonna be interesting to see the height difference in the different stranded cotton samples. 23. Fishbone Variations: So I finished my stranded cotton chart and there's a very distinct height difference going from the 123 and so on. You can see the texture changes as well. The stitches are much more defined in this final sample and in-person, you can see much better definition between each of the stitches. And that's just because there's more threads in the needle. This one, the outside edges are not brilliant. But what I noticed starting with this one, which I didn't really notice with the other two up here. But what I've noticed is the right-hand side, the needle position dropped more quickly than the left-hand side. So when I started working on the two strands, I decided to really keep an eye on that and I've found that I've got a better shape and better coverage of my paint lines. If I tried to keep where I'm bringing the needle out on either side parallel. So I've tried to keep that consistent with the final four samples. But what I've noticed with them is the higher the quantity, the harder it is to actually create that smooth outline. Everything starts to look a little bit rated. And that's just because of the thicker threads. It also, it's harder to see where the needle position should be because they're so thick they cover so much of your shape. Now realistically had, I've had wider shapes in these final couple of samples. I think really from 45.6, if I'd had wider shapes, they would have accommodated the thicker threads better. So there is a little bit of an inappropriate shape happening with the definition with these final three, certainly. But whilst I was researching this stitch, I found another one that is very similar called flat stitch, or occasionally known as Croatian flat stitch. I've actually found it into older books that I have. I generally find older embroidery books tend to be more informative and have a greater variety of stitches in them. So the difference with this one is that rather than having one line down the center that I'm just working slightly the side of. I actually have a bowed line down the center and I'm working to that line. So from my starting point here on the right, I'm going to plunge on the left, come up on the left and plunge on the right. So I'm going to continue working down the shape. Coming up on one side and plunging on the opposite internal line. That should give me a more padded effect down the middle and is better for wider shapes. So I thought I would try working this stitch in an open fashion. This is my fine wool. And the only references I've found to it in the vintage books that I'm looking at show, rather than having the plunge n's relatively parallel like we've seen in this one, and obviously angled, but relatively parallel to each other here. They actually show it as just covering the end of the previous stitch. So you have to be very careful about your angles. And actually I think that needs to be steeper so that you can just cover the tail end of the stitch and not have it show on the other side. Let's see if I can turn this as well. That should be interesting. You can see there I'm actually playing with my thread somewhat because that will help me to work out where the angle needs to be and to make sure that I'm covering the end of my last stitch rather than having it crossover too much and having it poking out the end. So I'm still trying to follow that same principle of having it closer on the inside of the curve and more open on the outside. We'll see if this works. Okay, I'm going to end it there because I am getting just a little bit too close. 24. Fishbone Review: Some a fishbone sample is finished. Overall, I'm quite happy with it. I've never really been a huge fan of Fishbone, but now I've done it open. I actually, I quite like this effect. And again, it would be a great fern or seaweed or something like that. As I said earlier, I'm quite happy with the way it curves. It's relatively flat. Ish, obviously there is a kind of slightly raised effect to it, but you can get higher stitches when you have padding. The stranded cotton sample, as I predicted, has a great height difference. The other thing I noticed when working this is that the more threads you have in the needle, the longer your stitch needs to be. If you keep them too short, they get very high very quickly and then you'll struggle to place your stitches around them. So it's a good idea to work different thicknesses like this so that you understand how stitches change when you have higher quantity of threads or thicker threads in the needle. I really liked the delicate effect, the open fishbone. And I quite like the shading as well that's gone in quite nicely with regards to the flat stitch, it was quite a nice exercise to do, but I'm just concerned the stitches are a little bit too long and this is supposed to be worked over large areas. But again, you do have those longer stitches that still have movement. These much more stable than these ones. So overall, if I were to do it again, I think I would do to fishbone over flat stitch. I would probably stick to the higher quantity or thicker thread simply because you get better definition. Unless of course you're going to do it open, which is quite challenging. Getting those angles where it's quite challenging. I've just noticed in the the viewfinder there seems to be a little bit of a stitch poking out just there. So I haven't quite got that angle right. But actually turning it was quite satisfying. So I might consider using this in future in place of a fly or a feather. 25. Middle Row Review: So much like surface ditches, level one, these can all be regarded as filling stitches. Burdens. Ditches particularly useful if you have a medium-size area that you need filling. Mostly I use it for ground level, so hills, that kind of thing, but you can do it horizontally for water as well. Fishbone again is a filling stitch or it could be open generally over narrower shapes. As I've previously said, that the thicker thread, the why do you want to go? But these long, elegant shapes, it works better in, and you can go fractionally wider than I've done here to accommodate the thicker threads. Feather stitch particularly is very open, much like the open fishbone, but feather is very open so it makes a great detail stitch to suggest grasses or firms or something like that. You can also use feather and open Fishbone to tie down labor work. You could do the same with the running stitch, Quaker stitch, and you can use heavy chain, but you've got to be careful that as you're sliding your needle underneath the heavy chain itself, it the needle doesn't get caught on the layed work. So these five stitches could be used burden stitching, not so much for late work, but you could use it in place of laid work because again, it fills densely and we'll cover a medium-size area. 26. How to: Oak Leaf Stitch: Our next stitch is going to be oak leaf stitch. To make my first oak leaf stitch, I'm going to make a straight stitch in the middle of my shape there. That is about seven or so Mill Long, which is just just slightly larger than a quarter of an inch. I'm going to bring my needle up short distance away. So that is probably an eighth of an inch. I'm thereabouts for Mill and it's about roughly a third of the way up the stitch. And what I'm actually going to do is use my needle to draw the thread sideways slightly. And I'm going to paste it. So I'm actually going to go through that first stitch. So I just need to draw over a little bit and plunge down into it. I'm then gonna do the same thing at the top. So I'm making two little side arms essentially. I'm going to do the same thing, splitting about a third of the way down. And then I'm going to mirror that on the other side. What I'm trying to do there is where I plunged the needle. I'm trying to plunge it in the same hole. So I've made this adorable little skeleton leaf shape, but that's actually a bit small. So what I'm gonna do is play with it a little bit more and see if I can create some better definition. Now I think my initial stitch was a fairly decent length. So what I'm gonna do this time is the side that I'm going to come up with first, the side that my stitches going to bow out to. I'm going to take it a little bit further away but trying to keep it around about the a third dish of the stitch. So what I'm trying to do there as accommodate a deeper curve in the thread. To make more shaping. See if I can pull you up a little bit. There we go. Then I'm going to do the same thing. I'm trying to make the second stitch up the top slightly shorter to give it a tapered shape. Then again, just mirroring that. On the other side, plunging into that same point. There we go. So slightly deeper curve there. I'm just going to play with this a little bit more. I think this is a stitch that you need to work a lot to play with it and practice it. So I'm just going to carry on playing and I will probably work through my other fibers. I'm going to be interested to see how this turns out in the stranded cotton. I have a theory that the multiple fibers in the needle may not work brilliantly. So I want to have a play with that to see just how well that's going to work. Now, you'll notice that I haven't drawn on any lines. And that's because the way we move the thread out of the way means any line I draw on will eventually be exposed. And you can see there's not many places for costing off. So I'm going to have to be very careful about bringing out from underneath my stitch. If I had a nearby paint line that would be useful. But my nearest paint lines are either here or down here, which means I'm gonna be running my thread quite a long way. So that's just something to bear in mind when you have an open stitch like this. Plotting out where you're going to put the stitches won't necessarily work because the thread won't necessarily lay nicely over your marks and you'll need to find somewhere to cost on and off. I've almost finished my sample. In a couple of places. I've struggled to get the curve that I want on the stitch because I feel that the stitch looks better with a slightly deeper curve. So you can see down here where they've got more of a curve. It looks better than this one that looks quite flat and static. What I've taken to doing is using my fingernail to push the thread to one side, which allows me the opportunity to gauge where I'm bringing up my needle so that I can stop it into the stitch itself. Now just hold it there to make the first two stitches. That then holds my threads in place and I can fill in the final two stitches. Like so. 27. Oak Leaf Stitch Review: So my sample is now finished. You can see I've worked in all of my threads. And one of the things I've noticed is when you have multiple threads in the needle, here, in the orange, these three and the green and then obviously the top section of the stranded cotton and the wall here, these three, you run the risk of splitting the bundle of threads and stitching between the threads. So it's most obvious here in the number two, as I've slid the needle into, the thread is actually parted them. And you can see it's just starting to show fabric. The same as happening over here in the orange. And it's happening in various places across the other threads. It's varies in its obviousness. It's slightly less obvious in these two in-person. It's very obvious in the four and the three as well. So what I've tried to do with some of the latest samples, I did the stranded cotton first. What I've tried to do with the latest samples is with this one. If we take this as the example, I've pushed the threads towards the top left. And what I've tried to do is specifically pierced the second thread that sits on the bottom right, so this side of the curve, so that the majority of the thread is sitting above where I plunged the needle in so that I'm specifically splitting one thread, not slipping the needle between the two. And it sort of has worked. But when you look closely, the stitch looks a little bit lopsided because obviously all of the thread or three-quarters of the thread is kinda packed on one side. So it, it sort of works in multiple threads. It doesn't always, there's a very obvious example here where I thought I'd split the thread and I haven't, I've obviously gone between them. You can see the thread down at the fabric just showing through there. So it doesn't necessarily always work. And as I say, it does look a little bit thick and somewhat lopsided. And you can see in places where the thread is thicker, I've actually struggled to get the angles and the distance in the stitches on the side. So overall, I think this works better in a single thread rather than multiples. You can see here I've done quite a large stitching, a single-stranded, stranded cotton, then try to make them a little bit smaller. These two here have not gone well until they look strange. But they're about I think it's two mil three-meter long, so thereabout an eighth of an inch. And these two, the slightly bigger ones have worked slightly better than more like formyl switches between, I think, an eighth of an inch and three-sixteenth of an inch. So you can't go super tiny with a very thin thread because it just doesn't work very well. Or at least I haven't been able to achieve anything. That looks nice. And that has this kind of lovely kind of fluidity. This, they look like when their work properly, they look like they're floating a little bit. So these two here haven't worked. These two are slightly better. And generally you can see that my stitches size to the quantity of thread and the thickness of the threads. So overall, the fine we'll have our smaller than the pearlite, which is about on par with the single-strand of wool. It's really important to play with different size threads if you can. Because you can see in places. So this one here is probably a little bit short, as is this one. So you can see I've gone longer in later stitches. So playing with the length of your stitch is you're practicing this is quite important, as are the angles that you're putting in these sides stitches in. And realistically, I think the best to have worked or the pearly and the fine wool. And I think that's because they have a higher twist on them. This is a thick thread. This is just regular cruel. And it has a fairly loose ply. And there are places where you can see a bit of the fabric coming through where I've split the thread in the middle. But because it's got quite loose, apply its separate a little bit as quite, quite obvious there. Whereas here where it's got a tight apply and it's a sturdy a thread. It's held up against that needle going through it a little bit better. That's been quite an interesting experiment. I had a good idea that when I plunge the needle in with multiple strands, it would separate the bundle. I would probably see fabric. I knew going into this that they probably wouldn't work. But it's been interesting to play with the other fibers to see how the twist on them does affect the stitch itself. So I quite like this alternating pattern that I've just put in here somewhere on a whim that's actually quite cute. And overall, the stitch reminds me of seeding. So I could, in the right fiber and in the right area, use this as a form of seating. Also, if I have particularly small leaf shapes, I could put stitching and then do an outlining stitch to make it look like the veining down the center of a leaf. Obviously, I'd want to keep it relatively small or really choose what my fiber wisely or my thread wisely. Because obviously this one here is looking a bit skinny and strange. Whereas these are looking a bit better because these to look a bit better as well because they are appropriately sized for the thickness of the thread. So overall, I'm happy with this sample and I feel like I've learned quite a bit from it, which is nice. 28. How to: Danish Knot: Our next stitch is going to be a Danish not. I'm going to start by making a short diagonal stitch on my fabric. That is but to middle. So in length, which is just under an eighth of an inch in length. I'm then going to bring my needle up in this instance underneath and to the left of my straight stitch. And I'm making sure that I'm coming up right next to it. I don't want to see any fabric between where my needle comes out and the stitch. I'm then going to use the eye of the needle. Slide under the stitch. And again, we're using the eye because that's blunt. If I were to use the sharp point of the Chanel, I could pass my thread rather than slide underneath it. And I know in just a couple of movements time I'm going to have to plunge through the fabric. So there's really no point in me switching to a tapestry. But when I do this, I want to make sure that my needle comes out above where the thread comes out so you can see the thread there is in the middle and the needle, the eye of the needle is coming up in the top-left above it. I'm going to pull all of this thread through. But before I do that, I just want to tweak this red where it comes out of the fabric to make sure the stitch is still nice and tight against the fabric. And having done that, I'm going to take the needle back over the stitch and this time passing underneath, but keeping it to the bottom right of where that initial thread came out. So you can just about see it there between the eye of the needle and this red here. If I tweak it, you can see that's where the reps it. So I'm trying to come up beneath it this time. I'm going to lift this. This has created a loop essentially, and I'm going to lift my thread up into that loop. So you can see how I've wrapped around the initial stitch and then I'm going to plunge it down. I'm going to plunge it down in a discrete way, much like when we made a chain stitch when we were ending it, we just took the needle down over the thread itself to hold it in place. I'm going to show you that again. I'm going to make a straight stitch into my fabric. So that stitch looks a little bit longer to me, but I'm gonna go with it. This is a really good stitch to play with either different weight threads or a different quantity of threading the needle. Because this stitch here is crucial to making a small compact. Not if it's too long, you have the ends of the stitch kind of sticking out of the not making these spurs, which I use for creative effect quite often. But you're really trying to keep it as compact and rounded as you can. This one here might be a little bit long, so I need to practice and play with that a little bit. But the size of this stitch here will differ depending on the fiber or the quantity of fibers you have in your needle. So playing with this is quite an important step. And you will learn to judge where you see stitches are successful. You'll learn to judge the length of the stitch. Again, I'm bringing my needle up about the middle point of the stitch. Taking the eye of the needle and sliding under. And again, I'm coming up above where the thread comes out, the fabric. I'm going to pull that through. And once the needle is released again, you could see that the stitches a little bit loose. If I pull on either end, you can see it moving around a little bit. So where the thread comes out of the fabric, I'm just going to tweak it to make sure that's nice and tight. And then pull all the rest of the read-through. Repeat that action. But going through, ensuring it sits on the lower right-hand side. Pulling all of that through and lifting the needle up in the loop to pull it tight. And then I'm just going to make that discrete couching stitch down just over the loop to hold it all in place. It tends to roll forward, so I just poke it to put it back into place. 29. How to: Danish Knot pt2: So you can work them out in different directions. So I'm gonna do it opposite this time. So my angle of my stitch is opposite. I am going to bring it up in the middle again and again, making sure there's no fabric visible between whether needless coming out on whether the stitch sits and approximately in the middle of the stitch. I'm going to take the needle under and this time I can wrap it. I can slide the needle under on the lower left-hand side and taking it back up. This time to sit in the upper right-hand side, again, pulling all that thread through and lifting up in the loop and then catching it down. Now, that may have seemed a little bit awkward. And it felt a little bit awkward. Working stitches in different directions like that can be just less intuitive. So it's always a good idea to practice it because you may find a working method that is easier or better for you. And the important thing is that when you do this, that you come out on one side of the threat whether thread is exiting the fabric there, you need to come out on one side and then loop around it to come to weave under on the other side. So here I'm on the left. When I've come around on this side, I'm going to come through on the right. I've made this bar particularly small. And you can see I'm having a little bit of trouble fiddling with it. And that's fine. I'm going to catch this one down. It's made a much more compact or not. It was philia to do, but it's much more compact. This time you can see I've got a much bigger or longer stitch which is thereabouts half centimeter or three-sixteenth of an inch. Again, I'm going to bring my needle up about the middle of the stitch. Going through this instance top left-hand side, bringing it around, bringing it through on the bottom right-hand side, lifting up into that loop and cutting it down. This time when I come to catch the thread down, rather than making a discrete stitch, I'm just going to extend it a little bit more because you can then see how it becomes slightly more T-shaped or triangular. And that's because my stitches that a little bit longer. The sides are poking out and I've just tried to mimic that with the couching stitch. I'm going to have a little bit of a play with the fibers that I have and see what effects I can achieve. 30. Danish Knot Review: So my Danish not sample is now finished. And again, I've just used the same threads in the same quantities. You can see I've labeled it all. I've got 2.1 in the orange here. And overall, the samples that seem to have gotten better and held their shape better. Either the higher twist, so the fine wool, the worsted wool, and the pearlite, both of which have a high twist on them, or where you have multiple strands in the needle. So the two in the wool here have gone in quite nicely. And the thicker versions of the stranded cotton, I think certainly the higher twist making a firmer thread has an impact on creating a better, more well-defined shape. I think the thicker threads act in the same way, so the wool here is quite soft and I've had issues with the single wool. This is just the plank row will I've had issues with the single wall not quite creating the definition that I want. I've deliberately gone big in a couple of instances because I like that aesthetic. But generally speaking, the overall shapes I'm making and not as well-defined and neat as in the two threads. I think just the thicker thread, the higher quantity of thread just makes itself sturdier because there's more of it to wrap around itself. That being said, I am quite enjoying some of the single strand stitches that I've done just down here. Mostly because the single-strand is so fine and so small that you can't make out any lack of definition in the center because it's just all too tiny to work with. So I think I might use this slightly modified version where I've gone too big with the base stitch. I quite like this little three-pronged shapes I making. So I might do that in the single-strand again. Other than that, it's probably going to be sticking to either the wool or the Pele. They've got high twist on them. There are a couple of instances where it has gone quite badly wrong. I think that's when I haven't got the base stitch tight enough. So as you're sliding the needle under the thread can relax a little bit. So you really got to make sure after you've pulled the needle through, you just want to tweak that thread again to make sure the stitches lying flat. Because I think in some places it's pulling. I think most notably there, um, that is an oversized stitch anyway, but then I think the base stitch itself alongside being oversized was a little bit loose. And then there's a couple of instances where where is it? There's one here, is this one. It's gone terribly wrong. It just looks like a big weird lump on the fabric. And I think in this instance the tension was fine. The size of the stitch was fine. But I think I plunge the needle to close in two threads. I think I needed to bring it out probably by one thread in the fabric and it would have just sat a bit neater on the fabric itself and less bubbly. It's wise to keep an eye on things like that as you're stitching, you're looking to keep the tension on your base stitch. Keep the right size based stitch, and just make sure that when you plunge your needle, you are making sure it's a decent enough distance that you get the shape and the definition. I did think about packing these altogether. And I did a little bit down here. You can see I've put these two back-to-back. So I started with this one in the corner. And what the needle up on the bottom right-hand side to then wrap around and then just doing the opposite here on the top left-hand side to wrap around. And you can see it makes quite a satisfying square, which is quite nice. But also just working this sample, you can see there's lots of fabric shown between the different stitches. Just working this sample was quite challenging because as I'm sliding my needle under the base stitch, not only am I having to push up from underneath which you've seen me do before, but also the needle was catching the surrounding stitches. So you've got to be careful when you're doing that. So I think packing them together, you're either going to make this square like shape, which could look very regular and you want it to look more random. Or you're going to have such trouble piercing the other stitches around it that it's going to get just kind of annoying to be honest with you. I think this overall is a stitch. I would prefer to scatter rather than pack. That being said, you could use it as a form of seeding and you could potentially use it in place for French knot, just not a French knot that an area of French knots that are packed together. So in future I think I'm gonna be sticking with the higher twist threads or multiples in the needle. And I think the higher quantity of multiples, I feel like the 45.6 in the stranded cotton have gone better than the 32.1. So overall I think higher twist or larger quantity of threads and scattered or as a detail not packed together. 31. Drawing on for Woven Wheels: Our next stage is going to be a woven wheel. This is a really lovely stitch that can add a great deal of texture to a piece. And it can add a little bit of height as well because they can get quite high. They make a really great berry or similar circular motif. So the first thing we need to do is take our circle template and draw a few circles. We do this because it's easier to use a template to draw on a perfect circle. Drawing a perfect circle freehand is virtually impossible. And I'm going to work my circles anywhere from about four mille, which is three-sixteenths of an inch to ten mille is my maximum, which will be I think it's just under half an inch wide. I'm just going to draw on a few. I won't draw on all of my circles to start with. I'm just going to draw on a couple of different sizes so that I can play with my different fibers. As I fill the space a bit more, it will get harder and harder to use the template because as I said in the previous video, woven wheels can get somewhat high. So what I think with this one I might do is start at the top and work my way down so that I don't have bubbly areas or too many bubbly areas. To do that. I'm going to start with my first size, which is the formyl. And using my pen, you can use a pencil as well. I'm just going to draw, trying to keep the pen to the outer edges if I can get that perfect circle. And the camera is sort of in the way. So I can't do a great job of that. But I'm going to play with a couple of different sizes and just draw them on next to each other. And so on. 32. How to: Woven Wheels: So we're going to start with a substructure or foundation row for these and then work over the top. And it's important to remember that when you work different sizes, you can add in a higher number of spokes. So in this one here, I'll probably put in five because that's the maximum it will accommodate. I could put in three. With this one. I could probably go to seven and just a bit as I go. Now, the reason I'm talking in odd numbers is in order to effectively waive the wheel, you will need an odd number of spokes. If you have an even number of spokes, the weaving won't work in the same way. So I am going to stop this one here. And there are a couple of different ways of doing this. The easiest one I've found so far is to work at detached fly. So I'm going to come up on one side and you'll notice there as well. My thread has come up just outside of the pink line. It's not too wide. I can't really see any fabric between where the threat comes out in the line, but it is on the outside of the line. And when I come to plunge, I'll do the same thing. Plunge on the outside. I'm then going to bring my needle up in about the middle. You can see I've held onto my threads because as I said, I'm working at attach fly. So I'm gonna pull that through and then plunge again on the outside. Then going to bring my needle up. I'm looking at the distance between where I first bought out the needle and murdered lost, plunged it. And I'm trying to hit the middle point between those two. Then again, using the eye of the needle, I'm going to run it under the slide itself. My needle through, going under the fly. And it's actually above where that thread has come out to catch the fly stitch down. The thread is going up underneath the two top bars. Then again, I'm looking to plunge on the outside of the shape. From here, I'm going to bring the needle up in the middle of my shape. I'm just going to be that otherwise slightly. Because what I want to do is make a stitch over the top to put altogether. There we go. That should hold everything tight. Now, the first thing that strikes me is that the distribution of my stitches there is not perfect. But it's close enough. That's actually probably one of the better ones I've done for demonstration. People don't tend to do their best stitching when they're demonstrating. So that's probably one of my better efforts. But this again is why we sample. It takes a while to work out spacing like this and to be able to approach it and do it perfectly first-time. So we want to keep practicing and practicing the different shapes. Even if you only have one type of threads and make sure you draw on different size shapes so that you can experience the different number of threads you can put in a woven wheel. So you can see I put my needle up in the center, just above where I caught everything down. And I've talked to my needless tight into the center of the stitches as I can. And I'm going to pull that out. And at this point I know I'm going to work exclusively on the surface of my fabric until such time as I've filled the shape. So this is a good time for me to take my Chanel off and replace it with a tapestry. Because once again, tapestries are designed to push fibers out of the way rather than paste them. So this should be allowed me to work quite easily. Now to work the weaving aspect, I'm going to take my thread over the next bar. And under the one after that, I'm going to pull that through. And at this point, if you pull on your thread very tightly, everything will pack into the center. And if you keep doing that repeatedly all the way round, you will with come quite high if you pull it so that it just pulls into the center and covers the fabric, it will stay quite flat. But I'm going to essentially repeat that process. I've gone over this first one, under the next. So if we call that 1.2, my thread is I'm gonna go over spoke three and under spoke for pulling it all through. This point. I want to go over spoke five and under spoke one. Now if you recall, we actually went over spoke one in the first pass. So this is why we need the odd number of spokes is so that we go under the threat that we went over in the previous round. And that gives us the wave and effect. I'm just going to keep going like that, making sure that I'm pulling it nicely into the center so that the fabric is covered. I also don't want to put too hard. You can see there if I pull very hard, yes, it's all pulling in nicely, but it's also pulling off center. So you want to keep an eye on that as you work as well? I'm just going to keep going until I fill the shape. This stage, it's looking like it's mostly full. I'm struggling to see where my threads, my spokes or two slides underneath them. It has become somewhat raised but not too much. And I think that's going to be my last stitch. Looks pretty good to me. I can't see the back because the camera is somewhat in the way. But I think that's covered. My paint lines all appear to be covered. And that's what we're looking for and that's why these stitch to outside of the shape. This foot Last Pass I've done the thread is sitting just on the line and it's able to do that because the spokes, it's just outside of the line. What I'm looking to do is cover those two things, the paint line and the smoke itself. Now, I have found in the past that I sometimes come back to my start point. I have also found that sometimes I don't, getting your center to be dead center is actually quite hard. So sometimes things can be a little bit off. And as long as it's not too asymmetric, you should be okay. That being said, you can do a symmetric woven wheels and they do look quite nice. So I am going to plunge my needle where I think the spot, the Smokies. And I'm trying not to pass any of the threads. So as I pull it down gently, I'm just looking to make sure nothing is distorted. And then I'm going to bring my needle out on a 45-degree cost off. So I'm going to take two stitches back underneath. Again checking to make sure nothing to stalks as I do so and then bringing it up in another area. And going back in again. There we go. I can then bring it out. Pull gently and snip. And that's my woven wheel. Very satisfying and very pretty. 33. Working different size Woven Wheels: So I just quickly wanted to show you the substructures of the other two. In this one, which is a formyl, we'll formula which is three-sixteenth of an inch. I've gone with three spokes just because it's so tiny in a slightly thinner thread or a softer threads such as the cruel, I actually probably could get away with five spokes, but because the Pele's a bit firmer, I've decided to go with a three. This one, which is five-sixteenths of an inch thereabouts or I think I think it was the 6.5. It's sitting between 7.5. It's sitting between the seven and the eight. So I think that's a 7.5 mill wheel. I've actually gone with seven spokes and I've worked in the same way as the five spoke. I've done that Y-shaped with a detached fly and then made a smoke coming from the top down to the bottom and then another one from the bottom going up to the side, essentially, which has given me seven spokes. But you don't have to do it with the detached fly process. You can actually stitch into the center is roughly the center. So this is a 9.5 millimeter circle, which is six 16th of an inch, if that's a thing. So I'm actually going to measure this because I'm being pedantic about it. This is why I'm not that keen on the spoke version. The center of this is somewhat movable. You can close up if the wiser a little bit too big, you can close up with that couching stitch in the middle. I feel like you can get a better distribution of spokes. I get very paranoid about stitching into the center. So I think I'm going in about bearish. And then you're just looking to space them out as equally as you can. But you then come back to the center. Now the problem with this is that you can very easily end up with an unnatural sized gap here because it hasn't worked out evenly. But also you end up with a growing hole. If you force threads into the same space over and over again, you're essentially end up with a big hole and you can pull your thread to hard as well, which opens up that whole a bit more. So 123456. Also have to worry about, am I going to end up with an even or an odd number? Eight. Okay, So this should just about workout with nine. It's not perfect. So where were they? Don't cross. So here they all sit under or over each other. There's the cross where they don't cross. I don't have any need to put a stitch in the middle to stabilize everything. So I'm just going to bring my thread up in the middle and get ready to go round. So I'm just going to double-check to four. Yeah. I've got nine stitches there. It's not perfect. The spacing. I don't think this one here looks like it's a bit smaller. And this one may be down here a bit bigger, but overall, I don't think it's gonna be that noticeable once the weaving goes in. So I'm going to weave a little bit on all of these. And I'll come back and show you what I've done when working a large wheel, such as this big 9.5 million one here, it's actually quite easy and most likely that you will run out straight. So I'm going to show you how to change your thread. What I'm actually going to do is introduce a new color because you can do that with woven wheels as well. You can realistically do it with any size, but it's actually easier in the slightly bigger ones. And I've gone with quite a heavily contrast in color here. You don't have to do that. You could shade throws it wherever you have a series of colors, you can take each one in turn. So this only gets, say, lighter in the middle going out to darker or vice versa. You want to be careful how many colors you pack in to a woven wheel because it can be too much. So something like this one, I'm gonna do two. I could have done slightly fewer in the green and actually worked three Something. This the two smaller ones I've got. So something like this size or this one. I would consider doing only two colors. This one particularly it would be one pass of the first color and then probably filling in with a second just because it's so tight. So to do that, I'm going to make my last stitch here. I'm just about to go over this top central smoke. What I'm actually going to do is plunged my needle underneath the next spoke along. So I'm continuing my pattern. And I'm looking to make it appear seamless. So I'm going to cast off with my two tiny stitches. And then I can trim my threads. And I'm going to call stone with new color. Somewhere nearby. I can make a couple of cast on stitches that I'm looking to do is to bring my needle out from underneath the same spoke I just plunged underneath so that I keep the continuation. So it looks like just a magic transformation of color rather than one color sitting more broadly than the other. And again, I'm going to switch back to that tapestry needle because I've just used the Chanel's to cast off. So I'm going to switch back to my tapestry needle to continue the weaving. And it would you just carry on as normal. So you can see I've gone over that top middle spoke, effectively gone under the one next to it because I've plunged and then come out. My next logical choices to go over the third one and under the fourth, and just carry on. So as I'm working this, I'm realizing that all of them I've worked in a similar fashion in that I have all started in the middle and worked around to the right. And that's probably because I'm right-handed equally. You can work them to the left. So I could have started up here and worked in the left hand or anticlockwise direction. It's whatever you feel most comfortable with. At this stage with the bigger wheel as well. I am trying not to pull my threads too tightly because if I do that they'll start to roll up over each other. So I'm having to be very gentle with my tension and just keep an eye out to make sure that it's all still even. 34. Woven Wheel Review: So the woven wheel sample is now done. You can see at the top here with my pearly samples, I have the 357.9 tears and they have actually I think smoothed out as I've gone to the high number of stitches. This one looks a lot more rounded. And I think that's because the distance between the stitches, particularly on the outer section, is slightly shorter. So it's more manageable and you end up with a slightly more rounded effect. This one where I did the three prongs and I actually did three prongs down here in this one as well. This one reminds me of a cabbage. It would have been nice to have done the centering white and the outer ones in green to make it more cabbage like. But this one was a bit disconcerting. Both of them were because there's no stitches to hold the thread in place. They tend to really pull into the center so they pile up much more in the center, over the center before you start filling them out. Whereas the bigger ones, the thread tends to sit snugly around that couching stitch in the middle. That was really interesting to see. And you can see I've done two colors here just to play with the effect in the wool samples. I mentioned when the tutorial videos that you can pull the thread very tightly and it will really pile up. If you keep your thread firm, not loose. So you can see I don't have any loose or loopy stitches because I pull my thread so that it lays flat, but I haven't pulled it particularly tightly. What happens when you do that is the thread actually pulls in underneath the previous stitch, so it gains height before it fills out. And that's what I've done with these two. This I've put in as a regular woven wheel and this one I've decided to really pack in those stitches. And when I just place my fingertip over the top, I'm not rubbing my stitches. I'm just placing my finger over the top. There's definitely a height difference when I compare it to here. So this left hand side of my finger sits higher than the right hand side. The same is true here. I think it's about half again, half the height of this one again. And in-person, when you look at it really closely, the center is much smaller. You can see the center is much more open here and the stitches and much more packed together. Then this one is a little bit moveable. It's not too bad. It's nothing that I'm worried about. But you can move the stitches a little bit just as you can here. This one is rock solid. So I wanted to have an example of the work normally and really packed together. And what's interesting about this is that you have to work this one very carefully and you have to pay attention to what you're doing. Not only do you have to put in enough stitches to cover your paint lines, which I have done. There's a little bit of a shadow there. That's actually the weaver fabric paint line. But you have to be careful because the more you pack in the stitches, more stress you're putting on that foundational structure, and the more likely it is to snap. Now, I've never had that happened to me. I've haven't really heard of it happening to anyone either, but I have been cautioned that that can happen when if you're gonna do this and really packed the stitches in, just really pay attention to how you're pulling your needle through. You may have noticed in the tutorial videos, I was trying to keep my needle flat to the fabric rather than pulling straight up because pulling straight up or stress and stretch those foundational rows. So you really want to pay attention to what you're doing in that this one I decided just to mix the fibers. I've got a single-strand of the CRO will in the middle and a single-strand of the fine wool, and that's about half the size. So that's quite an interesting effect. With this one, I decided to work in two strands because the thread was that much thicker. I stuck with the five-prime. And you can see, I haven't particularly tried to pack in like I did with this one. But you can see it's creating more of a scallop defect. And I think that's just the thicker threads in a relatively small area. So it could have gone slightly bigger with this to make them more flat, smooth shape by actually quite like this little almost like flower shaped scalloped effect. And because the thread is not much thicker, again, you've got more definition there. You can see more easily the threads themselves. So then I decided with the stranded cotton samples, I wanted to keep things fairly consistent. So I stuck with the same five-mile sized circle, which is somewhere between three-sixteenths of an inch and a quarter of an inch. And then I've also gone with say, five pronged substructure. And you can see immediately, not only do they go from smooth to the sculptor effect, again, like we've seen up here. But you can see the definition of the stitches grow as well. This one is very movable. Everything feels a little bit loose and actually it was sitting much better. But as I've put in these other areas of this wheel and pull things out of alignment. Which when I was working down here with these two, didn't happen so much with the four, with a thicker number of threads or higher number of threads. This feels quite delicate, movable. You can see there's quite a bit of movement there. So a single-strand at this size, I should have put in extra. Bars to make maybe seven or nine in this area. And I could have probably done a few more in here as well because this is a little bit more movable. Again, you can see more definition more so than this. And physically they all sit higher than each other as well. And that again is just the higher quantity. But if I poke them in turn, this one is movable. This one somewhat movable. This one's less so by the time you get to the four and the five is very little movement and the six is just solid. So having that higher quantity of threads are thicker threads means that you can go with slightly fewer bars. I'll circle. This point. I decided to experiment with how small I can go. Because up here I only did the four mil. And I said I was gonna go anywhere between four and I think it was about nine mil over here. This time I decided to ignore that rule I'd imposed on myself and see how small I can go. And this one is a two mil two-and-a-half mill and then a three mill that sits anywhere between I think it's just under a 16th of an inch to about an eighth of an inch. Again, 5 bar in each of them. And this is absolutely tiny and the most adorable thing you can imagine. It was brilliant to do it a little bit fiddly, admittedly, but I might be doing more of these because they're just so cute. But you can see the finer threads, you can definitely go smaller. So at this point, I realized that I had stuck mostly to the five bar substructure. That tends to be my go-to with this stitch. So I want you to do a few different versions. So I think I had 7.9 here. This one, this one was annoying and time-consuming. I tried to do the alternative version where I stitch into the middle and space everything out neatly and I had to take it about three times and put it back in. I much prefer doing the detached fly version and then adding any extra bars. I think I might have abandoned my attempts to stitch short stitches into the middle and just done it that way anyway. I it just doesn't work for me. So I much prefer to do that single detached fly down the middle and then add in the extra bars. This one I did as a three. And it was again that movement of pulling it into the middle and then having an overlap the actual middle of the stitch. This one I tried to keep everything looser and not put it so tightly. This one I went to town and just pulled everything into the center. It took a surprisingly long time to work because you're not filling out the shape like you do with all the others. The stitches are not sitting around each other like they do in the other versions. They just pulling over that center stitch so you kinda have to build up the middle before it starts filling out. Which was really interesting to see. And then this one, I decided to do a bit more mixing of the colors. So I've gone with two of the final, one of the crew will and one of the pearlite. So you can see I've got 211 there. Overall, this was a really lovely experiment to do. I'm particularly intrigued by the the different quantity of standard cottons and just how solid and how movable they are in comparison. And again, seeing this lovely scallop defect appear with the two in the world. So again, I'm very happy with this sample. 35. Bottom Row Review: The bottom row is now complete. And all of these stitches can be considered to be accent stitches. So I'm just going to write that on the side. Just like in our previous course, surface ditches level one. Again, just looking over the three together, you can see how the oak leaf gives you a lovely smattering of color in an area. So again, this would be great for seeding. The Danish naught. Slightly more packed in there, not covering the fabric entirely, but slightly more concentrated color so could be used as the seating, but also detail stitches as well. If you have individual floating stitches. And we have that little creative variation where we make our stitch too long. So that little spurs sticking out the side. And then with the woven wheel, as you can see, the color is much more densely placed in each of the wheels. They cover the fabric much more densely than the other two. So much like the top row, you have this graduation of color or density of color, which, which is really interesting to see. And you can see that the different sizes of the woven wheel, mostly we do these as detailed stitches. They make really great clusters of berries or just to break up an area, something like that. But actually the tiny ones, I'm wondering if potentially the very tiny ones, the two middle one there could be scattered around like seeding or like the leaf stitch. Could this be used in place of a Danish not or a French knot? So it's interesting to see them together. And the coverage and detail they give you potential coverage in detail, they give you for a piece. 36. Homework: Reviewing the designs: As mentioned in an earlier video, we will be using the same design templates as we did for the first course, surface stitches level one. And that is because we can enjoy how the different stitches in place in different areas can really change the overall appearance of a piece. That being said, we will be revisiting some of the stitches now that we've used in the previous course. So if you haven't done the previous course, do go back and have a look at it because you will be needing some of those stitches. And do remember if you ever need a refresher, that content is always there for you ready to go. So these designs are all available for download in the description below. And you will use them to transfer on the your chosen design onto your fabric. But you can also then use them to color in to plan your colors as we did in the previous topic. Now, in this topic, I, because my fabric was slightly thicker, I have used the ***** and parents method to transfer on. I have then used a pen rather than paint because that's an option as well. Similarly, you could use pencil. And in the instance of this one, I have actually tapped on a square corner, right, a right-hand corner. So that I have a straight edge that I can work to to work my stitches too. So if you're not sure what method you should be using to transfer on, do go back to our first course, the preparatory course that takes you through all the different options for materials, framing up, transferring on and so on. And there should be details in there that will help you. And as I say, I've used the pricking pounds method, but using a pen rather than paint. 37. Homework: Review the Stitch plans: So in the description below, there is also a document labeled 0 W, which once again is your order of work. And it tells you the order in which you will work, the different areas. And it's pretty much the same as the last course. The stages haven't really changed, but then the designs happen. And once you've worked out the order that design should be worked in, that's pretty much a stable thing. Once again, I have got these comical colors. It's not a suggestion of where you should be placing color is in fact a color code with a key down the side. And you can see that in each instance the first color is blue. So you're working those blue areas first. In homes in down here in the right-hand corner, it's terms of the hillock and the body of the bird over here, it's the back areas of plant and the hillock and the sand unit, the back and the tentacles of jelly fish. There is also an accompanying each one, a description of the area it's referring to and the stitches that should be done in them. And that is the file labeled 0 W, which stands for audit of work. You then have a stitch plan for each one, which will look slightly different because we've learnt different stitches. But there is some repetition as well. So I have some backstitch and some late work which we did in last course. There's some new stitches as well. So we have woven wheels and Danish naughts, quick stitch and so on. So if you can't remember how to do any of those stitches from the last course. Again, you can go back and review them if you need to, but there is also some flexibility. So for instance, here I've written the lead work with fly stitch, which would work very nicely, but I could actually substitute in very petite further stitch. I have written the heavy chain in a couple of areas for the wandering tendrils equally that can be changed ditch, possibly even quicker stitch as well because Quaker stitch sits slightly higher up. It depends on the thickness of your paint lines. If your lines go down and they're quite thick, having a broader stitch such as chain or heavy chain would work very well. Slightly thinner stitch such as the Quaker might not cover your paint lines. So there is a certain amount of flexibility. There's also some areas that I'm gonna be slightly free styling. So over here I've just got a floating box that says feather stitch. Because what my intention to do is to cover all of my paint lines in quake stitch and heavy chain. I can whip the heavy chain and the Quaker if I wanted to as well, probably I might do that with the heavy chain. But what I'm actually going to do is in these unmarked areas in-between, I can freestyle a little bit of stitch and I can actually make that diminished. So I can start maybe quite petite at the top and making it bigger through this broader area and then taking it down to something slightly smaller and converging it all into the middle. Alternatively, I could just scatter either French knots or Danish knots through that area. What I might actually do is work the feather stitch first, and then once the piece is completed, once I've done everything else, I can decide if I want the French knots and the Danish not through here. If it's already too crowded, that may not be a wise choice. If there are areas that I could fill it in, I could scatter it through. I'm just adding a little accent of color. And the same is true through here. I can throw in some Danish or some French knots through this area. Probably in quite a fine thread. But I could do it just to make it almost seemed like there's pollen drifting off the collection of berries or flowers or whatever we deserve, their accents and changes that you can make. Again, I've given myself a whip chain. We know I don't like whip chain. I don't know why I did it to myself. But again, that could quite easily be stem stitch, irregular chain stitch, stitch, anything like that. So the outlining stitches generally can be substituted for each other. But filling stitches such as burden laid work, could be swapped as well. So I've put in here quite a big area of burden stitch. Again, I don't know why I've done that to myself. I didn't say burns stitch works best over medium areas. That being said, I have actually worked a larger area burned stitch. But similarly, I could swap out for some late work with a couching stitch and then potentially move my burns, ditch it elsewhere. 38. Homework: Reviewing the colour schemes: So I haven't quite got to my coloring in yet. That's the next stage, but I have looked at my colors and I I'm kind of trying to move on a little bit from what I did last time. So last time I went kind of naturalistic in this one. This one I had a collection of, I think it was seven colors. This time I've gone with slightly fewer and I have actually got a variegated polar as well, which is in a bit of a mess, is unraveling a couple of purple colors, which are actually slightly different than blown out a little bit at the moment, but they are slightly different. Then in this one I've gone for. That's similar to colors and an accent approach. These. So let's start with this one because these are classic colors. These are yellow, blue, and red. They are the center of the color wheel. So you know, they're always going to work together. So I've decided to go with the yellow and the red is my main colors. And then the blue will act as a little bit of an accent in places to break it all up. These, these have actually come from an old kit. Is something that I haven't stitched a fallen out of love a bit slightly. I've cheated a little bit because the colors are preset for me, so I've just taken them. But again, the part of the reason why I was drawn to him was because they do make up the center of the color wheel. So yellow, blue, and red are your key colors that sit at the center of the color wheel. As you can see in here, we've got yellow, blue, and red. So if in doubt, you can go for colors like that and they will work. Here. I wanted to go with something that's not wholly naturalistic, but erring on the side of it. And I wanted to experiment with some variegated. So the variegated Brown is definitely going to go in here. And I could potentially use it. So brown fir tree trunks, maybe a little bit obvious, but sometimes doing something more towards a naturalistic is a fun and interesting thing to do. I could potentially use it in the burdens stitch that I'm gonna put down here as my underlayer to break up the green a little bit and how to tie a bit more of that together. So there's definitely uses for the purple is going to make a really nice accent on the bird up here in the leaf. And on these, they could be grapes in these colors. And obviously the green is going to do quite nicely down here. In the bourbon stitch and the hillock. These ones are a little bit trickier. I wanted to do something that wasn't wholly naturalistic, but in colors that I just kinda liked. So I really loved this aqua color. The yellows came together quite nicely. And I didn't really have a color that I wanted to put with it. So I'm just going to try three shades of two colors and see what I can create with that, because you don't necessarily always need the accent color. And you can see here I haven't really done that either. So I mean, I guess you could argue that either the purple, the brown could be qualified as an accent. But I've just tried to go with something that is little bit more true to nature. Whereas here, obviously, jellyfish live in the sea and these are actual colors, sandy, yellow. But I'm going to see what I can do to play with it, to mix it up a little bit and make it a little bit less naturalistic. So this is the worst it will, the final and stranded cotton, I have pearlite, fine wool started cotton and this is the regular cruel, well, so I've just laid out all of my threads onto my fabric just to make sure that I can see them and that they don't blend into the fabric. You can see that the crib wall over here is nice and thick. The colors are vibrant. That works nicely. Although some of the threads over here a thinner, they're still standing out. The one that causes me most concern is the yellow and turquoise. And you can see the turquoise ones, so not too bad. The palest is probably the worst than pale. Aqua Marina is probably the worst. It's still actually in-person does stand out though. I've got a couple of light setup which are blowing everything out slightly. The two yellows are pretty good. The one thing that does concern me is this very pale one at the bottom. The reason you can see it clearly on screen is because it's casting a shadow. If I straighten it out, it kind of disappears somewhat. I've been looking through my stash. What I'm actually going to do is adding a darker yellow. So that's gonna go, I'm gonna go shade darker with my yellows. If I can get it to sit in place. I'm going to make a darker tone and I'm going to remove that pill one entirely because it is just not working against my fabric. And the others should, should work as well. So the, now the palest color I have that was just a minute ago. My mid tone is still pretty pale against the fabric, but again, it's better visibility in person. And having made that swap and put in a darker color, the value of the colors actually matter a bit more with the acronym rain. They look too good beforehand, but they now will actually work a little bit better, which is nice. So I'm still might have trouble with my now lightest thread, but I won't have as much trouble with it as the pale and I've just discarded. And what I can do is if I'm having problems distinguishing between the thread in the fabric, I can actually outline it or contrast it with one of the darker colors or other color palette. So I now need to sit down and do my colorings in to see how I'm going to plan out my colors. Again, you don't just have to do that process once. You can do it multiple times if you want to. And if you've watched the last course, you will know that I did this one twice because I didn't like the colors. So we're going to see how it goes. The issue I'm going to face with this one is I can plan to make this brown, but because the color is variegated, I can't tell exactly where the colors are going to fall. So I'm just going to have to color that in somewhat patchy manner more than likely. But I also know that's not going to be a true reflection of where those colors are going to land. It's one of the big issues with a variegated thread. You just don't know how the colors are gonna go down and how the final effect will look. If I wanted to shade from light to dark, for instance, I wouldn't be able to really achieve that with this color because I could end up with dark patches on the lighter side and so on. So it's a little bit of a risk I've not really worked with very good, it's very often. So it's gonna be interesting to play with. 39. Working to a Tack line: I thought I would give you a quick look at working to attack line, which is pretty much like working to a paint line. Obviously your tagline is a little bit movable. So in this area, I have planned burden stitch and I've got two things. I've got this tangent line, and I have the tail that is going to sit in my way. So I have to just be very careful about a few things. First of all, am I stitching over the tail and then working the tail over the stitched area. Or am I going to stitch up to the tail and leave a gap, much like I would do with a wandering tangible. I think I'm actually going to use that method. I'm going to treat it like I would do an overlaying line or wondering tangible. So my base stitches, the foundation of burden stitch, which we know is those long horizontal stitches. I'm going to work them up to the tail and then leave a small gap so that whatever stitching I put in for the tail sits in the gap rather than on top. If I put it on top of the stitches, it could end up bulky. So I then have to look at where am I cost and on, if I cast on here along the edges, I will have to put in and outlining stitch, which I'm not adverse to. I can do that. It's not problem, but I'd like the flexibility not to do that if I can get away with it. So my best bet to cast on is somewhere through here because this drawn line, my paint line is definitely going to have to be covered. I will need an outlining stitch over the top of it. So if I put my cost on here, I know it will be covered. Whereas if I do a nice job of ending everything along here, along the tax line, might not have to put in and outlining stitch at all. So I'm giving myself the potential to do it rather than tying myself down to an outlining stitch. I'm going to pick a point, bring my needle up and the grain on my fabric is actually quite obvious. So I can just lay it along the grain of the fabric. And about here, I'm going to encounter my tail. So I'm going to plunge on one side of it and come up on the other again leaving that small gap. Then I'm going to follow my green line along. I can just use like I did with the attacking itself. I can use my needle to gently run along that grain. Then when I get here to my tagline, what I'm gonna do is just gently move out the way. I want to plunge into the green line that it's covering. So you can just see there the tracking is just bulging out and that's because I've just pushed it slightly out the way so I can pull my thread down and through. So when I come to bring my needle up, just going to check my spacing. Maybe 11 up, make it slightly narrower. You can see I've just used my fingertip to pull that thread out of the way. And I can track down from where my stitch has gone in to bring it up again. And I can just keep going like that. Now, the thing I've got to be careful of, you can see I've pulled my thread quite firmly across the fabric. But what's happening is it's pulling slightly at the edges here. So if I just release it a little bit and don't pull quite so hard on it. I should be. I have to create a neat line. I'm going to plunge there. Come up on the other side of it. I just want to make sure that as I'm pulling my thread now, I'm not really pulling hard. You can see there, if I pull really hard, it opens up both holes. Now if I was left with that, once I've finished stitching, I would absolutely have to put an outlining stitch on it. So I'm just going to tweak it back. Tweak both of them back. I want them to lay flat, but I don't want them to be pulling on or stressing out the fabric. I'm just going to continue putting in those baselines. And then when I come to work the stitches over the top, when I hit this line down here, I'll do the same thing. What it will depend. I may have a three-quarter stitch, a half-step to full stitch, something like that to make to make up to the boundary line. But I'm looking to move that tacking out of the way and plunge just underneath where it sits. I'll be doing that with the shorter vertical stitches. Again, there is a risk of pulling the fabric and leaving a hole. So I need to be careful of that. In both phases of this stitch, not just the foundational rows but the top stitches as well. Then when it comes to this side, I will need to decide if I'm putting in a stitch underneath where the tacking lays are not at that point. I could probably take out my tacking because once once these in and I have a distinct line from the horizontal foundational stitches, I should have a clear indication of where my edge sits so I could actually lift out this tacking so it stops getting in my way. At that point, you'll have to be careful. It is possible to stitch through the tacking. So you might find you end up with small fibers and that's where you need to go in with some tweezers and just lift them out. The long stitches I have, let allow me the flexibility to move out of the way so I can stitch underneath it rather than through it. But you've just got to be careful of that once you're done with the stitching and you take the tacking out, you gotta be careful that you don't leave fibers behind from stitching through the attacking. 40. Homework Assignment: Well, I hope you've enjoyed our little journey through surface ditches level two, and have gained confidence in your stitching and broadened your repertoire of stitches to play with in the future. Your homework for this topic as ever, is going to be to complete that sampling square again, fill it completely, play with different fibers if you have them, and then choose and complete one or the result motifs which I'm going to take you through next. 41. Toucan Landscape Step 1: So stage one is complete. And the first thing you'll notice is that I've entirely changed the stitch plan. I have a good reason for that. Trust me. Originally planned burden stitch down the bottom here with seeding through the body laid work through the wing and a feather stitch to catch it all down. And I would say this is a moderately sized area down here in the hillock. Burden stitch absolutely will work down here. There's there's nothing to say that you can't put burden stitch down here. The problem I had is that I was using these very fine walls. And you can see with a thread that size, even doing clusters of stitches, that's going to take a long time. If I had been using the regular crawl, which you can see is at least two if not three times the size. It would have been a lot quicker to do the burden stitch out down here. That's why I've switched out because it was just simply taking me too long. So I put in a small portion down in the corner. I've cut all of that out and I've replaced it with the same thread, but in two strands. And I've done the layed work and you can see I've done some shading and the reason why it looks a little bit erratic is because I have actually used the blending in the needle principle we looked at in the last course. I took one thread of the same, the same type of thread by took one of each of two colors. So I had to in the needle through these portions. So I've got the darkest color here. I've got the mix of the dark and a medium here. I was just making regular stitches with both threads in the needle. And you can see that it hasn't always laid down in an alternating fashion. So the blend isn't as controlled as it would be if I'd used the regular laid wet blending principle of a block of a, one of B to a and so on. This is just working a block of I started in the middle because that's what we always do if in doubt middle out. Because I worked block of my mid tone, a block of the mid and the dark tone, and then just the dark tone. And I'm not adverse to the way it's blended. It's just there's a certain loss of control that I might be struggling with a little bit. Which probably speaks more of my personality that I like it too. But it's an interesting experiment to do. I've not worked, laid work in two strands like that before. And as I say, I'm relatively happy with the results. I have to obviously catch it down with something. What I'm planning is to use definitely feather, possibly a little bit of fly here and there. And what I'm thinking, I need to go back to my original drawing and I need to troubleshoot this on paper because that's what you do. You troubleshoot and paper first. And what I'm thinking is I could do some wandering feather stitch that comes down and onto delayed work. Maybe a bit up here as well. It could either over or I could work it. So it looks like it's behind the tree trunk and just bring these kind of wondering tendrils of flight fly off at the stitch probably feather because that's the one we've studied, but I could throw in random little bits of flight if I wanted to as well. I can even take this wandering tendril. I could even take this tangible as well. And as it goes down behind the bird and connects with the tree, I could swish it around and maybe bringing it back on itself will have to have a look at that. But I like the idea of bits of feather maybe coming around, but I don't want to go too overboard. And in these opens at areas, if I start making holes with my needle and putting down the thread. I've run the risk of two things. If I decide I don't want it and I need to take out, I could leave myself with pin marks in the background fabric which can look unsightly. And depending on the fiber I'm using, it could actually leave behind fibers in the fabric. So I noticed when I was taking this bit out down here, I did make an effort to kind of pull out as many of the stray fibers as I could with a pair of tweezers, but I was left with a green residue in the fabric. So if I were to do that again with the green and decide, I don't like what I've done and I have to take out. I could end up with these green spots again, leaving unsightly marks in my fabric, which would be tricky to remove. So I need to go back to my original drawing and just play on paper with the placement of roughly where I want the fly or feather to go. But at this point I can remove my tacking. So it's already started to lift a bit in the corner. I used ray on which is quite shiny. Thread is quite smooth. It's not it's not unreasonable that it's unpicked because it just will ease out on its own. But I'm just using a needle there just to unpick everything. So far I've done, I cannot call any of my threads. But you can see I'm having trouble pulling that one out now because I've caught it. So what I'm going to do. Is very carefully. Use my scissors to get in a snip that thread and then see if I can't go negative teased out. I'm being very careful to try and avoid catching the threads if I can. And I can just see there, I've split that thread again. I'm going to get in there with my scissors and just trim it again. I can actually do is use my needle to put up snip. And then we go, I will go over it with a fine tooth comb just to see if there's any blue fibers from the tacking thread left. So I've created quite a nice crisp edge. But when I look at it up close, it is pulling in places which is understandable, that's the nature of the stitch. So what I will probably do is some sort of outlining stitch just to tidy up at the end. Instead of seeding in the head and chest of the bird, I've actually gone with burdens ditch. And the only reason I was able to do that was because of the fine threads and stranded cotton. Once again, had I been using the regular cruel, it would have been very, very difficult to work the burden stitch in here. So you can customize this element to the threads that you're using. Once again, if you're using the regular cool, I would suggest burdens stitching this area. It would still be fairly lengthy to stitch, but not as lengthy as it would in the fine wool. If you are using finer threads, particularly the fine wool, I would do it this way. Laid work in the hillock burden stitch in the bird. If you're using stranded cotton, you actually have the choice of either one of the arrangements. If you put a higher quantity of threads in your needle, the burden stitch wouldn't take too long to stitch in this area. You can work the seeding here as directed by the original stitch plan. If you have downloaded the stitch plan already, you will have noticed there's actually 21 to reflect the changes I've made and the original. And I'll be labeling them as to the appropriate threads. Because you have the flexibility to put as many or as few stranded cotton in your needle as you want, you could actually use a stranded cotton to do either one. So yes, you could do the burden stitch, as I've already said, or you could do the later because I have done. And the burden stage here. Just for the record, this is two strands of the fine worsted wool. I've used a single-strand to lay down the horizontal bars of that burden stitch and then two strands, Australia cotton over the top. And I've actually used both shades of my purple. You can see a little bit of lightness up here in the top of the head, darker down the chest and along the back. And I've used the three shades of worsted will have the final in dark, medium, and light. If you are using the scroll wheel, I would use a single-stranded for everything, including the seating through here. 42. Toucan Landscape Step 2: So stage two is now complete. And you can see I have filled in the tree trunk, the wing. I haven't yet done the beak, and I had scheduled to do this now in stage two, but I want to see how the rest of the colors play out, particularly given that I've made a somewhat significant change down here. This is a lot more green than I intended it to be. The original intention of burden stitch was going to have flashes of the brown in-between. And now I'm thinking I might use the brown to do whatever couching stitch I use over the top so it shouldn't change too much. But I just wanted to wait and see, to see how the colors pan out to do definitely the eye and the beak. And if you recall, I did that in the last course as well, surface ditches, level one. And the reason I can do that is because it's not under or overlapping. Anything else. You can see how the variegated color has gone down. I have to say at the moment, I'm not wholly in love with it. I think the very light color that you can see up at the top here. I, when I was working this, I was trying to make sure that the section of thread 0 was using was closer in color if I could to what I started with. So obviously I started up here and I work towards myself. Um, I have the darker colors up here. And I think at some point I decided why not give it a go and put them on other lighter colors. I'm not overly enamored with the streak. This tricky bits down here where the colors are much closer in tone. I think it's worked a bit better obviously that deep dark color, you can see it just fades away down here. And that little triangle that could have been a hollow, and therefore darker has actually come in light. Now, this is one of the drawbacks of using variegated threads. I could have taken sections of these lighter sections, particularly of the thread and discarded them. But I don't like wasting my materials, so I decided not to do that. Somewhat wishing I might should have maybe done that because the very light color, I don't particularly like I like the very dark, but I don't like the way the light color is so highlighted against it. It's not too bad. I think it was just starting to transition into the very light there. And I swapped my thread out. But I think overall I would prefer to not have it in here. But that's one of the drawbacks of working with a variegated thread. You cannot plan or manage. You can manage to a degree, but you can't really control where the colors are gonna go down and how they're going to sit against each other. That's I knew was gonna be a challenge for me. Giving up that control was gonna be something of a challenge. At the moment. Again, I'm not wholly enamored with it. But again, it comes down to how all the colors balanced in the end, it could be that this settles into the background, particularly once I get the tangent line at the top, it could settle into the background, so I don't notice it as much. But it's going to be a good sample and a good thing for me to look back on. If I use a variegated thread again, I think I will try and be a little bit more selective about the portions of color I'm using. But again, I worry about that wastage. That's entirely a personal thing. You guys don't necessarily have to worry about that. It's just something that preys on my mind a little. In the wing, I have used the fine wool in the mid and lighter tone, with a lighter tone at the top pyramid at the bottom. And I've gone with an opposing angle. So the hillock down here is going from bottom-left to top-right. I've tried to go in the opposite direction for two reasons. First of all, I didn't want those angles to match. Secondly, if I did match them, it'll be a very short thread across the shape. So this is actually the longer thread and therefore more appropriate for late work. I've done the blending principle that we all know and love the latest blending principle. And I've just used a single strand of the darker stranded cotton to work a very small going to slightly larger feather stitch in the wing to hold it all in place. And it seems to be catching it all down quite nicely. 43. Toucan Landscape Step 3: So stage three is almost complete. The birds, the finishing off on the bird is going to come later because I want to see how this top area plays out. And again, I could probably put this area in before I complete down here, I just want to see how the colors are going to land. Because up here in the next stage we're going to do some open stitching. I want to know how the colors are going to work in that area. So you can see in here, I've put the whipped running stitch in. I'm really loving the effect it's made. I've used a single-strand of the fine wool, a double-strand of the stranded cotton in its lightest tone. I originally put this in, in four strands of strategy cotton, so the single-strand of the firewall, and I whipped it in the four strands at the stranded cotton and it was too much, it's too bulky, so I have the number there to two. So the whipping is done in two strands of stranded cotton. And I've positioned my stitches so that they Start together, pot, following, echoing the shape, and then come back together at the bottom there. And you can see I've got these little areas that have opened up in the wider section. And what I'm thinking about is throwing, going back in at a later date and throwing in some French knots. Or I could do some pistil stitch is quite a slim area, so a lazy daisy might be too big, although if I do them lengthwise rather than across, that could have a final, they actually could work thinking about it in a fine thread, either the wool or the stranded cotton. But something slim and small. Danish not could work a French knot, pistil stitch, lazy daisy, something like that. So the next step is going to be filling in this area and it's gonna be an oak leaf stitch. I just want to see how much it's going to cover the, the area and how much density of color I'm going to have up here because I think that's going to influence my choices down here. I'm really loving the way the heavy chain has gone in. The color in-person is actually starting to knock back the vibrancy and the stripe ***** of the variegated thread. I don't think that holy comes through on camera and colors tend to blow out a little bit in photos and video. But it's in-person. It's looking really nice. And I have blended the colors through using the lathe work blending principle and parking my needle as you've seen me do before. I've started with my lightest tone going to the mid, just as it curves down and under. Again, the lightest tone, mid as it curves under, mid tone as I get further down, going into the dark, darkest color across the trunk and down through to the end. So I have this lovely idea of light hitting the top parts and getting darker as I go through. I'm really happy with the way it's played out. The fine wool can be a little bit tedious to work with because you don't get a lot of coverage. But it's made a really beautiful effect. It's given me quite a thick, smooth line without it being overbearing or two dominant. 44. Toucan Landscape Step 4: So step four was completing this area up here, you can see the oak leaf stitch has gone in quite nicely and I've surrounded that with some seeding in the purple. So I've used a single-strand or the final in the medium tone for the oak leaf stitch, and a single-strand of the darker tone of purple for the seeding. And I'm really quite liking the coverage I've got there. It's looking quite good. I had to outline or do this internal outline of the upper area. And I was looking at the colors I should be using for this, and I've settled on the lightest green. I've used the same color to throw in some French knots just in this area. I had originally scheduled to do a backstitch that I then go back and whip and to test out whether this would work. I actually took the two colors I was intending to use and just twisted them together. Because that gives me an idea of what the color would look like because whipped back stitch looks like a candy cane twist essentially. And I just laid it on the area I was going to stitch it. What I discovered was that the combination of colors would be too close to what I've already got in. I then took each of the individual threads and just laid them on separately. I really felt that the green lifted it more than the purple. So I decided to work this line in green. I could have worked in backstitch. It would have worked and I problem and just not whipped it. But what I decided instead was to substitute in a stem stitch because the two can be substituted one for the other. Whilst I like backstitch in certain contexts, so I do it quite a lot in cross stitch, which is accounted technique. I really liked the effect it has on that as a technique. But as a surface ditch, I don't particularly like how segmented it looks, which is why I tend to whip it if I were to work a line of backstitch. So if I don't like the effect of backstitch, I decided, let's just swap out for something I do like, I do particularly like stem stitch in this fine wool. The high twist on the thread makes it a really crisp, clean texture, which I'm really quite enjoying against the loose or no, those stitches aren't loose. But there's a more elongated, elegant effect to the whipped running stitch. So then I did something similar with the wing. I decided to lay my different threads on to see which one I liked the best. And in the end I decided that the lighter green was my preference. And I was planning to work Quaker stitch throughout the three different tail sections and around. My original intention was to work quake stitch on the two outer tail feathers first and then take the quake stitch from this middle tail and go all the way around the wing and meet at the point. Now, when I came to do that, well, actually as I was stitching this other area, I was thinking, do I actually have to do the tail? Because I quite like him as he is tasteless. And that would give me some more space to play with feather across this area. So I've decided that I'm not going to work his tail and this instance, all of the lines are covered due to the later work, which is fantastic. And I'm just going to start my wing down here and go all the way round. I did that. I got out my final and I started doing Quaker stitch. I remembered that Quaker stitch in this thread, in a single-stranded this thread is so fine that I couldn't actually see the texture of the stitch. It's sort of looked a little bit tight and cramped. I felt a little bit messy. So again, I'm probably just going to substitute in either a backstitch that I will whip or possibly a stem stitch. Stem stitch gives you a nice smooth outline as what a whipped backstitch. I did briefly contemplate chain stitch that might be a nice little edging to his wing. So we're going to have a little bit of a look at that later That's going to come in the next step, along with his beak. And the other areas. 45. Toucan Landscape Step 5: Step five is not done. You can see I've added in the last of the heavy chain down the center here, using the mid tone, going into the darker tone, the blend has happened just above the round shapes and the dark tone comes in just about here, down to the bottom. I've also filled in the top and bottom lines on this shape and gone ahead and work the beak down here as well, which isn't in step five. That was actually earlier. But I thought I would throw it in there because I was starting to get quite happy with the colors. Up here. I've just used the lightest green to do the top row in the same way that I've done the middle row. And then I have used. So that's an a single-strand. The heavy chain obviously isn't a single-strand as well using, as I said, the medium and the dark tone. And then up here through the bottom line of this top shape, I've actually used for strands of stranded cotton in the darker tone. And if you remember, I had a little aberration here when I was transferring on my pen jumped, which can happen. So I've had to go in with a thicker line to cover it and using that and a couple of strategically placed additional seeds stitches, I've been able to cover that line. If you were to scrutinize it closely, if you were to stop pushing the threads out of the way, yes, you could probably still see it. But if you just look at the piece and even look at it fairly up-close, you won't be able to see that. So I'm quite happy with how that's gone in. I am a little bit worried that the line is quite dominant. But again, I was worried about this and I feel that this is drifted back slightly and I've still got more to add in this. Remember this is the only shot of the brown I currently have. I'm going to add more of that in when it come to finish off securing the late work. The only thing that is bothering me, as you can see this one, I had another issue with drawing on. My pen got trapped between two of the horizontal threads and I ended up with a straight line. And my intention was to using my thicker thread, just drift off of that line just a little bit so that I could try and round that shape off, which is something you can do. You realistically want to stick to your paint lines, but there are times if you're willing to take the risk, you can make tiny adjustments, particularly using the thicker thread. So with four strands in the needle, I can drift off of my line. And because the thread is so thick, it will still cover it if I were to come all the way down here, obviously, that would look ridiculous anyway, but that's not going to cover a paint line up here. But if you go in this instance with this thread and this, this fabric and this red, you can just drift off that line just to touch, to round it out a little bit. I forgot to do that. I was being quite diligent. I could rip it out if I wanted to and rework it. But for me this is going to be a teaching sample. So I can actually point this out to students. These two things are the reason why we have to be so careful drawing on. I probably rushed it a little bit to get it done so I could get filming. These are the consequences of it. You end up having to Make ways of or find ways of hiding stuff like this. And I'm using a thicker throat is often the best way to do it. So down here in the beak, I'm really happy with how this has gone in. I've got some nice pointy points down here at the tip of the beak. I was intending or did try a little bit of blending in this top section, but the colors ended up looking a bit stripy and I wasn't happy with it. The bottom section has gone in a bit better and the colors, so I've got the medium tone at the front and the dark tone at the head. So that's gone in a little bit better. I have used fishbone for this. And if you don't like fish bone or you don't like turning fishbone because there's quite a curve on this top one particularly, you could substitute with rows of Quaker state, which is what I have actually tried. I did a little bit sampling to see if it work. I must admit I forgot to use or try and use Quaker stitch as a filling stitch like we do with stem in our sampling. So you can actually pack rows of it together. Now, that ended up looking quite stripy, obviously it's quite a high stitch. So you can see quite distinct shadow between the rows. Whereas the stem stitch tends to merge together a bit more. And I wasn't really enjoying the stripe *****, but that's a personal thing. That's a personal aesthetic. It would have worked. I could have finished filling it in if I wanted to because it was it was working, it achieved it unfilled three-quarters of the shape in Quaker stitch. I just didn't like the effect that it created. The bottom jaw, the bottom part, the beak went in very nicely, quite easily, quite quickly. The top one gave me a little bit more trouble. I have to confess, I'm not a huge fan of Fishbone, but I found turning the top section, turning it was quite challenging. Some of my stitches are a little bit and possibly a little bit too long. It's not too bad. It's not looking loose or bulky, so I'm not too worried about it. Um, but turning it was a little bit challenging. So if you look at the center line, it started in the middle and slowly drifted up. So it finishes in the top third of this side of the beak. That's because the stitches we're getting too long. So I have to take it slightly off center to get it to work. Then I just filled it in with some straight stitches to fill in the rest of the beak. Overall, I'm really happy with the shape I've made. And as I said, it's a nice pointy beak at the top. To the degree that I thought it might be nice to draw in an extra circle just here to make it look like he's eating one of the berries. Realistically drawing on at this point in a piece is probably not a good idea. You don't want to get pencil or ink on your stitches, so I probably won't do that. But it's something that's only just occurred to me seeing this. So I thought that might be a fun little thing I could potentially draw onto my next piece. I'm not sure about that. Yeah. I'm still quite happy with the way it's going and I've just got to secure my late work. So I gotta go back to my diagram because we were talking, I was talking about using feather stitch and possibly some fly to work over the top of this to hold it all down. Before I do that though, I'm going to need to outline it. So I want to put that on first so I can just work my couching stitches because remember, I wanted to have some fantastic to coming somewhere around here down and onto the hillock and across. Possibly some coming through here, disappearing behind the tree, around the vine and across. I don't want to be trying to work in outline over the top without further stitch. I want to do it the other way round. I want to work the feather stitch over the outlines. I'll probably finish outlining him and putting his eye in the circles through here. And then the final flourish will be whatever securing stitches I put on my late work. If I choose not to go the route with the flyer feathers overlapping the background and laid work. I would actually want to work by securing stitches before I work the outline. That way the outlining stitch will sit over the securing stitches because remember the skewing stitches are going to come probably to the edge. So then you would put your outlining stitch over the top. So Newton's everything up. But because I want to do this kind of wandering vine like feather stitch effect only to do the outline first. But that all hinges on the experiments I do. By going back to my original drawing, back to my outline. I'm just penciling on what I'm thinking in my head. I don't want to start stitching before I've troubleshoot it on paper. That's what we always do. If you have a change of heart, change of design, you troubleshoot on paper first. So that is my next step. 46. Toucan Landscape Step 6: I've gone back to one of my original drawings. And I have been troubleshooting this feather stitch design that I want to do on the late work. I don't think you can quite make it out. Just turn that off. You can see a little bit of an impression through here. But essentially, I have tried having the feather stitch to start just under the bird's chest and swing around onto the hillock. I'm away from the bird swinging towards it and down onto the hillock. I've had arrangements where it's kinda come up over the wandering vine between the bird and the tree at the back of the tree or this kind of thing. And you can see, I've done it. All of the lines I've put in all started with just a smooth straight line over the top. I've gone in and put these V-shaped to make it look like the feather stitch. And every time I did that, I just wasn't happy with the way it looks now, if you go back and look at the earlier videos, you can see me gesture in here and here because I thought about having this kind of almost like bush like effective coming down surrounding the bird. And every time I've drawn it out, I've not been happy with the results. What I have actually found is that keeping it contained to the hillock is actually more towards my personal preference. You can see I've just squared off, so I knew the rough area as working too. Now, this won't necessarily be exactly what I do on the piece. And you'll see that in a minute. I'm making it join up, turned out to be not quite practical. And you can see there's exceptions where the threads wouldn't be caught down properly. So I've done a modified version of this, but I prefer this to having it coming off the hillock itself and being honest, the bare fabric. This is why we troubleshoot on paper first, I was absolutely convinced that starting around here and bringing it around would be the best thing to do. And I haven't liked any iteration of it. So this is why we troubleshoot and paper. If I just gone in and done that and just start stitching, I would be left with all these pin marks and possibly bits of fluff. Given that I work this in a pearlite, this is all worked in St. Paul II, that the trunk is worked in. The amount of fluff left behind wouldn't have been much. Pele tends to be quite a smooth, compact thread, quite tightly wound, doesn't have much in the way of fibers. If you overwork, it can get fluffy and at that point it can be fibers behind. I would have definitely been left with these pin marks, these holes in the fabric. How do I want you to take out? The other option is to live in something that I'm not happy with. So this is why we go back to troubleshooting it on paper. So I've actually discovered that keeping it contained is my preference. And I went ahead and stitched it. So let's just let the camera just a little bit. You can see I just disliked down. It's all very dark, so it's, the camera is struggling with it somewhat. But you can see here I've actually not had it meet in the corner like I showed on the diagram. This line comes a little bit, starts a little bit further over at the left. Just because there was gonna be a big swath of fabric here that wasn't all threads that weren't caught down. And on the whole, I think it's done a pretty good job. It's a lot less lumpy than it was. There are still a couple of areas where it is bulging somewhat, which is not ideal. But I think part of that is the fact that I worked with two strands in the needle. And when you do that, they often twist around each other. So getting them to lay perfectly flat was not a good idea. I've had more success blending in the needle like that and all working later work in multiple threads with a stranded cotton. The cotton itself tends to be a little bit smoother and it lays better together. But I've used the same brown to work. The three rows of feather I've gotten there. And it's amazing how the colors around these bottom two have accidentally worked out very similar. And then the lighter one up here where more light would be shining on its pure accident, not at all designed. Then going ahead and outlined it, having put the feathering, I outlined it in the world, two strands of each. I've just used the darker color on the dark side, the medium color on the bottom and the lighter color on top. And this is why again, we go back to planning on paper. Had I've had my fellow stitch coming from here underneath or next to the bird and underneath his chin, next to his chest and worked around. I would've needed to have put this outline in first so that my first stitch could stick it over the top of it. Given that I didn't do that, I was actually able to stitch first and then outline it. So troubleshooting on paper actually influenced the order in which I put the stitches in, which is why you always go back to the paper. It's just a much easier way of deciding what you're going to do. Before I outlined it though, I decided to go in and do a little bit of chain stitch. So detached chain. Around the ends of the feather stitch. And it just gives it a little bit of a pop of color. It's very discreet and I'm enjoying that about it. I used a single-strand of the light and the dark stranded cotton. And I've actually to work the chain stitch the detached chain. I've come up from just underneath the back third of the way in on the fly. I've come up, brought the needle out from just underneath the throat, plunge back in on the other side. And then where I have put up the needle to catch the thread in place of actually come up just beyond the end of the stitch. So about a millimeter or so after the end of the feather. I bought the needle up to catch the chain stitch down so that the chain stitch itself is just sitting around the end of that arm of the feather stitch to make it look like a little bird or flower or something like that on the end. And I really think it's just lifted it slightly. I've done it quite densely at the front. And then as I've moved further back, I've dropped out. I think there's one missing here, here, here and here. I've just kind of slowly petered them out so that it's not covering the whole thing. And overall, I'm really happy. I really like the way it looks. So that major change that I made right at the beginning has actually come around quite nicely. Then I've moved onto the bird. I have used a backstitch top and bottom. I've used my darkest wool in a single-strand to do the underneath because that's there where there would be less light. I've used the lightest color on the top because that would be where the most light is and it actually matches up with the beak top and bottom. So I've used a single-strand in the backstitch. I wanted something quite thin and discrete. As I say, I don't like the segmented texture, but I'm trying to broaden the number of stitches I default to. I often default to stem stitch. So I was looking at basically stem stitching everything on here and I thought I can't do that. But equally, a stem stitch would work. But he's gone in quite nicely and I think the colors of work quite well. They, they, they're not obvious. A discrete stitches quite thin is quite small. And the colors I've used to help it to sink into the background, which is quite nice. Then just to mix things up a little bit, I've used a chain stitch in again, a single-stranded find worsted wool in the medium color on the wing, which is set it off quite nicely. Then gone ahead and put in French knots in the bottom here, and then woven wheels going up the vine. I've used the darkest color at the bottom in two strands of stranded cotton, then used a mix of the dark and the light in the next two and then the top three are all done in the lightest stranded cotton again, all in two strands. And then just to finish it off, I will use that modified Danish naught where I've made my stitches just a little bit bigger to make that triangle shape and scattered it through the the woven wheels and the French enough. I did wonder about having them flow slightly more to the right hand side. You could argue that given the way this vine sits, maybe a wind blowing it slightly. So I wondered about having slightly more this side to make it look like pollen was being blown across the shape. In the end, I just really liked the compact shape that I made and decided not to add in any extras. They're just kinda scattered in randomly. And I decided at the top that I wasn't going to fill out and have any sitting on the outside. I just wanted them placed between the shapes. And I really like the effect. I think there's more scope to play with it. But I really like what I've achieved there. Again, I've just used a single strand of the lightest. We'll throw in those little Danish knots. And for anyone who's wondering, I actually cast on and off underneath the heavy chain by angling my needle under it. And I think I used a couple of the woven wheels as well, again, angling the needle to come out from underneath it and go back in underneath it. So with that, the pieces complete, I'm quite happy with the overall results. There was a few major changes along the way, particularly down in the hillock. And I think I made some changes up here as well. But overall, I'm really happy with it. There is one section I you guys probably know by now, there's always something I want to change on my pieces. Pretty much. There's very few exceptions. I think in this instance the eye isn't particularly working well. I use a single-strand of the lightest green to do the outside of the eye. And two strands of the lightest stranded cotton, the purple for the iris. And it's just all done in French knots. I just think it's a bit too much. Similarly, putting in a woven wheel, it was a very small area. I was worried about catching everything else. I could potentially have put it in before I worked the burden stitch. But then you have the risk of catching the threads of the woven wheel and distorting it as you work the very fine stitches for the burden stitch. So I could have just left it empty with a single French knot. But I think overall, that's the bit that's not really working for me. I'm really loving the detail of those little lazy daisies on the edge of the feather. I might do that again. If I hadn't been working overlaid, welcome might have thrown in some French knots. Similarly, I did wonder about placing the lazy daisy in the center of the feather rather around the end of it. That's again something to play with in the future. One thing I did want to point out though, is here where the bird is meeting the hillock. If you look at the original design, you can see there's actually a gap. And I've lost that gap here. And that happens occasionally when you're transferring on. It's not desirable. But occasionally you things can grow as you're stitching them. We saw here, I've had a couple of aberrations with this. I think overall with this motif, I was probably just rushing the transfer process. And it is possible that the stitching has helped to shape, to grow as well, but it's closed up that gap. I'm not averse to it. I'd rather it weren't there, obviously because when you look at the original drawings, there should be a gap in there. But overall, I'm not addressed to it. But again, that's something I need to keep an eye on when I am transferring on for whatever technique it may be. I need to just calm down, slow down, and just do it much more accurate job. And you would have thought by now, I would have learned that lesson, But apparently, my standards are dropping and I need to work on self-discipline a little bit more. But I've said this before you live in then you acknowledged the mistakes. You vow to do better and you move on from it. The other thing is, this fabric is not the smoothest. The Calico that I used in the first course is actually more densely woven and a lot smoother. So maybe using pen on this type of fabric because it's quite bumpy, was not the best idea I could have painted on instead. So maybe in future I need to use a combination of pounds and paint for Norman dealing in rather than ***** pounds and drawn with a pen. But again, it's food for thought and something to think about next time. 47. Cactus Landscape Step 1: So stage one is complete with the rows of stem stitch in the left-hand hillock. And on this right-hand plant, we've got fishbone on the right-hand side and fly stitch on the left. I have used the mid tone of the yellow at the tips of both the flying fish bone going into the darker shade of red. And on the left-hand side here I've used the mid tone to start with blending through using the wet blending principle for a very quick blend, but using that laid wet blending principle to go from medium into dark. And that once again, is because this sits at the lower end of my design. So I'm choosing the darker colors to do that with. Now with regards to this area in surface ditches, level one, we had fly stitch in the right on the right-hand side and Van **** on the left. You could repeat that if you wanted to. If you don't want to include the fishbone, you can go back to both of those. One word of caution. I wouldn't put the Van **** in this one on the right-hand side. I've my feeling is it's just a little bit too wide and it was going to look a little bit scraggly, the Basel P2, wider sides. And then you have that tiny plaque going down the middle. I just think it's gonna be too wide, so I would stick to that on the left-hand side if I were you equally if you don't want to use fly stitch, you can just put the Van **** in on the left-hand side and stick with the fishbone on the right. This area is ideal for any one of those stitches. So your options are fishbone fly or alternatively Van ****. With regards to the stem stitch over here, I actually through my loop to the outside of the curve is you're supposed to. And I started here next to the tree and worked towards the other hillock. Throwing my loop to the outside, I started along the top line. And then to work the second row, I actually just worked from where I did plunged my needle here, completing the stem stitch and started again going back the other way. Now, I don't think it's coming through on screen, but I've actually created that stem stitch, outline stitch, opposing look that we did in the jellyfish tentacles in surface stitches level one. And that's because I'm working in the opposite direction, but still crucially throwing my loop to the same side. So every time I made a stitch in the early stages, I was throwing my loop to the outside. When I came to blend, I found that the lighter color, maybe it's finished over here. And I would start up here with the darker color, which means I had to think about which side I was throwing my loop too, to make sure that I continued the pattern of the angle sitting opposite each other to make that V shape. So that's something to think about. As you work this area. You don't necessarily have to just do as I've done. You can start at the top here, worked down, cast off, come back to the top here, worked down and so on. If you are going to do that, do very much, keep an eye on the quality of your wool. The more you pull it through the fabric, the more it will wear. If you're casting on and off all the time, there's extra wear and tear on your throat. So just keep an eye on the quality of it as you're working. And try to make sure that whatever you choose, whether you choose to make a pattern with the opposing angles or keep it all consistent, going in the same direction. Just make sure you have continuity with your choice. It can get a little bit confusing at times. 48. Cactus Landscape Step 2: So stage two is now complete and you can see I have the burden stitch here in the right-hand plant and chain stitch in the tree trunk. Now, because chain stitch is broader, I haven't got as many rows in there than in comparison to the stem stitch that I used in surface ditches level one. And because I have less space, I don't have well, I probably could make space to do the legwork blending, but I've chosen instead to stripe the colors together because that's something you can do as well. In this instance, it's actually worked quite well because the value of the colors are so close, it doesn't appear hugely stripy. You can see this definition between the colors, particularly between the medium and the dark. Although again, in-person that is not quite so strong. But they do graduate through each other quite nicely. And as to the red, so you can see here I've gone with the lightest, the medium, and there's just a touch of the very dark at the bottom. I am pleased with how this has all gone in the burden stitch. Normally, I use burden stitch for hillock. So I did think about placing it down here in the middle. So it's a bit odd for me to see this in a non hillock like shape. Don't know that I'm 100% happy with it at the moment. But I think it probably just needs to bed in a little bit and just be left and obviously the rest of the areas need to be filled out. But equally, I could have done this in late work. If you recall, last time we used rows of chain stitch. What I might do because I had originally planned to put this in in burden. I might put this in and laid back instead. The one thing that concerns me about that is the height difference between laid work and chain stitch. It may look a little bit dented, so it may look at this shape. This plant is sitting lower than the tree and obviously you can see it sat there in front of it. So that's the only concern I have. I could outline it in something like chain stitch itself or a heavy chain or Quaker stitch, which will give me more of a raised effect and would probably sit at the same height if not slightly higher than the chain. But the inside will still be slightly depressed. That's my theory at the moment, but I'm going to try it and laid work and I'll probably use a feather stitch to catch these two bits down. By the time I get down here, the stitches won't be so long, so I probably won't need to catch them down, but I could just run in some backstitch or stem stitch or something like that if I felt it was necessary. Working around these shapes was quite challenging as was working the burden stitch up to the edges of it and the outside edges as well. And essentially what you're doing is just making as much of a stitches you can to the paint lines. So you can see here, I've got stitches in this section that just slowly graduate down to smaller and smaller. And I've got instances of that between the circles as well. The colors are merging a little bit here at the bottom, but I'm thinking if I use a yellow to outline it all, that should help to create definition between the shapes. 49. Cactus Landscape Step 3: Stage three. I have worked the woven wheels in the right-hand plant and the later work in the left-hand plant. I'm really enjoying how they've got the two different textures in similar shapes. I'm, I still don't think I'm overly enamored with the burden stitch in here, but it's growing on me a little bit. The options for these three circles were French knots in the first two and a woven wheel in the third. I decided to do woven wheels in all of them. I didn't think it would really work in the wall in the smallest one. And actually it's gone in quite nicely. I've got quite a nice shape. It was quite tight to work and I've had to push up from underneath, which means I'll need to adjust the strings on my frame. But it's gone and it didn't take too many passes. And in the center of the bigger too, I've put a single pass of the medium gold and two passes of the medium golden, that the bigger one here and the other. The red color is my lightest tone because that matches up with the red blocks in the burden stitch and it makes it look like the color is bleeding through down into the rest of the plant, which I quite like. On this side, I have worked late work diagonally across my shape from bottom-left to top-right. The top section is the palest red. I've used my laid wet blending principle, which is obviously perfect related work into blended into the medium and a touch of the darker tone down here. Just to make separation between the hillock and the plant, I have just thrown in a little bit of a blend of the gold, which you can see down at the bottom. I have yet to put the couching stitches over the top. And obviously these are gonna be in the next stage. And the couching stitches over the top. I will probably do the yellow in the couching stitches at the moment. That's what I think I'm gonna do. But it still does need to be caught down. And at this stage, I could outline both of them as well in the next step. Again, you know, I like to hold off on doing that to balance my colors towards the end of the project. They don't that the outlines themselves don't under or overlap any of the other shapes that are still to be done. So they obviously overlap here. This sits in front of these two shapes on the right-hand side. But now that these two are done, the outlining stitch can go on at any time. So I'm going to again hold off on doing that. Just so that I know I can get the colors balanced a bit better. 50. Cactus Landscape Step 4: Step four, I was filling in this area and the woven wheels in the center of each of them. I've done a little bit of my accent color, the blue. I've even done that in the very small one. And to be honest with you, is kind of a waste of time. There is so little of that blue showing that it's not really that visible because the shape is so small. Working the woven wheel with just three prongs, which I did over here as well, is becomes so raised that it is kind of out of sorts with the other two, which are slightly flatter. The other option I had detailed for them with some French knots, so woven wheel and some French knots, just as I have planned over here, woven wheel in the largest of French knots in the others. Other than that, the colors are okay, I've got my lightest than medium, than darkest yellow and that kind of pulls in the little bit of shading I've got down here. It was a bit tricky, much like over here in the bird and stitch. I'm trying not to catch the surrounding stitches was a bit challenging, but I got there in the end. It was a little bit fiddly. I think if I were to do this again and put wheels in these tiny areas, I definitely wouldn't do two colors. And I might consider just do French knots instead. That being said, this one particularly did go in very well on the right-hand plant. This one, not so much, and I think that's probably because of the different color in the center. These two will find a single-pass in this one, double pass in this one at the center, accent color. And these two sharp quite nicely. This one isn't so obvious. So in here, I had French knots and Danish Nazi scheduled originally had stem stitch for the top line. I do it dawned on me as I started that I could just French knot across the entire line and cover it. And I have decided to do that because I have some stem stitch here and it will probably appear elsewhere as well. An outline here, maybe only two plants, something like that. And you can see I haven't got a completely smooth line, which is very challenging to create an almost, I would say impossible to create in French knots by actually quite like the little Ripley line I've got. The key was to cover the lines which I've achieved. And then you can see I've just scattered the stitches out and then thrown in a couple of Danish knots as well in my two darkest color. So it's the darkest yellow and the darkest red. 51. Cactus Landscape Step 5: Step five, and the piece is now complete. I have added in the last items of the wandering tendril and the later work down here and the final few outlines. Overall, the piece is looking a bit dull and gray on camera, but in-person, the blue is really popping and actually is highlighting the little touches we have in the center of the woven wheels. And this is more prominent than you can see on camera. And overall, I'm quite happy with it. The tangible has gone in quite nicely. And I'm really loving this pop of blue downside. I did wonder about transitioning into some red part way down, but I just enjoyed the blue so much that I decided to leave it as is, there is a small amount of definition lost. This is quite a tight curve. The stitches are slightly lifting up and pulling in, which I'm not entirely happy with, but it covers my paint line. And as I say, I think it's worse on camera. When you look up close, there's quite a nice line, but the curl has been lost slightly. So that tells me that working this type of tight curve in this stitch is maybe not best idea. So I will think about not doing that later. But as you can see, I have actually achieved it. So it's just, I'm unhappy with the overall aesthetic of it. So that's really a personal choice. I'm loving the chain stitch and I loved the way the heavy chain sits just slightly higher than the chain stitch, which looks really good. And down here in the corner, I've decided to do laid work, but this time I've done it horizontally rather than diagonally as you've seen me do it before. And it's gone quite well. I've staggered the edges just as I would do if it were diagonally. So you can see it varies where I plunge the needle and bought out. I've just tried to shorten them as I go into the corner here, I have elongated this line ever so slightly by I think about two stitches because I just felt prefer to see it come in a bit more. But it doesn't make much difference, but it is, as I say, slightly longer than you'll see on the design. And I decided to revisit oak leaf stitch. Oak leaf stitch I actually found in a book of quillwork stitches. So it should work in the quillwork threat. But as you could see in the sampling, I did have some issues with it, particularly splitting down the middle to reveal the fabric. And of course, if you're gonna do it overlaid work, you will split the thread to reveal the background thread. The readiness instance, which by the way is the medium and the dark tone. I've got a mixture of the medium and the dark tone in the outline and the darkest yellow. For the oak leaf stitch. Anyway, I'm can't decide if the manufacturing standards used to be better for cowork threads because the book I found out clip stitching is quite an old one. So that's potential they were working with the same type of cruel works read, but it had a higher twist on it, more like the fine worsted or that you saw me use earlier. So I decided I wanted to revisit it because I wanted to do this. I wanted to have this skeleton like leaf effect over the later work holding it down. I wondered if I could better manage the threads to create a better effect. And it's not gone into badly. And the way I've done it, and I'm going to use the tree trunk here as an example. So if we pretend this is our stitch that we put down, the first long stitch that we put down for late work. What I was doing and what the book informed me, told me to do was to plunge my thread in to the center and then when I come to do the other stitch, you plunging directly opposite it. So you're putting that double thickness through the same hole, which expands the hole and makes it bigger and therefore elongates the hole as well. So what I've tried to do is plunge on one side and then either plunge underneath or above where I've been plunged initially so that you don't get that double thickness, you get them stacked on top of each other, which yes, will elongate the split that you're making, but it shouldn't widen it. And it's not gone into badly. If you look up close, you can see that they are staggered, but it's not an unattractive thing. From a distance, the line looks fairly complete. This, this one, the angles weren't so great, so we're just going to do that. But the other two look pretty good. And as I say, you can't really see that I've modified the stitch in that way unless you look very closely. So sometimes it's interesting to play with stitches like that and I have to confess, it didn't occur to me when I was doing the tutorial video, but I might show it to my students now that I've worked that out. And then as you can see, it's gone in a bit better. I can't see any of the fabric or the red thread coming through. From that point of view, it's quite work quite nicely. Seems to be holding the later work down a bit more. There's a section through here which I should probably support, but I feel like I'm going to crowd if I put another stitching. So I probably should have angled my stitches slightly differently to fit in a fourth stitch. But that's fine. You live and learn. All know that for next time. This is the first time I've used oak leaf stitch overlaid work. I knew it would work because of the long stitch. And you have to just play with the angles a little bit to make sure that you're not running parallel. To the threads because you don't want your stitch to disappear between the late thread so they need to let cross it. But I think it's worked quite well and it's given me this feeling of leaf litter on the forest floor, which I quite like. So as I say, I'm really enjoying the pop of blue against the chain down here. I was looking at potentially doing some more French knots or Danish nuts. I could have added in rows of stem or rows of chain, possibly even rows of heavy chain if I felt like it rose a Quaker stitch. And I decided that because the other areas are quite solid, I'd quite like to leaving this open and not filling it in at all. But equally, I could have filled in and it would have looked just as good. I decided to just to leave that empty. I've added in the final outlines on the two main plant shapes. I just went with a simple stem stitch. You've probably realized by now the stem stitch. I quite like it's nice and thin. It covers the paint lines well, because it's such a subtle texture as well, it tends to let whatever you've done in the center of a shape really pull forward. So it's just a nice way of ending things. Backstitch would work quite nicely. If I was using a thinner thread, I could have made quite dainty chain stitch that could have worked. I've only outlined the two main shapes that outlines and shaping. I've got on these two here. I think a fine as they are. I don't think they need an extra outline. Again, if they did, I could do a backstitch or stem stitch because there's more shapes keeping your line thinner would work well with those as well. Because I used reds both here and here in the plant and in the delayed work. I decided I needed to break up a little bit. So I did a whip bit of width backstitch. And I did that thing of taking the two threads, twisting them together, laying them on, laying them on separately. And I decided that the whipped version would work better. That touch of yellow just helps to separate the two sections of red quite nicely. The reason I wanted red down here with so it reflects this one and balanced quite nicely. I have used my palest color, so I've used palest, red and yellow on the top on this one, and the mid tone on this right hand shape. And I'll use the Paste read to work a feather stitch to hold the later work in place. As I got to the bottom, I realized I was running out of space for another feather. So I've just done along stitch like I would do with a fly. And actually as I brought the second one in on this side, I realized if I'd worked the two bottom further stitches on both sides, ever so slightly shorter. I could have actually fitted in another fly there and joined them up. But again, you live and learn. I will, I've never thought of doing that before. So now that I've noticed it, I can keep that in mind for next time. So as I say, in on-camera, it's looking a little bit gray and this blue seems really obvious. But in person, it's actually highlighting the touches we have elsewhere. The one thing I would change is probably this section. I do quite like the burden stitch, but I think I've just bought the yellow down just a touch too far. And whilst I generally blend when I do burdens stitch, I think in this instance it would have looked better if I just done butted the two up rather than trying to intermingle them. I could have just done a couple of rows at the top to give that touch of highlight. And then come down into the red and put a little bit more of the darker in down the bottom. Being said, it's only really as I finished it off that I've decided I'm not so keen on what I've done here. I actually quite liked it when I first put it in. I thought it looked quite nice and I was going to kind of build around it. But just as all the other colors of settled into place, it's highlighted to me that it's probably too much yellow. If you look at the two on the side, the actual solid color is actually a very small section at the top and the blending is what draws it down. I think if I just stuck to that top section, it would have gotten a lot better. Overall. I'm really happy with it though. I'm really enjoying the combination of the French knots and the Danish notes down here. And as I say, this little oak leaf stitch litter like effect that I'm getting from the late work. 52. Jelly Fish Step 1: So phase one was the tentacles and the later work in this background area. So starting with the tentacles, I have used a single-stranded, stranded cotton, all three of my shades and I have blended from light to dark with the shadow appearing just under the head of a jellyfish. I have used Fishbone stitch and blended using the layed work blending principle. I'm really happy the way those colors have gone in. I think it looks really lovely. It looks dimensional already to me, which is really nice to see. The only one thing I would say is down here with the fishbone. I tried to keep it open and then going to close and doesn't come through fully onscreen. But you can see it a little bit in these two. But I've tried to keep it somewhat open, going to close then into the color transition, the mid tone color transition, and just a touch of the darker, the very top. And to be honest with you, I don't think it was really worth it. It doesn't really add anything to the area. And I know I'm going to have to outline it obviously when you have an open stitch like this and you have an outline, you're going to have to put some sort of outlining on it. So back stitch, stem stitch, something like that. So I knew I would have to but leaving it open and going to close just doesn't really that the density of the color doesn't improve significantly enough for it to be noticeable as an effect. So at the moment, it seems like a bit of a wasted effort. I'm not gonna rip it out. I'm not going to add in any extra stitches. If I try and add stitches and I could damage what I've already got. I could make it look lumpy and lose the lovely shaping that I've got and the line that goes down the middle, whether the stitches crossover. And I don't want to do that. It could be when I come to outline it. However I outline it just enhances that area. I think it's unlikely. As I say, it's not so appalling to me that I want to rip it out or replace it, but I just don't think it's bringing anything to the table as it were. It's not enhancing the area in any significant way for the effort I went to to do it. If I were to do it again, I probably wouldn't keep it open, going to close. I would just do closed from the word go. Even though I knew I would have to outline it because of the paint lines or design lines and the open stitch, I still tried to work very hard to try and keep my shapes nice. Because as I've said before, when you focus on accuracy regardless of whether your current covering the edges are not, you will help to build better accuracy and precision in what you're doing. And I can definitely tell where I started. I started in this one and I progressed up. They have gotten a little bit better each time. There's a couple of aberrations in places, but again, I'm outlining it so it doesn't matter. But I have taken that moment to work on my accuracy and placing the needle and creating the stitch. And then down here, I've done laid work. Getting the angle is a bit tricky between the different shapes. I don't think it matches up holy, but I think it's close enough that it's not gonna be that noticeable, particularly when I get these shapes in. I still got the couching stitch to do over the top, which I'm planning to be a running stitch. Just not quite sure what color I'm going to use yet. That will come later as well, the outlining on this one. So down here in the late work, I've used two strands in the needle, and I have used the two darker title or the darker and the mid tone in the green. And I've used the layed work blending principle to obviously it's laid work. So I've used the layer blending principle to merge the two. And I have noticed that the angle for most of this section is about this. So not quite 45 degrees across the shape is a bit steeper than that. But actually as I've gone through this section, it has flattened out quite a lot. So the angle has moved and changed, which should be a cause for concern. But it's swept around in such a smooth way that it's not really noticeable unless you're looking at very close at it. So I can't see any gaps. There's nothing obvious that would explain such a sweet brand. It will just be the way I've placed the needle. And as I said, because it happens, it transitions so smoothly, so nicely. I don't feel the need to rework that area. The next thing to do is the head of the jellyfish and the seaweed. 53. Jelly Fish Step 2: So as I was starting phase two and starting to fill in the chain stitch here in the seaweed, I realized that I would be better off putting in the top line and if I could the couching stitch, now, if I'd wanted to wait to get the color balance, I could have worked this line after I've done the CBD towards the end of the piece and just angled my needle in and under the chain stitch. It's not ideal, but it is possible and you just got to be careful that you don't catch the stitches and distort them. I knew all along that I wanted to have yellow along this top line to break up the blue a little bit. As I was starting to fill in this area, I realized that what I wanted to create in the laid work was that sense of light hitting the peaks and valleys of sand at the bottom of the ocean. So you have this dabbled light coming in and you get these very light highlights where the sun hits the sand, which helped me make my color choice. The best way to do that was to use the lightest color. So with that in mind, I stopped I think I come about halfway down. I stopped stitching quickly put in these two areas. So I've got a single-strand of the worsted wool in the darkest color in stem stitch along that top line. And a single-stranded, the lightest color in stranded cotton in a running stitch through the laid work at the back. So having completed this area, I moved on to the seaweed. And what I wanted to do is make a height difference between the stitching so that the seaweed looked as though it was physically further forward as well as color wise. To do that, I've used two strands in the needle. I've used predominantly the yellow color, which is in the worsted wool. And you can see I've just got a touch of the green coming through in these two. And that's where I've mixed a single strand of the medium, green with a single-strand of the medium yellow. So I've got stranded cotton and together in the needle. So I've just worked the outsides of that in a mix. Then I've worked my way in. These obviously have been treated as diminishing shapes. So I started on one side with the mix of stranded cotton wool and then I've used two of the darker wall on the other side and I've done that in both of them. I've slowly worked my way in. So there's a stripe down the middle that is a mix of the medium and the darkest yellow. So I do have a little bit of a color fade. It's not as obvious onscreen. It's much better in person, particularly when I turn off my studio lights. This one, I decided to do a single row of two strands of the medium green on the very outside. And I'm against that. I've put a mix of a single strand of the medium green and the single-stranded and the medium yellow. So again, mixing the stranded cotton wool together and then just treated at the same, I've got two of the darkest on the outside. I've worked either side until I've got a mix of the medium and the dark yellow down the middle. I've only managed to rows down the stalk because it's so narrow when I was using stem stitch, obviously I've fitted more down there because the stem stitch isn't as broad as the chain. So most of my color blending has happened in the wider sections of the shape. There is actually a height difference because stranded cotton wool on not the same thickness. When I've mixed them in the needle, this row actually sits lower than the two strands that sit in the rest of the shape. And the two strands are stranded cotton sit lower than the blend of stranded cotton wool, which again is it's lower than the two together in the needle. And actually it's a very subtle, I think had, I've worked three strands of stranded cotton on this very outer one in the middle shape, that probably would've sat about the same height as the two wool. But because they are just marginally different, if you place your finger on it, you can feel almost like a curve. Again, is a physical height difference as well as the change in color, which gives it this idea that it's folding away from the viewer, which is quite nice, but it's not so significant that it looks obvious or staggered. It doesn't look stepped. It's just a very subtle diminishing height, which is quite nice. So up here in the jellyfish, obviously I've done laid work and I've used the laid wet blending principle. But I didn't want to lose this darkness that I've got just at the top here. So I've decided only to stick with the lightest and medium tone because the dark then actually is emphasized, which is quite nice. So I've just gone ahead and done regular laid work. I didn't bother to blend in the needle because it's nice to have examples of both. Obviously I've done that in another project and it's gone in quite nicely. The little bumpy bits along the bottom where a bit more challenging because you've got to try and leave gaps for the stitching that will go round and not overfill the shapes so that you lose the shaping. So that was quite interesting to do, But it's such a small area that it was two or three stitches. So I think it's getting quite nicely and actually looking at it on camera, the shaping is still quite strong. So I think I can still work with that shape quite nicely. So now that that is complete, I can move on to starting the seaweed. 54. Jelly Fish Step 3: Stage three was to put in the rows of heavy chain on the two longer sections of the coral. And I decided I wanted to blend it. I've really enjoyed the blending here, and I keep going back into it, thinking how lovely it looks with this dark shadow. I decided I wanted to do some more blending through here. And I've actually played with the quantity of thread I haven't the needle and the colors at the top here, I've started with the lightest color into. I've been gone to a single-strand of the light and the medium through this section. Through here, I've actually segwayed into three threads, which is two of the medium and one of the light, then going down to just plain medium in four threads. And then through here, I've done 2.2 are one of the medium, one of the darker color. I've actually not only graded the color, but I've got graded the number of threads. So 23.4 and I've done the same here, but again, starting like I did with the last one, starting with a darker tone. So this actually leaves out the lightest tone that I've put in here. And I started with a mix of one light and one medium. Then again graduating through to the different quantities, again ending with a blend of 2.2. So two of the medium to dark. And just so going in-between, again, it's 23 through here and then into four. So overall, I'm happy with it. There are a few areas where on camera it looks a bit skinny. And like the threads haven't transitioned very nicely through each other. But I think that's where the lighter thread happens to be more prominent here than it was here. So I think that's just a trick of the light overall transitioning between the two and the three and the four threads actually has gone quite smoothly. I worried when I first did it that it would be too obvious, but it seems to have gone through. I'm quite subtly because of the way I've crossed over the color. So the two lightest here and then one light and one medium here. I haven't had to use the laid wet blending principle that we did here because the crossover color allows me just to set them up. So the transition between color is quite subtle as well. I think I might have preferred to go just a tad darker down the bottom here and have a few stitches fully in the darker color. But it didn't pan out that way. But as I say, I am very happy with the way not only the thread quantities, but the colors will blend through each other. And there doesn't seem to be any big jumps, which is nice. It doesn't seem to be any eye-catching. Particular areas that might be because the color changes too harsh or the stitch has broadened quite suddenly. And to decide the quantities of threads I used, I actually went back to my original sampling, which is actually just out of shot here. I looked at the different thicknesses and I just really liked the idea of signaling through both thickness and color. 55. Jelly Fish Step 4: Stage three is the Quaker stitch on these three shorter sections of coral. And again, I started in a similar way. I've started with two of the light. So this is the worsted wool, the fine wall. And I've started with two of my lightest at the top, say going into one light, one medium to another medium, and then one medium, one dark. So I've just tried to mimic the principles I've used on the green, which I think of the same principles that are used on the same piece in surface ditches level one. And again, it's the light is coming in from this top section as you go further down, down and away from the light source, everything gets that little bit darker. With this be this section on the left-hand side here being more in shadow than the other pieces. So at this point in my plan, I have a note to put in some feather stitch in-between these lines to fill out the area a little bit. And I'm contemplating some scattered Danish knots as well to make it look like those particles that you see floating around in water. But this section here is fairly sizable. It's not too big. It's fairly sizable. And I'm gonna be putting burdens stitch in here, which is going to take me quite a long time because again, I'm using the final threads, but I'm actually thinking of using multiples. So I think I said in one of the last videos, I didn't want to use multiples of this in the needle for burden, but I think I'm gonna have to do to get the coverage. But this is gonna be a big swath of yellow with a touch of blue-green down the bottom. And I'm going to be using, I think at the top, I need to go back to my color plan. Let's look at the conference. They go. So obviously the blues and not wholly representative of the blue-green I've gotten place. But you can see I am using a touch of the yellow for my substructure. And then I'm going into the blue which will help to break it up a little bit. And I've got a touch of blue through here. And I have been wondering about blending in the needle. So much like I did in this section. I've got one blue and one, or one Aqua and one yellow in the needle. I could potentially do the same through this area, so we'll see, but again, it's progressively getting darker. So this swath of yellow will change the balance through here, which will then help me choose the colors I put in the feather. And if I do the Danish knots. And because much like in other projects, the feather stitch doesn't over or under lap any other area. I can go ahead and put the burden in and pretty much complete the piece. I could even potentially put in the outlining here, the couching stitches here. I can pretty much complete the piece before I put the feathering. But again, the feather will be quite large areas because I think I've got five is in each of the gaps. And then I've got to plan through here. That's going to fill in that area quite a lot and putting quite a lot of color. So it might be worth doing the feather stitch before I do the final touches as the outlines and the couching stitches here, we'll see how it goes as you know, where areas don't over or under lap. You can reorder them if you need to. 56. Jelly Fish Step 5: I'm gonna do a quick extra overview of this because I am not going to remember what I've put in here. I'm absolutely not going to remember. So I have put my foundational rows for the burden stitch in a mixture of the worsted wool and the stranded cotton over really embraced the blending in the needle concept which I haven't done with burdens stitch, stitching over. It's going to be quite interesting. But essentially at the top here for first three rows, I have a combination of the medium and the dark tone. In the Western world. The next three rows you can see are actually a mixture of the worsted wool in medium and the medium stranded cotton. Then I have two medium stranded cotton with three strands. After that, I have again three strands, but it's two of the Dark, One of the medium for two stitches. And then the final row down the bottom here is three strands, all of which are the dark. I've tried to keep my spacing fairly consistent and where I have got the two colors. I haven't tried to determine where each of the colors lay as long as they are not twisted around each other. And that one looks like it is. I've tried to maintain the not twisting around. So I'm actually going to do is poke that with a needle to see if I can untwist them a little bit. There we go. So as long as they're not twisted around each other, I haven't worried about as to whether the green threads sits above the yellow or below it. So you can see I've actually, this one sits above. This one sits below. This one sits above. Just providing that they're not split through each other or twisted around each other, that they're laying parallel. Haven't worried too much about it. I haven't been so fussy with stranded cotton. Stranded cotton tends to twist around each other. But the coloration, they're, the fade through is there. You can see it even I'm looking at tiny little screen as I record this. But even in the tiny little screen, I can see that it fades through into the darker colors. So you don't necessarily have to see all of the color with the stranded cotton because the transition is fairly distinct. So they don't have to lay as parallel. And really with three going through a relatively small hole, they probably won't, they'll probably will twist around each other. It's just more obvious when you have the contrast of colors in the same needle. So that's what I've done and I all I need to do now is put the surface ditches over the top so the vertical stitches, and that is going to predominantly be in the yellow with a touch of green down here, probably the darkest tone we'll see when we get there. But what you'll find is that the substructure slowly comes in to appearance. It slowly appears as you work down through the yellows because obviously it will match somewhat with the colors up here. And it will slowly become more obvious as you stitch down. So I'm actually very interested to see how this pans out. It's a bit of a risk. It could be a complete disaster and we'll just have to stitch it and say stage five was the Bourbon stitch and it's outlines. And I have done a couple of other bits you might be able to see up here. It was an epic amount of burden stitch. I have used two strands of wool in the needle. And down here you can see I've thrown in somewhat stranded cotton. I thought the two strands of the fine worsted wool in the needle for bone stitch will be really lumpy and uncontrollable. It doesn't feel particularly lumpy. The threads went down better than I expected them to. There was some twisting but that was manageable. I do think there is some variation in the spacing. So I'm not happy with that. You can see I feel like it's thinner here than it is here. This is quite a swath of burden stitch to do. I don't particularly mind burden stitch, but it's not my favorite either. I know a lot of people struggle with it, so doing it in large swaths actually is probably a good idea, but I don't think it's worked in my favor this time. I think that is enhanced by the fact that I've introduced this much more contrast and color in the green. So as you come further down, the lines are much more visible and therefore the inconsistencies are enhanced and they look worse than they actually are. I've done the classic blending in the needle. So I started up here with two strands of the lightest going to one, light, one medium, and so on, all the way down, down to two strands of the darkest yellow at the bottom. And then through here, I've got one strand of the darkest and two strands of the stranded cotton just to break it up a little bit. So it's not one big swath of yellow. It's okay. It's not my favorite thing. And as I say, I think it's just too much, I think is too big an area to be doing in. If you don't want to do burdens stitch in this area, you can actually switch the two. You can have laid work in the front, which obviously going a lot quicker. And the Bernstein would fit quite nicely in the background there. If you are going to put laid-back in the front working something other than running stitch. I might be inclined to do either running stitch in a thicker thread or with more threads and needle because remember this was one strand in the background. I would do it with maybe two or three. Or you could use other stitches such as chain backstitch. You can see up here I've added in a little bit of feather. You could do things like that and really play with the texture is a little bit if you wanted to. So I looked at my original drawing and I had scheduled whip chain for this area. I have the arrow pointing to the lower line. I didn't appear to have decided on the top line. I think the intention was to do whipped chain for both. I think that's what I was indicating. So I did my normal thing of trying to work out what color should I be using. So I took my different weights of thread, I twisted them together as I normally do. And I laid them onto the burden stitch to see how it would look. I really liked this kind of twisted candy cane effect against the burden stitch. Once again, I ditch the chain and I've just put in a very large backstitch. My backstitch in this instance was about four mils, so about quarter of an inch. I use two strands of the medium, yellow so the wool to put in the basic backstitch. And then I've whipped it with two strands of the medium green, which is stranded cotton. And I really like the effect is quite thin. It's quite delicate. It sits quite nicely, even though is that little bit thicker because I'm using two strands and needle and my stitches are bigger. It still has a quite slim line appearance to it. But I decided I absolutely could not refuse to do whipped chain. Again. I've managed it successfully up to this point and I forced myself to do it in two strands of my darker stranded cotton. I put in the chain stitch along this bottom line. So it goes from one side of the design all the way to the other. And then I've gone back and whipped in two strands of the medium tone just to break up the color a little bit. And you know what? I have to concede, I think it works. Slightly broader stitch and the darker color, very much weight the piece they hold in place to stop it looking like it's floating. It feels like it's giving more substance to the piece itself. And the fact that I've used the medium and the dark tone in certain lighting, it almost, almost looks iridescent, which is quite nice. It gives us that kind of glittery underwater kind of effect. And I think it's just the contrast between the dark and the medium tone. I'm actually surprisingly for which chain, quite happy with how that's gone in. With that done, I decided to look at some of the other areas that I have been postponing. And most notably the jellyfish. I did try to put a little bit of fly stitch in here, but unfortunately it just wasn't working for me, so I switched to the feather and I feel much happier with that. I have started at the central point and gone down and I've used these peaks as my final resting point. So I knew I was coming from the middle down to here. And then I would turn it ever so slightly into these little gaps on either side. It's gone in. Okay. I have to confess. It was quite challenging. Mostly I think because of the angle under which I've put the lead working. And part of that was to do with the shape. So I wanted everything to come to the center here. So I wanted my last stitch to sit nicely across the middle of the top of the jellyfish. And you can see that I've achieved that with the angle I've taken. However, I'm sat here directly beneath, looking top down onto this piece. If I look at it from this angle, the optimal angle to work the stitches is actually more like that. So you can see it sits at odds of what I've done. But if I move that angle up to the top, you can see how it would sit awkwardly across the top of the shape. The angle would say awkwardly across the top of the shape. I think that's where I've had so much issues trying to get this looking nicely and sitting nicely is because I'm trying to follow the angle of the stitch which is at odds at the angle at which I need to put my feather stitch. It's not quite at 90 degrees but it is holding it seems to be holding everything down. I did have to try and focus more on splitting the threads to hold them in place. Because I found with the pull of the stitch as I'm pulling the loop this way, it separates out the fiber somewhat. I found if I split the late work and deliberately split the later work, it tends to sit a bit nicer and it doesn't, the threads don't part to open up and showing a fabric. So with that done, I moved onto the tentacles. I wanted to keep it simple because they're quite light areas, but I knew I needed to outline them. So what I've done is just a simple backstitch. I did consider whipping all of them. I've whipped too for now. I need to fill in this area and see what colors I'm using. I'm thinking of using blue in the center here with touches of yellow and then seeing how we go on the outside. So I don't want to over concentrate this area too much if I can avoid it. So I've used a simple backstitch up here to emphasize the shading. I've used a few stitches of the darkest tone, switching to the medium-term and then the lightest tone. And I've done that on each one just so that I don't lose the shading down the center on these two. Um, I have actually gone back and whipped the backstitch with the medium yellow, medium yellow here and lightest yellow here. I still don't know. If I'll whip the others. I need to see. And I'm thinking about putting some weaving along this edge to make it more of a frill. When I put the probably backstitch may be stemmed across the top. Possibly backstitch, woven backstitch across the bottom there. The one concern I have is if I go too big with the loops, I am going to lose that touch of darkness at the top because the loops will cover it, which I don't want to do. I really enjoy how that shading has gone up and into just under the jellyfish. It gives it, I feel it gives it more dimension. I still haven't decided for whip these. But the reason I whipped at these two specifically is because in the first course, I did a backstitch, a width backstitch on the three other tentacle. So the two outer and the middle. So I didn't want to copy that again. I want it to mix up a little bit. So I'm doing the two inner ones this time instead. I think it works. I think I'm going to leave it like that. I'm going to see how much color and what color I put in here. So that's gonna be the next step, is finishing off the feather through here and putting in those woven wheels. 57. Jelly Fish Step 6: Stage six and the peace or both now complete, I started with these woven wheels down here in the corner. I have worked everything in two strands of the cotton, starting with my lightest color in the center, couple of passes, going to the medium for a couple of passes and then filling it out with the dark. There is quite a subtle transition in there, which I don't think is fully coming through on camera. But in person it does look pretty good. I have decided not to whip the remaining tentacles, just sticking with the middle two. I then outlined in stem stitch the top of the jellyfish in a single-strand of the lightest stranded cotton and then segwayed into backstitch across the bottom. You can just about make out the weaving there, which is very small and very sweet. Which means I have been able to keep that dark shade just under the top of the jellyfish, which I think adds dimension. Then you can see I've worked further stitched area of Carl in the corner. So I've used two strands of the wool and two strands of the stranded cotton. I've done my normal blending in the needle. So you can see I've started with the very lightest tone up here, going down to the very darkest, blending through the different combinations. Here I started with the medium tone down into the dark. Through this section here I actually started with the lighter tone on one side going down into the medium tone. And a mix of the medium and light here going into the medium tone to the medium tone down into the dark here. And you can see flashes of color. It looks like there's a shadow. So I'm going to zoom you in so you can see what I've done. You can see there is touches of yellow through the blue or aqua, and there's touches of aqua through the yellow. And essentially what I've done is put in a detached fly on the inside of each of the feathers, almost each of the feathers you can see the top couple don't have them. And then actually you can see it quite clearly here. I've started off with a small fly that slowly gotten bigger. So it's the same size as the feather. And that's just detached fly as we did in surface ditches level one, I've tried to make sure that there's no fabric sharing between the two. I think there isn't a couple of places, but it's so subtle that it doesn't really matter. You can see I've shaded the colors. So up here I've got my lightest tone for a little bit, going into the medium and then through into the dark. And you can just see through here in the corner and through here. I've tried to marry these two up. So I worked for the stitch down. I didn't cost off my thread. I work for the stitch down. I tinkered with the shaping. You can see it's gone. Not too big but larger here. And I've had to shrink it down a bit so I could shorten stitches. So I could come up in one V and plunging the other to make the next stitch down. So I've tried to connect the two, which I didn't think to do in one of the previous topics. So I thought I'd have a go of it in this one. So I did have to unpick a little bit to resize the last couple so that I could bring them in about the same size. This one that connects them is a little bit big, but I think it works. I'm, I'm actually quite happy with it. It doesn't stand out to me. My I is not drawn to it. When I look, if when you're looking at a piece, it doesn't travel seamlessly across the piece. It's drawn somewhere in particular. It's usually because there's something that's standing out and this doesn't stand out to me. At least. You can see down here, I've actually segwayed into a fly stitch. So at this point where I've bought my needle up here, rather than swinging out to the side to plunge to make another feather. I simply made that couching stitch and come up to make the next fly beneath it. And I've done that in a couple of instances just where it gets very narrow so that I can bring this stitch down and make the connection. So it's all coming from a growth point. And you can see quite clearly with the blue here as well. I've brought some of the yellow down, but I've also skipped I'm a fly in the yellow just to kinda peter out so that it doesn't necessarily all go in. Your kind of starting shy of the very tip to make like an accent and then having it peter out as it gets to the bottom. Overall, I've really enjoyed working this piece in-person. The colors are very loud. The yellow is, some would say highlighter yellow or near to highlight yellow. It's an unusual color palette for me. I'm just working with three shades of two different colors. There's no accent to play with. But I really like it. I like stepping outside of my normal colorway. If I'm going to use yellow, I would normally go with a golden yellow rather than as much brighter, cleaner color. So I've really enjoyed it. And there's some of the aspects have been quite challenging. For instance, weaving my needle through the backstitch up here. I had to be very careful not to catch the late stitches and the feather that sits over the top. I really enjoyed combining the two color palettes and bringing them together in this feather stitch. Now, I did consider throwing in either some seeding, some scattered French knots or Danish notes to create the idea of small particles in water. But because there's so much going on through here and the feather stitch with the different colors, I thought I'd just leave it. It's better to leave it as is. I was worried that adding in those extra speckles is going to just overwhelm the piece slightly. So I decided to leave that out and I've just realized I haven't done any French knots at all. Which is interesting or well, not really. But there is an option to do that, to add in those Danish Nazi fringe not seating, which I would have considered, how do I not have worked the colors so closely together in this area? 58. Next Course announcement: I thought by now you guys would have a couple of pieces you've completed that you might be proud of and would like to present in your home. So our next course is going to be mounting, specifically hard mounting, which is where we take a textile and wrap it around a piece of board to prepare it to go into a frame. And you can see behind me, I have a couple of mountain pieces and one particularly that is in a frame. Now I have quite a particular process I go through to do this with a and it has an I4 conservation and preservation for preserving it for future generations. It is quite a lengthy process. It is also quite hard on your hands and it has quite an extensive list of equipment. So I'm not going to be releasing details of that equipment until the course begins. My recommendation is that you watched the course in its entirety to understand each step of the process before you start investing in anything. As I say, there is quite a bit of equipment that goes along with this. Some of which you may have, some of which you may not. But before anyone starts investing too much, it's really important that you understand the process and what you'll have to go through. Because as I say, it can be quite hard on the hands. This type of mounting is not for everyone. So there will be other types of mounting further down the line in this course. But for the moment we'll be looking at hard mounting. I encourage you all to share your work on social media and if you do, please tag me in. I'd love to see what you've done with this. I am known as a stitching quiet across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And I would just love to connect with you there. If you are watching this on Skillshare, you can ask questions in the comment section below, and don't forget that you can create your own projects in the projects and resources section, this will allow you to post pictures and updates as to the progress of your work. And I can't wait to see what you create.