Mastering Hand Embroidery with A Stitch in Quine

1. Introduction to Mastering Hand Embroidery: Hello everyone and welcome to mastering hand embroidery where the stitching Quine, my name is Becky and I'm gonna be your hand embroidery tutor. My name is Becky Quine and I'm the owner and founder of the stitching coin. I am a Royal School and needlework trained hand embroidery tutor, conservative restorer. I've trained in many different forms of British surface embroidery alongside textile conservation and restoration techniques. I've actually had a lifelong interest in craft, particularly cross stitch and more recently knitting and crochet. And I found over the years, I've used these skills as a way of decompressing from the stresses and strains of everyday life. I spent the early part of my career working in a variety of administrative roles. And in 2012 when I lost my job, I knew I wanted to do something quite different and make a change. And that's what a really good friend of mine told me about a new course, the RSM we're starting, which was providing professional level training for anyone who wanted to work commercially as a hand embroider. I was applied and was accepted into their first intake. And after three very long years, I graduated first in my class with distinction in 2015. Since then, I've been splitting my time teaching privately, teaching for the school, and working in their commercial studio. Mastering hand embroidery has become a real passion project for me. I wanted to create something that was substantial and challenging so that people could build really good core foundational skills in hand embroidery. But it also needs to be accessible and flexible enough to fit into a busy lifestyle. And that's really the beauty of an online course like this. You can work at your own pace. You can participate in a community. And the videos are always gonna be available for you to go back and review if you need to. The name of stitching choir was actually suggested by a very amused colleague. I found it funny, so I decided to adopt it. Mastering hand embroidery, where the stitching quiet is intended as a long-term course, there'll be broken down into smaller, more manageable sections with a view to covering as many embroidery techniques as we can. It's like deal for the beginner to learn strong foundational skills, but can also be considered a back to basics course for the more experienced stitcher to revisit those core foundational skills and refined technique. In this first course, we'll be looking at the materials, equipment, and skills you'll need to start your stitching journey. 2. Fabrics: Whenever I start thinking about my next embroidery project, the first couple of questions I asked myself or what techniques might using and what motif and my stitching. In this course, I've actually answered both of those questions for you. I'll be letting you know ahead of time the technique will be studying and providing you with motifs along the way so that you can practice what we've learned with those two questions answered. The next thing I ask myself is, what fabric am I using? There is a huge, huge array of fabrics that are suitable for hand embroidery. The selection of which is often shaped by the technique you're working. But even then you'll still have quite a few options to choose from. So in this video, I thought we could look at some of the fabrics I most commonly use and what I used them for. This is by no means a complete overview of all the fabrics, just the ones that I use most frequently. I have actually summarized all of this in a document that's available to download in the description below. Here I've laid out a number of fabrics and loosely split them into three categories. Densely woven fabrics, counted fabrics and decorative fabrics. We're going to start with the densely woven fabrics that they serve. A wider variety of techniques such as cruel work surface ditches, written work Guild works up shading and plicae to name a few. The first fabric is Calico, also known as cotton muslin. And in the interests of transparency, I should probably tell you I'm having a rather unsettling love affair with Calico. It's just a great fabric. It's really versatile. It's made up of fine cotton threads which are worked in a plane wave, which gives it a nice smooth surface to work on. I think most commonly available in this kind of beige color with these little brown dots that you can see scattered around. At first sight, you'd think these dots would be distracting. But in my experience, it really doesn't detract from the embroidery tool. But you can also get a bleached version. This feels slightly thinner than the base calico. And I have to confess, I don't really use this fabric that often. Brilliant white color can be a little bit too white, but it does depend on the motif. I have actually used this fabric for a winter scene which turned out to be very effective. Both Californios come in different weights. I prefer either a medium or a heavyweight. The lightweight is just a little bit too thin for me. I have all the materials I use. This is probably the one I use most frequently, mostly because it's the cheapest and easiest sauce. Know Medellin in this fabric is slightly heavier than the calico and it's made up of thicker linen threads, again in a plane wave, so it does have a smooth appearance, but when you touch it, when you run your finger over it, it does feel a little bit rougher. This is mostly because the fibers that is woven from a slightly thicker, again, comes in this natural color, but there's also a bleached version. I tend to find that normal dealing in is not as common as calico, which does make it a little bit more expensive. Linen twill. This is a very thick and robust fabric. It's really, really satisfying to work on, again, made up of linen threads. You can see this rather unique diagonal line across the fabric. This is due to the twill weave, which is work slightly differently to the plane wave you've seen in the previous two fabrics. If you run your fingers across the surface, it feels a little bit bumpy. Learning tool is most traditionally used as a base for cowork, which is surface stitches works specifically in a wool thread. You can also get a cotton twill, which is known as denim linen tool. Unfortunately, these days is quite specialist, which does make it hard to source and expensive. Cotton satin gene. This fabric is traditionally used for Mountain Milk work, which is a white work techniques developed in Mount malloc island. Much like toilet is very thick and robust, although the cotton threads are a little bit finer, this has become something of a specialist fabric which makes it expensive and difficult to source. Counted fabrics. The wave on these fabrics is much more open than the ones we've looked at previously. And they're used for counting techniques such as cross stitch black work, canvas work, which is sometimes known as needle point. Then you have pulled thread two and thread Harding, just to name a few. They come in two different formats. You have HPI and TPI. And it's really important to know which one you're working on as this will affect what you count, which influences the size of your stitches. Hpi stands for holes per inch. So you actually count the holes when making stitches and TPI threads per inch. So you actually count threads of the fabric when making stitches. These fabrics are categorized by their count. This refers to the number of threads or holes per inch. So you can lay down a clean ruler on your fabric and go in and count either the holes, all the threads in the inch to get your account. Many of these fabrics do have names, which is a categorization system put together by the main worldwide manufacturer. The names are used to describe the combination of the count and the fiber mix. The fibers that usually go into these fabrics are either cotton, linen, some sort of viscose polyester, and a lot of instances those are mixed. Ada, probably the most common counted fabric available. It comes in huge range of counts, colors, fibers. I don't tend to use it for anything really other than cross stitch, which I'm not planning to cover in this course. But if you'd like me to just let me know, even wave, this is quite a common fabric and not very expensive, as the name suggests, the threads of this fabric, or even and consistent in both the thickness and spacing. The fiber used to make even wave is usually cotton or cotton mix. The range of colors and counts is just vast. Even weave can be used as a substitute for aid or if you need it to, the accounts do have to be converted because they're not on the same system. But you either double the count of Ada or half account that even we've, uh, 14 count Ada can be swapped out for a 28 count even wave, or a 32 can't even leave can be replaced with a 16 count Ada. Linen. This is a very traditional fabric used mostly for clothing and household items. And as the name suggests, the fabric is made up of linen threads. But these threads are not always consistent in their thickness, which does give a slightly varied appearance. And you can see this thick bits periodically, we refer to them as slumps. Correspondingly, there's usually some thinner areas as well. But this fabric does use the same count system as even wave. So if you wanted to replace the 32 count linen with something else, you can just substitute with 32, can't even leave. This type of fabric though is a little less common and slightly more expensive than even with Canvas. There are a couple of different types of Canvas. This one is known as a mono Canvas because it has a single thread running in both directions. It comes in a few different counts, but does have a limited color range of either brown or white. This stuff is really hard wearing as the cotton fibers have been quite heavily starched. When coupled with wool thread embroidery, it can be used to upholstered furniture, which was quite a popular pursuit in the Victorian era. Again, not the most common fabric, which makes it a little bit more expensive. But there are a couple of even wave and linen substitutes that you can make, which is nice. Double Canvas. This fabric has evenly spaced pairs of threads that allow for smaller stitches in places much like the monarch Canvas, the cotton fiber has been heavily starched, so the fabric is again quite hard wearing. There are a few different counts. However, the color is mostly white. Decorative fabrics. These are all fabrics that I use, but usually in combination with a stronger, densely woven fabric, which is often Calico. There is one exception, I'll explain when we get there. These types of fabrics are often used either as a decorative background for any non counted technique or as applied fabric for applique, a stump work, and so on. Patchwork cotton, also known as printed Calico. This, at first glance would seem to fit into densely woven category. However, the fabric does have a little bit more in the way of stretch and movement than the other fabrics we looked at. So I would combine it with something like a calico to give it strength and stability. Mostly because Calico is cheap. Patchwork fabric comes in and just an endless range of colors and prints. And it's nice to add a pop of color in the background of a piece of embroidery. Silk. This is the decorative fabric I use the most often. I like the subtle sheen of the silk. It pretty much enhances any technique. I mostly have used it for gold or consecrating. The two examples I have here are both referred to as a shot or changeable silk. This means that the horizontal and vertical threads are actually different colors. And you can just see here one is red and one is black. Nowadays, you can also get patchwork cottons that are woven in the same way. You can actually see quite a texture difference as well. This one has got intermittently thicker threads. These lumps are also referred to as slumps. This smoother looking one is referred to as a power woven silk, which is a slightly different manufacturing process in comparison to this one. Silk can be quite easy to source these days, but it's one of the more expensive fabrics I use. And I tend to stick with a GPA on silk. Velvet. Though it has a short dense pile of cut threads. It can be hard to find, which makes it expensive. And again, it does need something behind it to give it strength when embroidering on it. These two examples are cotton and silk velvet. Although you can get synthetic versions as well. I found that the cotton velvet tends to be a little bit more stable and the silk velvet a little bit more stretchy, which can make it harder to work with. When you cut into any of the velvet ants, they leave these little tufts of fabric everywhere, everywhere. Organs and organ D. This type of fabric is made up of very, very fine threads that are closely woven together. I have three examples here. This one is organ D, which is cotton. And these two are both organs as this slightly more orange one is silk or Banza, and this one, the red one, is synthetic silk organs that tends to have a little bit more body to it and a little bit more stiffness, whereas the synthetic is a little bit more flowing. Now I mentioned earlier there was an exception. And this is it. There is a technique called shadow work, which has worked onto this type of fabric. And you just work with this in the frame. There's no need to bucket with a piece of calico or anything like that. But they can also be used for applied fabrics or stump work elements and so on. Net or tool. This is an open fabric, so much so I've had to put another color behind it just so that you can see what's going on. This I think is cotton, but you can also have a silk and synthetic versions. I generally use it for a technique called net dawning. Where do where you go in and stitch around these little honeycomb shapes that you can just see. And this creates a repeating pattern, is then usually inserted to a larger piece of work, but can also be used in smaller pieces on stump work or replicate as well. The last fabrics were looking at our padding fabrics. We use padding across many techniques, but notably a plicae stump work and goldberg. Kraft felt. I don't really use Kraft felt as a decorative fabric. It's usually just for padding. I do like 100% wool felt, which is surprisingly affordable, but synthetic, that works just as well. And you can also get blends of wool and synthetic color range pretty extensive, which is good because you should try and match the color of your felt to the color of the fabric or thread you're putting over the top. Fabric should not be seen when the piece is finished. I tend to go with a one or two miles thick felt, cockpit felt. I'm not sure if this is a typically British thing, but it is a composite material that is made up of literally everything. This substance of which I am not a fan, used to be used as an underlay for carpeting. So it'd be laid down first to act as an insulation and cushioning for the carpet, and then the carpet would be put up at the top. We have repurposed it for embroidery. These days, most carpets don't need this stuff. There are actually better alternatives, so it is becoming less common. And we are starting to look for alternatives which will probably be thicker versions of the craft helped bump or curtain into lining, usually used when melting a piece to go in a frame. Techniques such as gold work and stump work can be a little bit lumpy on the back. So you put this down on the board first and it acts as a cushion to those thick threads. When the embroidery is placed over the top, it should look even and smooth. Wording or batting, commonly used for patchwork quilts. This is just an alternative to the bumps. It does exactly the same job. It's put on in a slightly different way, but it's the same thing is to cushion thick heavy threads. Helmet interfacing. It's a synthetic composite material that feels a little bit like a flexible cardboard. When you cut into it keeps its shape really nice because it's quite stable. So you can get clean edges and corners, which can be useful when you're trying to create clean shapes, particularly in a cliche. You can also stitch through it, stitch over it, and draw and paint on it as well. That was a lot of information and hopefully it wasn't too overwhelming. But once again, I have summarized all of the fabrics and their uses in a document in the description below. And ahead of time, I'll be letting you know what I'm using and the reasons why. 3. Threads: Now I don't like to brag, but I do have all the threads. Actually quite a small portion of my stash. But it does go to show just how many threads are available to the stitch of these days. So I thought in this next video, we can take a look at some of the more common threads that are available and what they're used for. This is by no means intended to be an overview of everything that's on the market, but it should be enough to get you going and including death texture and depth in a piece of embroidery. Cotton used for surface stitches, soak, shading, black work, canvas work amongst others. Stranded cotton, which is sometimes referred to as floss, is a divisible thread. So it's made up of multiple strands, which is usually six. And it has been specifically designed to be split down and use either singly or in multiples. Each strand is made up of two long cotton staples that are then loosely applied or twisted together, and it creates this really soft and flexible thread. I also have a stranded silk version, which is actually 12 as opposed to six stranded ray on version, which is for, as opposed to either 12 or six. The silk is much finer. The radon is very shiny. It has a looser twist on it as well. In the UK, silk and round or not so common and they are more expensive. I usually source them from independent diets and more often than not, they variegated rather than solid colors. So in a similar vein, you can get a stranded metallic, also known as light effects. Again, it's a divisible thread made up of six different strands that can be used in place of stranded cotton and do add a lovely sparkle to a piece. However, they can be challenging to work with. So having some sort of thread conditioner such as beeswax like this, there are synthetic versions as well. We'll make working with these things easier. Also increasing your needle size and they should not be confused with Goldmark threads, which is an entirely different subject. It's a relatively new thread which is only made by one manufacturer. And again, Is it divisible thread made up of six strands? You can see that it's not a smooth as the stranded cotton and it does have a little bit of a sparkle like much like the metallic thread, is actually a long cotton staple that has been applied with the lyrics polyamides to add that little bit of sparkle. It can be used in the same way as the stranded cotton, and it does create a particularly beautiful effect, a long and short. However, even though it has some sort of synthetic metallic component, I would not use the wax that would flatten the fluffy effect, but a bigger needle is definitely an order. Per Les. Paul thread is used for surface ditches, pulled and drawn work, canvas work, amongst others. The name will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and it's a non divisible thread. It, that means it's not been designed to be taken apart. It's made up of two long and thick cotton staples of them being very tightly plied, are twisted together, which makes them really strong thread. Pearly comes in different thicknesses. Three, which is the thickest, 581212 on the whole is the thinnest, although I think there is one company that goes thinner. Pele's a lot less flexible than stranded cotton, but your surface stitches will actually be better defined if you work them in this, they do have variegated range and a metallic range, but the sizes tend to be quite limited. And it might experience the metallic pele is actually slightly easier to work with the metallic standards. I also have a silk pearly variation. Again, mostly isosceles from independent diets in a variegated form. This isn't a particularly common thread in the UK at all, which does make it slightly more expensive and harder to source kind of Broder. This is often used for surface stitches, black work, pull thread, drawn thread work, and canvas work abroad or is also known as special embroidery thread and is a non divisible thread much like the PLA. This time it's made up of four strands that have been applied together. The play itself is quite firm, which creates a nice strong thread. However, it does retain some of its flexibility, which places it nicely between the stranded cotton and the Perla in terms of its strength and stiffness. Much like the pearlite does come in different sizes, which is also known as a weight, 16, which is the thickest and probably the most common. Then you have 20. There is also a 25 which I don't have here at the moment, and a 3030 being the thinnest, but the range of sizes may vary from manufacturer, from a manufacturer. It works beautifully well for well-defined surface ditches, but it's strong enough for pooled hand-drawn thread work as well. Stranded cotton is possibly the most commonly available embroidery thread is closely followed by the pearlite, particularly the size eight. The cotton of road or I find is a little bit harder to find. So for instance, I have a branch of a nationwide cross shop ten minutes away from my home here in the UK. And I know I can run down there and pick up both stranded cotton and parlay. If I wanted the cotton a broader or any of the other specialists threads such as the ray on or the silk, I would be looking online for them. There are three to four main manufacturers worldwide that focus on the cotton versions of these threads. Each company has its own numbering system, which is applied across the range of all of the threads they produce. Stranded cotton probably has the widest range of colors. The others tend to be a little bit more limited. But when the colors are present across the different thread types, the color should actually be consistent. Cruel wall specifically for cool work comes in Hanks scans. Sometimes on a real cruel CRE, WE L is an old English word that means to loosely applied strands of wool, which you can just about see here. If your thread is missing either one of these two characteristics, It's not cruel and any stitching worked in it will not be cool work. There are a couple of smaller companies that manufacture this type of threads. The range of colors varies from brands, brands. Sometimes companies will use synthetic colors. Other times they use natural dyes. But most of the companies have organized their colorful colors into families, which makes assembling a color palette quite straightforward. The thickness of the thread will vary by manufacturer, who also may use terms such as less weight or worsted wool. Wool is actually quite hard wearing, so it's often used for soft furnishings. Ribbons, specifically used for Reuben work. The best type to use is 100% silk ribbon, which is very thin and flexible. And it allows you to manipulate it into some really lovely shapes. I've seen pieces worked in satin ribbons, which tend to be a little bit thicker and slightly less elegant. The ribbons are usually available in two mil for meal, 713 mill. And the best pieces I've seen worked in this technique usually use a combination of all or most of these sizes. Ribbon work is quite niche, which means the threads are quite specialist. And the motifs that you work on, mostly floral Goldberg threads for gold work, there is quite a large range of fairly unique threads that have very historic roots in this topic. We won't be going over all of the threads today is there's just too many to talk about. We will however, go over them in more detail before the Goldmark topic. But they can be broadly divided into two categories. Couching threads, which are attached to the fabric by stitching over them. And Perth roads, which you stitch down by sliding the needle through them. There are one or two others that don't fit into these categories, or some straddle both. Counting threats. Traditionally there was a silk core, but these days it's almost always cotton. That has been then wrapped in a colored paper or a thin metal ribbon. Here we have Japanese threat, which is paper apps. Then we have twist, which is actually three gold threads twisted together. And this one is a Rococo. The smaller versions are called check threads, which has more of a texture. The parents health threads. These are all threads that are actually made of metal. Here we have pulpal, which is also a couching thread in that you stitch over it to attach it to the fabric. Then we have bright check and rough Perl. These three threads are quite similar in that they're all kind of like a spring, a tightly coiled wire, which you can see a little bit more clearly with the power pole as the metal used to make it a slightly thicker. These to the bright Check and the rough powell are usually cut into shorter pieces. And then the needless pass through them to stitch them down. All of these threads come in different sizes. Each thread type has its own sizing system that uniquely names or numbers them. There are also many, many more threats than you can see here. But the most important thing about Goldberg threads is that they need careful handling and storage. Stroking and poking them as out the oils on your hands can actually aid tarnishing. And some of them are quite delicate and easily crushed, so it's best to store them in tissue paper and a box. Plastic bags and plastic boxes can actually also encourage the tarnish. You can wrap some of them in tin foil as well, which does help mount Malik threads available in sizes 12341 being the finest for being the thickest. It's a soft cotton thread that's made up of multiple plies. They are not divisible. It's traditionally used in Mount Malik work, which is a white work technique developed in Mount malloc, Ireland. It's not really manufactured that much these days. It can be quite hard to source. And although not traditional, you can substitute in a white version of the four different sizes of pearly that we looked at earlier. Beating thread for beadwork. There's a couple of different types and my preference is very much for the filament thread, which is multiple strands that have been lightly waxed or conditioned to hold them together. It's not divisible thread. Having a thread with multiple strands means that if one of the threads is compromised by a sharp edge or a bar inside the bead. The rest of the thread should hold the bead in place. You can get a transparent beating thread, which you can just about see there. It's very difficult to, to thread into a needle, so it's not really my preference. Miscellaneous, other threats, these are novelty or specialty threads that are slightly harder to source here in the UK. So let's start with this one. This is called GIMP. It's a cotton cool that has been strengthened or stiffened with a conditioner and then wrapped with either rayon or silk. This one is actually a ray on wrapped GIMP. And you can see there's a little metallic sparkle in there as well. This one is Chanel, is kind of Tufty fluffy thread, which is quite fun. And then this booklet looks like the two players have been kinda scrunched up to give it a kind of ripple effect. These threads I would be inclined to, to couch down. I used stitch over them to attach them to the fabric. By doing this, you're not passing them through the fabric so much because I think doing that would cause the wrapping on this one to come off, these other ones to deteriorate quite quickly and then snap. So here we have filaments, silk, which is a silk threads. And individual silk thread is not applied or twisted with anything. And the actual strands that have been laid down together don't have much of a player twist on them as well. Again, doing extensive stitching in this, you'd need to be careful that the threads don't snap because they'll deteriorate quite quickly going through the fabric. And here we have lace threads. Threads are quite specialty. They are designed to make lace from there, often used for bobbin lace, I believe, and similar. There's a couple of different brands. They're quite rare these days, but they're both, these are two different brands here. They're both cotton. They've got quite a high twist on them and they're very fine. So we use that for things like pull thread work on a very fine count fabric machine threads, as the name suggests, they're designed to work in a sewing machine. They're usually synthetic and have two or more strands tightly played together and it creates a really nice strong thread. I use this one, particularly in gold work to couch the gold down, which is in lieu of a more traditional silk thread. Silk tends to dry out and shatter. So we now use a synthetic alternative, or you also use it for applying fabrics and the plicae and stump work. Having this type of thread in a variety of colors is actually quite useful. Most brands will make a metallic rayon, linen, linen alternative. Upholstery and button thread. These two are much thicker than the machine threads. They're still two-ply, but the individual strands are much thicker and they've been very tightly played together to make a super-strong thread. We use these for certain types of framing up and mounting. So many of the threats we've just looked at have their own specific techniques that we use them for, but they can all be used to enhance the other techniques as well. And broadly speaking, it would be things like gold work, applique a box making beadwork, ribbon work, stump work, that kind of thing. Now again, it was a lot of information and hopefully it was more instructive than overwhelming and that you can now go confidently out into the world to buy embroidery threads. But once again, I do have a document in the description below that summarizes the threads and they uses. 4. Needles: Needles, when it comes to needles, I like to keep it really simple and I only use a small selection of them. That being said, the different needle types actually come in a wide variety of sizes. And having a selection of those sizes to hand can be really useful. Chanel needles, they have a large eye and a sharp point. I use these densely woven fabrics because the sharp point is designed to create the hole that the thread will pass through. A generally use this size, which is a size 24 channel. And I use it for thicker threads such as wool pele called a broader and so on. However, it does come in different sizes. This is the size 24 we've just looked at. I like to have a couple of twenties and 22s as well. These are used for plunging gold work threads or wires in stumped work. This is a size 26, which is slightly finer. I would use that for stranded cotton. And here, this one is just ridiculously sized. It's a 13 and I use it for plunging bundles of thread. In stump work. I typically use this for most surface embroidery. Coworker plicae called looks up shading, that kind of thing. This is a tapestry needle. They're also known as cross stitch needles. Much like the shield, it does have a large eye, but this time it has a blunt point. And the blank point is designed to push threads out of the way, rob them, paste them like the Chanel does. Again, my go-to is a size 24, but they do come in different sizes. And just for comparison, you can just see there the sharp point versus the blunt point in the tapestry needle. Those are both size 24 hours. So they do come in different sizes. Again, we have a size 24. This is a 26 Which I would use on finer fabrics such as a Kingston linen or so on. But as I say, mostly I use the 24, then I'm not actually sure why I have this. This is a 13 tapestry needle. I don't use it. It's too big to be woven through my fabric here. And it's just appeared in my collection one day. I'm not sure where tapestries and she kneels have the same sizing system. So they're just identical in size and length and so on. And the difference is, is that the Chanel or just chopper. I typically use these tapestry or cross, cross stitch needles for counted work such as Black work canvas, needle point pulled, threat drawn threat, that kinda thing. So embroidery needles. These are a very small eye, which you can just see here. A sharp point. Again, you use them with densely woven fabrics. They're designed once again to create the holder of the thread passes through, I mostly use these two smaller ones, which are 12 and tens. They're very fine. And the 12th particularly are quite expensive. And not many of them that are produced make it to market because the eye is, I find it tends to snap during production. I tend to use them with single strands of cotton or machine threads and so on. These are slightly bigger. You've got a 9879. I sometimes swap out for a 24-hour Neil needle. They're not quite the same size, but they can swap over like that. Mostly I use these for silk shading, gold work, applique, a stump work, that kind of thing. So just for comparison, you can see this is a shinier needle and this is an embroidery. Again, this is an embroidery nine and you can just see the length of the eye there with the shinier needle is much, much bigger. Curved needles. These have a small eye and a sharp point and a rather distinctive curve to the shaft of the needle. Sharp point is once again used to create the whole of the thread will pass through. The curve shape, works to scoop up fabric to make stitches. If you're working on the back of a tight frame or when mounting, I generally use mattress needles for this. But you can also get a very fine beading needle that is specifically for beating. And it won't work for mounting due to the stress and angle is put under the curve. Needle is quite challenging to start with, but you can master it and it's really useful in certain circumstances. So it's worthwhile persevering with that. When you are selecting a needle size, remember that the bigger the number, the finer the needle. So in this instance, the bigger number 26 is this finest needle at the bottom. And the lower number 13 is the bigger needle at the top. It's quite easy to tell when your needle is too small for your threads. Not only will it be quite hard to pull through the fabric, I'll also be quite a distinct popping noise as you do so. So when you hear this popping noise, it's an indication that you need to go to a bigger size needle. If your needle is already too big for your thread, you will find that the needle slips off as a thread quite easily, quite frequently. And again, when that happens, you need to go down to size needle. Needles are not immune to deterioration. We call this tarnish. And in my experience, it tends to happen around the middle where I most frequently hold the needle and it's usually the oils and sweat coming off your fingers that just have an effect on the metal. You can see this middle one particularly is tarnished the whole length, whereas it spots in the other two. And for contexts you can see this top one is actually brand new. I haven't used it yet. And as a result, it's still just very shiny. Now these tarnish marks can actually leave marks in your fabric. So should be discarded and not used as soon as you see this happening. And generally speaking, needle should be discarded and replaced on the completion of each project. That was nice and simple. Needles don't have to be complicated at all. And once again, I have a document in the description below that summarizes the needles we've discussed and their uses. And whilst there isn't a direct size comparison between Chanel and embroidery needles, I have successfully substituted one for the other in the past. I've included details of that as well. 5. Frames: A good way to elevate your stitching is to use a frame. It should hold your fabric smooth and talked and create a nice surface to stitch on. They come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. So I thought we'd take a look at them next. But it's really important that your frame is sized appropriately. The design should sit within its boundaries. You don't really want to be moving fabric or the frame itself around that could lead to damaged or crushed stitches. So with that in mind, unless otherwise stated, all of the designs on this course have been sized for an eight inch hoop. Ring frames, or hoops are probably the easiest and cheapest to source. I have two examples. This thinner one is probably the most common. I see they start at around three to four inches in diameter, go up pretty much in inch increments. After that, you unscrew the top, the frame comes into halves, and then you can put your fabric in to hold it in place. There are also standards that can be used with this thinner type of frame. This is the most common type of standard IC. They take most types of frame including again, the smaller one of the next type we will look at. They are adjustable. The angle can change, the whole frame can be flipped back to reveal the back of the hoop. Frame with a stalk. This is the other type of frame I use. You can see in the profile it's much deeper than the other type of frame that we have. And it comes with this stalk attachment on the back. And the idea that fat is supposed to go into a holder such as this table clamp. You'd attach it to the table here and then your stock goes in there. Or there's also a seat frame. So you'd sit on this puddle section and your stock would go in here. There is also a floor stand variation, but I don't have a version of that at the moment to show you. If I had to choose between the two ranges, I would probably go with the hoop on a stalk. I really like that it supports itself and the deeper frame holds the fabric a little bit more firmly. Now growing up, I did use these frames a lot and I found I tended to grip it very tightly causing pain in my wrist. Not necessarily the experience that everyone will have. It's just something that I did. But you can get this little gadget that's designed to hold and clamp on so that they're hands-free. And it does work with one of the smaller frames that we're going to look at in just a minute. Now the drawback to this range, it is only available in 6810 inch hoops. And the table clamp, which I much prefer your limited so your table can't be deeper than this. If you have a rounded edge, you'll find that it can be a little bit unstable. Overall, this range is a little bit more expensive. Hips are probably the easiest of all the frames to frame up. The next ones we'll look at actually have a much longer process to get the fabric onto them. And on the whole will be more expensive than these. This is a roller or rotating frame. It's an easy and relatively inexpensive upgrade from a hoop. These frames come in different lengths, but the width varies very little if at all. The fabric is attached along either of the bars, which can be rolled so you can stretch out your fabric and then you can hold everything in place by adjusting the wing nuts. I do use these occasionally, mostly for cross stitch and sampling. And I have found that I need to be careful with both the width and the length of the fabric. If you roll too much fabric around either one of these bars, the fabric just won't sit as tight as you want it to. You'll have a loss of tension. I know this as a Victorian roller frame. I actually found this one in a secondhand shops. I don't know exactly how old it is. However, there is a modern equivalent that is quite similar, that's referred to as a millennium frame. It's the same principle as the role frame we just looked at. In your fabric is attached along the top and bottom edges to this webbing. And these disks that you can see just down here in each corner, they actually have a screw thread carved into them. And the bars down the side have a screw thread as well. So you twist the disks to separate the bars and stretch out the fabric. You have to be really careful that you don't take one side further than the other because you could take your fabric off square and skew it slightly. So you've got to make sure to measure these two distances to make sure they're the same. And you can see in this instance, I've added some tape and string to the sides to give a four-way stretch. This is a slight frame. My favorite type of frame to work on. The first time I used it on, I absolutely fell in love with it. It is the professional level tool though, which makes it highly specialist. And from what I can tell, I think there's only two manufacturers in the UK making these, which makes them hard to source and quite expensive. If you travel with them, they can be very heavy and cumbersome, but the wood is quite thick, but the fabric tension you can achieve with them, it's just unsurpassed with any other frame. It makes every single stitch a joy. It's the same principle as the last two frames we looked at. The fabric is attached along these roller bars top and bottom. And then you have the stretcher bars along the sides where you put in split pins to hold the balls apart. Again, I've got this additional webbing and lacing to give the four-way stretch. If you look down the bottom here, you can actually see those pre drilled holes, which is where the split pins going. Now on a modern frame, they should be identical across both arms. On an older frame, there might be more in the way of discrepancy. So once again, you're going to have to measure the two distances to make sure that they're even so that you don't once again skew your fabric. The downside to these, aside from the heart to source and expensive nature of them, is you do need some specialist equipment to put with them. You're better off with a set of muscles, which again can be expensive and hard to source. There are also quite bulky to store. There are a couple of other frames that will work well, but the angle poison when we looked at earlier, this is probably going to be too heavy for it. These frames come in different sizes and this one is known as an 18 inch frame. And that actually refers to the approximate length of the webbing that's attached to this bar. So you can just see here at the top, that's the approximate length is 18 inches, which gives you an idea of your stitching area. I do also have a 24-inch frame and they do go down in size. I know there's one supply that's doing, I think 1512 inch frames as well. But generally speaking, the actual bars or the frame are longer than the inches stated. So I know the 24-inch frame I have is actually 32 inches over all. Before we finish up, I just wanted to mention a couple of things. First of all, don't put your frame on the floor like I did, or that your fabric has the potential to pick up dirt and dust which will not be good for your embroidery. And the reason I did that was because it was the only way I could get really good pictures of the larger frames we looked at. On a similar note, try not to place I wouldn't trust falls or wooden frames next to a heat source. This has the potential to dry the word out. And my reason for doing so was my limited filming space. Also, my heating is off. Now, as I said earlier, using a frame can very much elevate your embroidery. So hopefully that has demystified the subject for you. That being said, this is not a complete overview of all of the frames available. I have actually missed a few hours. This video. Some of you may have noticed that some of my hoops looked a little bit strange. This is a bound hoop, which means we've taken a piece of long cotton fabric and just wrapped it around both the inner and the outer hoop. This is designed to cushion and protect your embroidery fabric. It's by no means mandatory and I have to say, I'm not a fan of it. I have noticed in the edit, but this is particularly dirty in my defense. This is this wrapping has been on there a long time. So when I'm done here, that's coming off and going into been. Now, before you go committing to a frame purchase, I strongly recommend that you watch the framing up videos that are coming up soon. Framing up, it can be easy, it can be quite lengthy. So it's best to have that full knowledge before you make the commitment of buying something. 6. Essential Equipment: There are a few pieces of equipment that are essential. There's some that are useful to have and I use occasionally. And then there's some things that are peculiar to certain techniques and processes. In this video, I thought we could look at putting together a simple sewing kit. Now with that in mind, I have found myself lovely tin. This used to have chocolates in it. They were in a tray wrapped in cellophane. I have checked the tin quite carefully and to remove any debris and given it a thorough cleaning and there wasn't much debris. There's noisy one I'm currently storing pins in, but this is Tupperware seals quite nicely with the snap of all. It's if you're going to use this, boy knew, when you store food in containers like this, some of the residue can be left behind. You don't want any kind of oil or debris getting onto your equipment because that can transfer onto your fabric. So by nu, if you're going Tupperware, pencil cases, they went really well. And they're quite cheap. They come in different sizes and typical, awesome. Or you could get your mom to make you something. Scissors. There are different types of scissors. The ones I see most often are these stoke shaped ones. They also seem to be the most traditional. Although these days you can get alternatives. And I think the best one I've seen is a unicorn, which is kinda cool. Some of them are painted. You have to be careful because the paint can chip off and it's eroded in a couple of places on this pair. You don't want paint chips getting onto your work. Some are curved. You can just see there is a curve shape to the blade. And this pair particularly have a little bump on the end, which you can just about see. The idea is that this little bump pushes fabric out of the way when you're cutting, traditionally used when you're making lace. They are actually called lasers, which are quite specialist. And then you just have other irregular pairs that aren't stalk shaped. These ones I think of a cutting pizza, which they're not, they're actually for a plicae. Now, if I only had to buy one pair, I would be buying these. Because out of the collection, they have the sharpest, pointiest blade. The best pair of embroidery scissors is not the decoration, it's not the unicorn, the stalk or the lack of, it is the sharpness of the blade and the pointing us to the point. So out of all of these IoT be getting these and putting them into my kit. The other type of scissors I think are essential or pair of embroidery shares. Yeah, They're actually fabric shoes. These are primarily for cutting fabric. And you can see they're much bigger and more hefty. They come in different sizes and varieties. And again, you want them to be sharp. If at any point you have issues cutting your thread or cutting fabric, it's probably because the blade is blunt and you need to sharpen them. Now as an interim measure, I will often use this. This is a scissor sharpener. It does help to prolong the life a little bit of the blade, but eventually you're better off either discarding the scissors or you can get them sharpened. Good-quality pair of scissors like these, can be sharpened. There's a curfew companies that do them. You want to check the brand, go to the brand website, see if they offer it as a Service. I tend to find that smaller companies are more likely to offer it. Sometimes there's a charge, it just depends on the company. This is a seam Ripper. The idea is that you slip this front section between two pieces of fabric that have been stitched together. I eat the same. When you push and put some force behind it, this curved sharp and section in the middle will actually cut or rip through those stitches so that the fabric comes apart. You'll notice that it is not called an embroidery take router. That's because it's not been designed to take out embroidery. If you have one of these in your kit, please take it out. If you are planning on buying one, please don't. This can do so much damage to your work. I've seen many students get quite frustrated with what they're doing and want to take out their stitches. So they break out the seam Ripper. They pretty much attack their work with it. And what happens is without knowing this food section slips not just under the stitches but through the fabric itself. Again, you put a bit of pressure behind it, start taking things out and before you know it, you've dropped a huge hole in your fabric. It's not just thin fabrics like Calico. I've seen this do damage on thicker fabric such as linen, twill, and Canvas as well. Stick with a sharp pair of scissors. They'll all you need. If you pay attention when you're using them, you can actually feel through the blade when you're hitting a thicker bits. So you're more likely to tell if you're cutting fabric rather than stitches, symbols. I never used to use them. I did not like them mostly because I couldn't get them to stay on my fingers and if I could I couldn't work with them effectively. And then I got a minor infection in my finger. I was using a very fine size 12 needles and the I used to slip between the nail beds and the fleshy part of my finger and I got a very minor infection. It wasn't great. It wasn't too bad though. So once again, I revisited symbols and came to the conclusion that the metal ones are not For me. I had to think very carefully about which finger is going to put them on. Most of my colleagues put them on these two fingers. Whereas I got my infection on this finger on my right hand. I came to the conclusion that putting a thimble there would be more effective. But as I say, the metal ones always fell off. And that's when I found this one. This has gotten metal tip and a rubber skirt. And I found it just to be very effective. You can see a couple of blemishes on the skirt there. That's because if the needle slips, it can the final ones particularly can plunge through the rubber, but it doesn't happen that often. Then this one is a hard plastic or rubber That's just super thick. It's not as flexible as this one. But again, both of them stay on my finger and much better. And if they don't, I can stop these two, both with a scrap fabric, which is useful. Now the other thing I have are these sticky dots. They don't seem like they would work, but I've actually had them be surprisingly effective. The stickiness on the back is very super sticky. Even on those days when I have rather unpleasant, hot, sweaty fingers, they still work perfectly and some of them have this metal thing that you can stick on in the same way. These are kind of positional and repositioning across any part of your fingers that you might need them on. Pins. I use these ones. These are glass headed pins. I normally use them for framing up applying fabrics mounting isn't particularly important to use glass header pins for Mountains as they will be gentler on your fingers. And they're also quite strong. They've got a relatively thick shaft on them. As I said, they can be used for applying fabrics, but you can also use these ones. These are a little bit finer. They still have the girl's head, but the final shaft on them will actually leave fewer holes and blemishes in your fabric. Now, these are probably too thin for mounting and framing up. So you'll just want to use them for applying fabrics. If you get any bins or kinks and your pins, throw them away. Once they start bending, they're only going to continue to bend and they're kind of useless at that point. I have a specific pot that I put them in. It's just an old chocolate hot chocolate pot. And it just keeps everything safe and out of the way. Pencils always useful for jotting down or sketching out ideas. But I also use these for drawing on, so transferring my image onto my fabric. My preferred method is with a mechanical pencil. These don't really blunt off that much. When you're using a regular pencil. You have to keep sharpening it to make sure you have a nice sharp point because as the lead will dull, it will become rounded and broader so you end up with thicker lines. So my preference is for a mechanical pencil. There are other methods of drawing on, and it does vary from topic to topic. But another alternative that is often used, gel pens. Whenever you use a pen, you all very much committing pencils while she can't entirely get them out of the fabric, you can diminish them somewhat. Pens and evenness, fine liner people often use. Once you've got that ink in the fabric is not coming out. So you want to be really careful at the marks you make. For things such as Canvas work, I'll use a slightly thicker pen. It's still quite fine, but it's got a broader nib there. And again, it's permanent. And then you have other options. If you're doing white work or similar, you have washable pens. This is a dressmakers chalk pencil, and this is a heat reactive pen. The washable ones and heat reactive. Whenever you introduce any of the inks into your fabric, you're introducing an unknown quantity. And particularly with these ones that claim to be removable, often it's just a chemical reaction that's going on with the ink and water or heat or so on. I do use sometimes blue coloring, pencil, or dressmakers talk. They can rub off quite easily. So you want to either have it handy to keep, re-establishing the lines or work quickly so they don't rub off entirely. In addition to a pencil, I like to have a ruler. Try to keep it exclusively for embroidery if you can. Don't use it to draw edges with either a pen or pencil, can leave residue which could then transfer it onto your fabric, which we don't want. I like a clear ruler myself because if I need to I can measure the distance between my searches. Don't tell anyone I told you that. I also like to have one that has both centimeters and inches on it. Tape measures, measuring things useful for when you're framing up the larger frames we looked at, but just generally measuring out your fabric to cut, to go into any frame, really, I prefer these ones, but you do have to be careful because the tape will actually stretch over time, so you have to replace them periodically. And this one does again have both centimeters and inches on them. Low tack tape can be used for taping down designs so they don't move when you're transferring own or tracing and so on. You can also use it carefully to blot off straight fibers on your piece. It has to be low tack. Low tack will not leave a sticky residue on any surface which has the risk of transferring onto your fabric. You don't want sticky residue on your fabric. A simple set of coloring pencils can actually be really useful. The darker blues could actually be used to transfer on for white work if you wanted to. But just having some coloring pencils so that you can take a look at planning your colors in a piece before you start stitching. It's a really good way of starting out your piece with a little bit of direction as to where you're using color. We will go over this in more detail in the color planning video at the end of our first topic. So this isn't really a tool for my toolkit per se, but I thought I would include it here. Anyway. When your fabric has been framed up, regardless of the frame you're using, it will need to be covered with something that will stop airborne particulates, dust, that kind of thing, and possibly pets getting on your work and leaving stains or causing issues. So here I have some white tissue paper. Tissue paper works really well. We usually dispose of it after each project, but it has to be white. Any other color will have pigments in it that has the potential to leach out into your textile, particularly if it gets wet or damp. The alternative is old cheating and pillow cases. They will need to be washed thoroughly before you use it. You can cut them down. You can also fold over the edges and put in some very wonky seems if you want it to, but you don't have to. As a side note, we actually use white tissue paper for transfer method called trace and TAC, which will be coming up in a later video. A quick review of my sewing kit. First of all, I am going to need a bigger tin. Secondly, I don't think I fully clarified my thoughts on the pens. You won't need all of these for this course as yet, we may pick up a few extra as we go. But for this, if you're starting out, start with mechanical HB pencil, there is going to be at least one fabric I use where I know that the HB wide shot very well because it has a kind of gray tone to it. So I would be looking either to use a gel pen or this very fine point to mark a pen. In fact, I think my preference would be to that one. If I'm not using the pricked pounds and paint method of transferring on. 7. Useful Equipment: The next few items are optional. Obviously, I own them because I'm showing them to you and I find them really useful. But I've also noticed I don't use them that often. Needle thread is, I don't really use these myself, but I have supplied them to students in the past. They are quite simple. You pass this loop or the hook through the eye of a needle. The thread then goes into the loop and you pull it all back through the eye. This one has a flexible wire loop, and this one has hooks on either end. And this one has a hook so tiny that I can't actually get the camera to focus on it. I much prefer the press metal variety. It's very sturdy but not too expensive. The only downside is that many of the eyes for the smaller needles are actually too small to fit either of the hooks. So I would then have to switch to this flexible loop one. The downside to the loop is that they can come apart quite easily, particularly if you try using them with thicker threads such as wool or pearly. Although I have found that if you press your finger nail down where the wire gets trapped into the metal section, they lost a little bit longer. Pliers or needle grippers. Sometimes needles can get stuck in particularly thick or dense areas of stitching so you can use a needle grip or to put it through. This pair look a little bit like scissors, but they actually have a serrated section rather than a sharp blade. This pair, you actually have to squeeze together to get them to open up because they have this locking system. Which means when you've gripped a needle and you look at together, you can then handle them however you want. You don't have to keep squeezing them, told them tight. You can also buy a pair of needle nose pliers that work in the same way, but they don't have a locking system to them. This is a whistler. If you are going to use either a rotating or ring frame, having one of these is quite useful. They're actually designed to slip over the wing nuts so that you can get a bit more purchase on them and tighten them down. And obviously you've got plenty to grip there. If you're going to be using a ring frame, a screwdriver is also really useful and I will show you how we use them when we get to the framing up videos. If you are planning to use either a pair of pliers or a screwdriver. It's really important that you buy new. If you just go to a nearby toolbox and grab out small tools, it's highly possible they will have a buildup of dirt grease on them, which could transfer onto your embroidery, or it could transfer onto your hands and then onto your embroidery. It's unlikely you'll get those stains out. It's really important that you buy new and keep them exclusively for your embroidery. This is a metal, it's a gold work laying tool and it's used to help position pills in a technique called cut work. Traditionally, it was also used to make holes in the fabric to plunge thick gold work threats. However, these days, it's not as sharp and pointy as it used to be, so we don't tend to use it for plunging anymore. You can use it in other techniques for laying threads as well. It is a specialist tool and even the cheaper ones can be expensive. However, if you happen to find yourself in the possession of a big chunky tapestry needle like I do. You can use that as a substitute. I now know why this is in my collection. It can be used in the same way. It's just more rounded and not as comfortable to hold as the metal. This is a stiletto. I still let O is used for making islets, most commonly in white to work. This pointy end pushes through and parts of the fabric. And then you have this tapering shape that will help you make bigger and smaller islands. This one happens to be wooden, but you can get metal and plastic ones as well. The plastic ones I have noticed don't seem to be as pointy. So I prefer to stick with either metal or wood. And again, it can be substituted with a very large chunky Chanel needle. You can see though that whilst the needle tapers, it doesn't quite go as thick stiletto. So the size of the holes you'll make with the Chanel will be limited. These last two items we won't be using immediately on this course. I will try to let you know when we'll be using them. But it will be the metal or a lean tool first. Tweezers, these are really useful for getting out tacking threads. Turning the edges of fabric if you need to, crimping and bending wires in stump work, you can get specific embroidery tweezers which can be quite expensive. These are just, I think 60 papers I found a local chemist. Again, it's really important that you buy new and only use them for embroidery. You don't want to get Greece or dirt or oil on them, which then transfer it onto your fabric. Some sort of pin cushion or needle book to hold your needles. This one was made for me by my nan, is just some cotton fabric widths and felt in the middle. And then this one was made for me by a good friend. Again, some cotton fabric and felt in the middle. Good-quality, 100% wool felt, I think is the best for storing your needles. Although I think this one particularly is synthetic and it just does the job like the others do. This one actually has a filling which helps to clean the needles. Cotton buds. These are used primarily to get out bloodstains. These are the non plastic variety. They actually have the paper or cardboard core. And the idea is that you suck on one end because your saliva is the best thing to remove your blood. You would suck on the end and soak it with your saliva and then just apply it to the stain. And I found that the more quickly you do that, the more effective you are at getting the blood out. That being said, there is often some mock or residue left behind in the fabric, particularly if you're using silk. So after that, you should have a pretty good sign kit to get you going. As I said, there are some items that are technique or process specific and we'll look at those as we encounter the technical process. 8. Framing up a Ring frame: As I've said before, the friend you use should be appropriate to the size of the motif, your stitching, but that piece of fabric you put into the frame needs to be of the correct size as well. You need that big enough surface area to actually stitching. But then you need to have a mind to the future as to how you're presenting it when you're done. And that can take many forms. You can do hard mounting, soft hanging fabric, book cushion, that kind of thing. You need to make sure you have an excess of fabric to accommodate that. Now if at this stage you don't know what you're gonna do in the end, it's best to go with a slightly bigger piece of fabric that gives you the excess of fabric you need to accommodate any of those different mounting systems. And also if you're gonna be working in a ring frame, that little bit extra fabric is going to give you plenty to grab, hold off to stretch in order to tension fabric in the hoop. I always like to start with the design. And from there I can start checking hoops. And you can see this one is just too small. The design barely fits in at the edges. The gap between the edge of the design and the frame itself is just too small. This would be very uncomfortable to stitch. So that's gonna be a no. This one could actually work. You can see there's a nice big rebate here, so the design is nowhere near touching the edges of the frame. This would entail a larger piece of fabric, which depending on how I'm intending to present the piece when it's finished could be a little bit wasteful. Although if I were considering using linen or cotton satin gene, this might actually be a good option. This one is pretty much perfect. I've still got a decent gap between the edges of the design and the frame. So I can cut moderately sized piece of fabric and still have access to all of the different lines. And my hands won't feel like they're uncomfortable or cramped as I'm working in there. I just wanted to pop in here and say that if you are intending to stitch on one of those thicker fabrics, some form of twill, cotton satin gene, that kind of thing in a hoop. You do want to consider going slightly bigger. Now, in this instance, I would probably go from a size eight inch hoop to a tenant tube. Because what happens when you put those thicker fabrics into a hoop is the frame itself can rub on the surface of the fabric, which leaves shiny patches. They don't necessarily damage the integrity of the fabric at all, but they can look I'm slightly when you mount or present them when you're finished. If you do go to a bigger hoop, that area of damage which you can't really prevent, actually gets pushed further out, which gives you more flexibility in the final mounting. So this is a piece of cruel work that I have worked in a hoop. And if I just move it over slightly, you can see the very definite ring marks there. Now, I could iron the edges of my fabric. And when I say that, I mean, I would come to here. So my iron would come in up to about this point to see if I can diminish those marks. I would not want to encroach nearer to my stitching, ironing your stitching can cross it, crushed the stitches, damage the threads. In this case, this is wool so I could felt these fibers and lose the definition that I've got. I can come in and iron the edges of my fabric. That's not gonna get rid of it all entirely. There'll be still some marks, but I've probably got a better chance of stretching them out. If I were to mount the piece, I'd worked in a 10-inch hoop. These marks would sit further out, which means when I come to mount it, I would have less damage and distortion to the fabric sing so close to my piece. So next I want to measure my frame. It is about 20 centimeters, which is eight inches. Now because this is quite deep frame as well, I just want to measure the edges. So that's about two centimeters or thereabouts, an inch. That would be enough to get me down to the edge of the frame. But I actually want some extra to be able to pull on to tension the fabric. I'm thinking probably about three centimeters, which I think is just over an inch or so, about an inch and three-sixteenths, something like that. But I might actually round that up to four centimeters, which puts it to around an inch and a half. That should give me plenty of fabric to work with. Okay, so let's plot this out. You guys are obviously going to use your own chosen measuring system. I'm gonna be looking at both because I know people can be confused by centimeters, just as I'm confused by inches. I will also be rounding up the inches because I don't like how they break down. I mean, 25, thirty-seconds, Really, that just doesn't make sense. So we have centimeters and inches, and we know that our frame was 20 centimeters in diameter, which is eight inches. The sides or the depth was two centimeters, which we rounded up to an inch. And then the excess I decided on was four centimeters, which is about 1.5 inches. Now, when you do this, you have to remember that you have an excess on one side of your frame, but also the other. So you actually want to times that number by two, which would give me eight or eight centimeters or three inches. Now it also occurs to me that the depth. Is on both sides as well. So you would times this number by two, which would give me four centimeters, and this one by two, which would give me two inches. So I then want to add up those numbers. So that would be 32 centimeters or inches. So I'm now going to cut myself 32 by 32 centimeter square of Calico. So here I have some calico. I'm just going to measure my edge and cut it. And if I happen to snip slightly over, it doesn't matter. Going slightly bigger isn't going to hurt too much. Just as long as I don't go too big. When you're doing this, just take care not to cut your tape measure. I have done that before. Now. I could cut all the way along here, but I'm actually not going to calico rips really nicely and I know if I rip it, it's going to give me a nice straight edge. There usually is a little bit of distortion in the fibers just around the edges, but it doesn't tend to migrate into the middle. So I know my fabric grain is gonna be straightened the middle as well. Plus I really like the sound. So I just need to now cuts the other way. I should be good. Here we go. Ready to go. It's not possible to rip all fabrics. Some are just too thick, such as the normal D linen or the linen twill. In those instances, you want to cut as close to the green line as you can to keep it nice and straight. Now that I've chosen my frame and cut my fabric appropriately for it, I just want to quickly iron the fabric. I want to press out any of those deep creases that could look on slightly in the finished piece. I also know that we all know how to do this. We have all iron things in the past. So I don't want to spend too much time on this, but there are a few things that I've encountered in the last decade that I've been doing this that you might just want to know about ahead of time so you don't hit the same issues that I hit. The key thing being this brown buildup that you can develop on your ion. I have noticed this particularly when I'm working with Calico and I've been told by my colleagues is due to a finish or chemical wash that is often used as the final production stage of a fabric. In this instance, it burns off and leaves the brown staining you can see on the ion. I tend to find that it happens more extensively if I spritz or spray the fabric with water to relax those creases before I in the mouth. Now, unfortunately, these brown marks can transfer back onto your fabric, leaving a mark that is unsightly and really hard to get rid of. I have two ways of dealing with this. I can either just keep an eye on the ion itself and wash it off when I see it occurring. Or I can actually launder my fabric ahead of time. That tends to wash out the chemical finished, which leaves you with a much softer and more pliable fabric. On a personal level, I actually quite like the Finnish. It gives a kind of stiffness and rigidity to the fabric. It gives it a body which I quite like to work on. In my instance. I just keep an eye on the iron and I wipe it down. Whenever I feel it needs to do that. I just take a clean cloth, soak it in water, and wipe across the ion, the flatbed of the ion. If you have particularly stubborn stains that don't come off, you can allow the iron to heat up a little bit. You do not want it hot. I can't stress that enough. You do not want it hot. A hot iron, you're more likely going to burn yourself on. So it needs to be just warm that the warmth and we'll just heat everything up so it's a bit looser and you can wipe it off quite easily. If you are gonna do it on a warm, not hot iron, warm iron. Make sure you use a natural fiber cloth. Synthetic fibers have a habit of melting. You also occasionally worked with heat reactive adhesives. If you're not careful, they can get onto your ironing board cover. So what you can do is put down a piece of tissue paper for protection and then lay your fabric on top. Now you can iron it at this point if you wanted to. But I also like to add another piece of tissue paper over the top. And this will stop any brown staining getting onto my fabric if I'd been a little bit lazy and not cleaned my iron, it also allows me to iron on a hotter settings. So if I were, for instance, preparing a decorative fabric such as silk, and I sandwiched it like this between the layers of tissue. I could turn the heat setting up just a little bit so that I get more of the creases out and the tissue will just help to protect the silk from scorching. I'm going to be using an eight inch hoop with stalk. So to start with, I'm going to separate the two pieces by undoing screw here. Don't need to do it by much. If you leave this quite tight at the top, it will actually help you to tension your frame when you come to put it in. So I'm going to separate out the two pieces and lay one down on the counter. And then going to lay my fabric over the hoop and place the inner hoop over the top. Then just pushed down. So now I've got that done. I can tighten the screw here. And there's actually a slot on the side. You can just about see. I'm just going to put the screwdriver in that and that will help me to tighten it up a little bit more. So I like to do it until I hear squeak, which is just there. And then I'm going to pinch the edges of my fabric and just pull all the way around. And that's just going to stretch the fabric a little bit further in my frame because I want my fabric to be drum tight. So I'm just going around all of the edges. And as I'm doing it, I'm just watching to make sure that the grain is still relatively straight. And it hasn't gone completely off. And is now sitting at right angles to or 45-degree to my hoop or something like that or there's no strong Whipple's. With that done, I can now transfer on my design and it should be drum tight. You should be able to tap it and it sounds like a drum. So what happens if I already have my design on the fabric? Well, in that instance, I would lay the inner hoop down first and just extend out that stalk and make sure it all balances quite nicely. Then you can use the stock itself to try and center the design so it's not wonky in the frame. And from there, you can put the outer hoop on. And again just press down. And again, I can just tighten it with the with my hand or the screwdriver. And then I would pinch and pull my fabric all the way round to tension up. So as I said, there's no right or wrong way to frame up a hoop, but there are a few things you can do that are more convenient. So keeping your design square and the frame helps, and that's it. As I said, to do that I use the stalk. And you can see here, I've quite specifically married up the screw with the stalk. The stalk generally indicates the top of my frame. And if I keep the screw in line with the stalk, I know my screw is the top of the frame as well. I have before just of thrown together a hoop and it's ended up wherever it's ended up. I've had the screw be around this side or this side. And what I found is if it's on the perimeter of my, my vision, my thread will get caught around it more often if it's dead center here where I can see it and I'm making hand motions that go off to the sides. My thread is less likely to get caught up here. And getting your thread core is actually really irritating. So keep it where you can see it, keep it nice and central and you will catch it less. The other thing is I've put this slot on the right-hand side, and that's because I'm right handed. When I go in with a screwdriver, it's nice and simple and easy. If I were to put it on the left-hand side, it would be awkward and difficult. So if you are left-handed, consider flipping the frame so that the slots that you can put a screwdriver in ends up on the other side. 9. Prepping larger frames: So now we need to take a look at those bigger frames, the roller or rotating frame, Victorian roller or millennium frame. And this frame, overall, the process of reframing I portray is pretty much the same. There's a couple of minor variances that we need to take into account and think about in the process. And we actually have a different treatment for densely woven fabrics versus counted fabric. So we're gonna be reviewing that as well. But before we do that, we just need to look at a couple of extra items of equipment that will be needed at the tail end of this process. This is a very big and very scary needle. It's very sharp and pointy, which is why it has a cork on the end and why the court always goes back when I'm not using it. You also never ever put it on a chair? It's also known as a bracing needle or a curved spring needle. And it's used to apply the string. You saw in the frames video, there was a four-way stretch on a couple of frames. We do that by applying string and you can see it's got this big eye which accommodates the thick string. This is a cotton fiber, so it's a multiply non divisible cotton fiber, and it has quite a high twist on it. In the UK, we call this butcher's string or parcel string. In the US, it's I believe known as £2 string. So mostly we use this for framing up, but we can also use it as a type of padding that we do called heartstring padding. And this is the type we use. There do still seem to be a couple of different sizes available, but I prefer the thicker one that is added to this cotton webbing. This is a cotton herringbone tape, which is the fibers cotton. And you can see it's got this kind of herringbone like appearance to it. It's tightly woven, nice and strong. So we apply this to the edges, a little fabric and then the cotton thread is taken through it with the big scary needle. If you are not intending to use any of those bigger three frames, you will not need this equipment. Larger frame such as the roller or rotating frame, Victorian roller slash millennium frame, and sleep frame, all have very similar qualities in that they're often these long wooden bars that have this cotton herringbone type attached to them. This is where your stitch on your fabric and there's usually some way of separating them out. So here we have this little groove that the separator bars snap into and then it's fixed into place using the wing nuts. And here we have more adjustable arm that is usually the same length as the roller balls or thereabouts. You can see these pre drilled holes which are for split pins. These metal pins just slot into the holes. And that's what helps to hold your balls apart. In terms of the Victorian or millennium frame, you have those disks that we saw in the previous video that you twist to separate out the bars. Alongside all of the pieces of your chosen frame, you will need fabric of your choice. Loss headed pins and needles. My preference is for either a size nine embroidery or a size 20 for sure Neil, you will need a strong threads such as upholstery thread or button. Cotton, herringbone type, pair of scissors. A pen. Measuring tape. If you are using a roller frame or rotating frame, a whistler is also very useful. And if your preferences for thimble, one of those as well. You can see here on the slight frame and the same is true of the Victorian roller, that there is a small gap from where the tape ends to where the arm goes in. Now this gap allows us the space to put on this additional webbing and the string, which allows us to create that four-way stretch on the slight frame and the bigger frames generally. If we compare that to a rotating frame, you can see that whilst there is a small gap, it's in no way big enough for us to apply this extra tape and string. So when I cut fabric for a rotating frame, I try and make it smaller than the webbing. So I'll measure my webbing and then I typically take off an inch each side, which is 2.5 centimeters or 1.5 inches each side. So that would be the equivalent of two inches or five centimeters across the entire width or three inches and around 7.57 centimeters over the entire width. I'll take. So the first thing to do when framing up is to measure my entire frame. You can see this side, the tape actually doesn't quite go as far as this side. If I were to measure and center my tape, my piece of fabric would actually be off-center in the frame itself. So what I need to do is measure from this groove to this groove here. So what you can see my fingertips. So that means even though the fabric may not be centered on my tape, it will be centered on my frame. And this brings me to this mark here in the middle. This is actually a frame I inherited from somebody. They very kindly gave it to me because they didn't want anymore. But if you look, this doesn't seem quite like it's in the center to me, I think it's slightly off. I've got a feeling that's because they measured the tape rather than the width. Now I haven't actually checked to corroborate my assumption, so I may be wrong. So we're going to do that together now. But since I'm here, I might as well just double-check and make them OK. So I'm actually going to use a pen. You can use pencil to do this. I actually prefer a permanent, more permanent mark. Pencil can fade away and rub off, whereas this lost a bit longer. So I am going to measure. So you can see I've hooked the edge of the tape into that rich there and I am taking it to the other side. It's actually 30.1 centimeters, which is quite an annoying number. But we're gonna divide that into just trying to balance my tape measure there if I can. So I've just fiddled with this for ages. So I'm actually going to do is turn the bar around and put the tape on it this way so that the edge of the fabric sits alongside the centimeters, which is probably the more practical way to do it. It's going to slide around and be quite annoying. So my apologies for that. But what I need to do is take that 30.1 centimeters and divide it into two. So that'll give me 15 centimeters and a half. So I'm just going to measure there. I've put that mark in. You can see in this instance because I've got this little dot here from the previous owner. I've actually made mine quite deliberately longer so that I know next time That's the Mach to go. So if somebody does very generously give you a, a frame like this, do measure it for yourself to make sure any marks you can see on the fabric or in fact the center. And if they're not, do remark it so that you can send to your fabric properly. So as I've said, I tend to cut my fabric slightly shorter than the tape on a roller frame. I have a piece of canvas here that at first sight looks like it could be the right size. But remember, we want to put that tape dan side and the tape will go through this obviously later, but the tape actually sits half on, half off of your fabric. You can just see down here in the corner, if I do that, it's going to encroach where my boss My boss is going to sit there, which leaves me with absolutely no space for the string at all. So we need to take off at least 2.5 centimeters or an inch on both sides. If I measure my fabric, again, you can see here it's wider where it stapled to the bar and it just comes in on a diagonal. So this section where you're going to attach your fabric is actually narrower. Then it seems, okay. I'm going to measure my fabric, which is about 28.5 centimeters, which is around about 11 and a quarter inches. So I want to take off five centimeters over all 2.5 on each side, which puts me down to 23.5 centimeters or thereabouts, nine and a quarter inches, something like that. So I'm just going to put my measure down on the fabric. And for some reason here I'm using one of those metal readers. I don't know why. I just pick that one up today, but it doesn't mean I can't cut it with my scissors, which is nice. So I'm going to move out of the way. Now. We said 23.5 centimeters, which puts me about that. So I'm just going to make a snip, very loud snip. So I'm just going to now cut along that green. Now with this fabric as well, because I have a fixed bar, I want to make sure that I'm not going to roll too much around my frame. And if I pull this down, you can see there's a bit of an excess here. So I might just trim that off. Remember I am going to fold under section of it. So if I just do that now I'm just going to fold along that grain line because that's obviously shrinking down my fabric slightly. This fabric is really good. It really holds itself. So when I come to place it on the bar, I'll have that much. The other bar in place as well. So that's going to sit about that. Well, I can confidently do is up the top here, just going to make a mark with my pen. And that allows me to kind of eyeball the size it should be. That should give me enough of a stitching area. Whilst not having too much of an excess to roll around the bars. When you row fabric around these bars, the tension can be very much compromised. They don't pull it straight in as tight as you would like them to. But just because of the bulk that sits here, and particularly with this fabric, this is very thick, which is lovely because it really holds its shape. But if you're trying to roll it round a bar like this is actually going to be very stiff. It was not going to like it. It's going to want to spring back so you're not gonna be able to hold your attention. So if measuring isn't for you, you can kind of eyeball this stuff and trim everything down. Now the reason why I decided to make them mark above the bar, if I just rearrange it the way I had it, you can see I made a mark above the bar is once again to accommodate that fold under. Now I will probably have to twist my boss slightly and there will be a little bit of wrapping, but there should be no overlapping of the fabric, which is where you get issues with attention, not keeping itself. 10. Prepping Fabric for a larger frame: The same thing with slight frame. I have actually used this one before and you can see there is a mark which I am quite confident is correct, but we'll measure it anyway. But you can see here the webbing itself comes somewhat closer to where the frame flares out, but still quite a distance from this hole. But you can have the same problem where it may not be centrally located. So in this instance, I'm gonna be measuring from this hole to this hole to get the center of the tape is 68.9 millimeters and divide it into half will be 34 centimeters and 4.5 mil. So I'm just going to try and balance my tape measure their role with fabric up to sit underneath. That looks like it's pretty much on point to me. So I'm going to leave that one just because I know people will probably notice. Yes, I have got some damage here to the fabric on the edge of my frame and I have actually patched it. I've used the same cotton herringbone tape and just applied it on the back to hold it altogether. You can make running repairs like this because the tape can be damaged. But in the long term I need to be looking to get that replaced at some point. I have actually repaired another one of my frames as well. So you may spot that I'm one of the videos. I just quickly wanted to review what I said in the earlier video about frames. This is in fact a 24 inch slight frame. But if you measure the entirety of the arm, the whole arms themselves are 32 inches. The bottom of the tape is the 24. But again, much like the role of frame, can you see how this tape folds in an angle? And it does that on both sides. So actually my stitching area is not 24 inches. It's more like 23.5 or just shy of 60 centimeters. So when I come to decide how much fabric I want on here, I need to take that into account. And generally speaking, on this size frame, I tend to go with a 50 by 50 centimeter square, which is just slightly larger than 19.5 inches. So that's generally my stitching surface. I could go out to the 60 centimeters. I like to leave just a little bit of gap. So I could take up to 58 or 59 centimeters, but I wouldn't go much less than 45, which is about 15 and three-quarter inches. At that point, the gap between where the boss sits and where the fabric will be starts to get very large. So my strings would be quite long and longer. Strings tend to go loose a little bit quicker. So at that stage, I would probably look it'd be looking to go to a smaller frame in order to work out how much fabric I needed. I had to bring together everything I would be doing on the one frame. Now, you guys will have choices in this course, whereas I will stitch everything. So I took all of the designs I was going to offer you and I've put them together and sell a type them into one large area. You can see here. This is actually the circle you can see here is to help limit my design. So I know that they'll fit quite comfortably into an eight inch hoop. So ignore the hoop, the rings. But you can see that actually the designs fit quite comfortably just inside the 24. In order to give myself just a little bit more space to play with. I've taken it just to the edges. So my piece of fabric ended up about 58 centimeters long. So I do have a little bit of space at the edges, but not much. This is a good way if you're working multiple pieces or multiple designs, seller taping it together like this and marrying it up to your frame like I'm showing you here, is a really good way of doing that. It also gives me the depth here that I might need. So I ended up cutting my piece of fabric or about 50 centimeters deep. So you can see here through this is just a piece of Calico. You can see here that not only do I have excess top and bottom for framing up, but I also have access at the sides as well for the tape. My piece of fabric is around 58 centimeters wide by 50 centimeters deep. Again, if you're looking to work in that eight inch hoop, a 32 by 32 centimeter square should work. Here I have a piece of calico or cotton muslin. I have cut it to the size of my sleep frame and the piece of embroidery I'm going to work on it. I have sprayed it with water and then I end it. And you can see there are still some minor creases left. This one, particularly when I finished ironing it, the piece of fabric was still damp, so I laid it over close horse and this is where it was sitting. Now I know from experience that when I come to frame this up, that will pull out quite nicely. So I'm not too worried about it and I don't feel the need to iron it again. I have also ripped all four sides of the piece of fabric sign no migraine is straight. So the next step is to fold under a section of fabrics around about a centimeter or so in. I'm just going to pick up the fabric and flip it under. Now you want to keep this as much on the green as you can. On bigger fabrics such as the Normandy linen, you can follow the grain of the fabric on finer and different textured fabrics like the twill, you can extract a thread, both of which I'm going to show you in this instance because we know that the fabric is on the grain, I can just estimate and try and keep this depth the same all the way along. The fabric is so fine grained that if there is a small amount of variation, which there probably will be, it won't make too much of a difference. So I can confidently turn this under by about a centimeter all the way along. And I should be okay. I'm just going to press into the place using the heat from my hands and just checking to make sure that all the way along the fabric isn't dipping down too far. So you can see the creases going off slightly here. So I can just adjust it back with my fingertips and press that crease into place. I have also found, if you pinch far enough away from the corner and just pull, you will often find that it will fold itself under by the right amount. And then you can just use the heat from your hand to press into place. So here I have a piece of Normandy Lenin. I've cut it to size that very often when you have closely fabrics like this, It's not always cut entirely square. So what I'm actually now going to do is try and square it out. And what I'm actually going to do is go in and just pull out fibers of the fabric until I have one that runs from corner to corner. It shouldn't take me too long. This one isn't too wonky. But I'm just going to extract each fiber. And then we go, I'm just going to do one more just to double-check. So right from the corner there and it's going all the way along. So that has come out from corner to corner, which means this edge is now straight. I have a little bit of the opposing way coming through, but there's nothing there that I can't deal with. If they were particularly long, I would be looking to turn them off with a pair of scissors. Another thing to look out for on fabrics like this is what's referred to as the salvage. It's often denoted by this orange strip running through it. Sometimes it's red or other colors. And it's basically where the fibers have been woven into the fabric to secure the edges. Sometimes they can be quite deep. This one goes in centimeter and a half, which is just over half an inch. It probably isn't coming through on camera. You can see a bit more clearly in person. But I'm actually going to have to cut that off because this is more densely woven because you've got basically double the thread's going back into the fabric. It's going to cool differently when I put it on a frame. So I just want to cut that little bit off to even everything out so my tension is nice and consistent and I'm actually going to repeat that same process. So once I cut this edge, I'm going to fray out the fibers until I know my edges completely straight. And then I can start moving on to the next stage. This edge of my fabric is going to be attached to the herringbone tape on my slate frame and start prepping the fabric. I'm going to fold the edge under by about a centimeter. And I'm just going to press that fold into play. So what I'm trying to do is follow the grain of the fabric to keep it straight. Pressing like this with my fingertips should be sufficient. I shouldn't need to do anything else because the heat from my hands will help to hold in place. A particularly if we work quickly on fabrics like this that have a slightly larger thread that it's woven from. It's quite easy to follow the green line. The same is true of counted fabrics as well. But if you have a finer grain or something that is confusing, a little bit like 12 can be. You can actually extract a thread and I'll show you how to do that next. Here I have some linen 12th. I've cut it to size and I'm afraid out the edges until I know they're all straight and trimmed away. Any excess, believe it or not, I have actually I'm the fabric as well. There are a few creases that remain. I know with the frame I'm gonna be using that this will all pull out, so it should be fine. I've also made sure to turn it face up. So I've got my diagonal line going from bottom left to top right. So this is the side I'll be stitching on. So now I've done all that. I can start prepping it to go on my frame. This is the long edge of my fabric. It's the edge that will be attached to a herringbone take on the role of bar of my frame. And around about a centimeter to half an inch in. I'm going to slide my pen under one of the horizontal threats, so it runs parallel to my edge. And I'm going to pull in an effort to extract it. Um, you wanna go slowly with this because it's more likely going to break. But you can see that it's just starting to crease out. So I'm just pushing the fibers out with my hands and just keep gently pulling and easing the fabric along. We're just looking to take out the thread across this length. Now with enough pulled up, I should be able to get my finger in there, which will make the process easier. Access out a bit more. Here we go. I can feel it starting to move. Okay? So my thread has snapped, which happens. But I've got enough of a tail there. I can continue pulling and just easing the excess out and I can just feel it starting to go. The whole thing is now going to slide out. So I'm gonna go back to where I started and just try and track the original thread and do the same thing on the other side. Now this seems like quite an odd thing to do. But if you look along the edge of the fabric, you can clearly see that line all the way to the edge. What that means is when I come to fold over two, compare this edge to be pinned onto my frame. I can follow along where that missing thread is. And I know that I'm keeping this edge nice and straight and on grain. We spent quite a lot of time trying to square up the fabric. We want to make sure that it goes square onto the frame. And one of the ways of doing that is making sure that where we fold it along here is straight. I'm going to finish building this edge over and then I'm going to repeat it on the other side. And then I can start painting. 11. Applying fabric to a larger frame: With my edge turned under, I'm going to take the two corners, turn the fabric over and just bring the two edges together. Married them up quite nicely. I am going to pinch. And I'm also going to put a pin just in there as well. Now I'm gonna do the same thing on the other side. But you'll note I'm not pinching all the way across. If I do that, I will leave a big crease in my fabric, which I don't want. So I'm going to turn to the other side and show that that crease is nicely in and under. Take the other two sides, bring them together nicely. And again, tuck that in and pinch. So what I'm gonna do is just using a pin. I'm going to track that central grain all the way down the fabric. And I'm trying not to scratch the surface of the fabric if I can. I'm just laying it down. And because this is quite a dense fabric and quite thick threats, I can keep the pin in the channel between the two threads. So I'm going to slide my needle in there. So I know that this is directly opposite this one. I would do that with any counted fabrics such as Ada linen, even we've Canvas and so on. So now that I've found the center of both my roller bar and my fabric. I'm going to bring the two together and marry them up. And I need to make sure that the face, the top side of the fabric is face up towards me and the fabric is folded under. But you can see here the stapled edge against my bar. I'm going to lift the tape up and place it together and marry up with the pen. I'm going to line them up so they're both next to each other. I'm then going to take that pin out and pin the two pieces together. When I do this, you notice that I'm putting the pins and vertically. If I were to pin sideways, this backwards action would move my fabric around, which I don't want. So I'm going to put them all in vertically. Now, before we progress, I was told to think of this as the folder under that. You can just see here is the meat in my sandwich. So the top face of my fabric and my webbing on my bread. And this is the meat in the sandwich, although you could probably have whatever filling your fancy, it doesn't have to be meat. I'm going to take my thumb and place it on the herringbone type, my middle finger and place it on the fabric and I'm going to take my index finger and place it between the two layers. And then I'm just going to smooth the fabric out to the edges and put in another pin. And I'm just going to work my way along, pinning in the same way and you always start in the middle. So this is this pin here is my midpoint and you work towards the outer edges, and that means any excess fabric is smoothed outwards. Do remember we've taken quite a bit of time and care to get off fabric square and to find the center of our frame. If we were to start at this end and pin two on the left and pin to the right, you will fabric would shift over. And similarly, if you would start on the right, look to the left, it would shift in the opposite direction. We don't want that. We want to keep it centered on square in our frame. So if in doubt, middle out is one of my favorite sayings. And you'll probably hear me say a lot because it is relevant quite a lot. And it is definitely relevant in this instance. So again, I'm not pulling, I'm just smoothing those fabrics together and easing out any excess into the corner. So with that done, I can go back to the center and work in the other direction. Again, I'm just trying to make sure that the top edge of this fold and the top edge of the herringbone tape or actually level with one another. I don't want the fabric rolling over the herringbone type or vice versa. I want them to sit level with each other. So I'm just going to repeat that process. Middle finger goes on the fabric, thumb goes on the herringbone tape, index finger goes between. You're going to just smooth those edges together and pin them into place. I'm gonna be using the upholstery thread. This is also known as an extra strong thread. And I just wanted to quickly talk about it before we move on. Generally speaking, I use a cream or a white because that almost always matches my fabric. And it's the same thread I use when it comes to mounting. And I usually use a cream fabric on the back of my piece, so the thread matches in quite well with that. It's not often that I use a dark thread for this. I am going to use it for the framing up, particularly because you will be able to see my stitches a bit better if I use this dock thread. That being said, when it comes to framing up, all of your threads get cut away when you finished the piece anyway. So the color actually doesn't really matter. I'm going to hold this one for mounting and so that you can see my stitches. I'm going to use the darker thread. When you come to stitch your fabric to the frame, you're going to start in the middle just like you did with the pinning and work your way out. And it's the same process you're going to be smooth in your fabric out to the edges, keeping your fabric nice and centered. But when you do that, you want to try and do all the stitching in one go with one piece of thread if you can. Now when we're doing this type of framing up, I have a simple trick for you. When it comes to the counted stuff. You may have to cast on and off a couple of times depending on how big your frame is. But for this type of stitching on, I have discovered that if you take your thread and measure it against your bars and add another 20 centimeters or so. You actually have just about enough to do the stitching. When you do this process, you do want to grasp firmly on the real and pull on the other end of the thread to stretch it out and then hold it vertically so that all of the twist will drop out. Relaxing your thread in this manner and allowing the twist drop-out will help to reduce the number of knots you develop whilst you're stitching. I'm also going to be using a size nine embroidery needle. Similarly, you could use a size 24 Chanel needle. I'm going to start with a knot. And to do that I'm going to lay the thread on the index finger of my non-dominant hand. Place the needle right angles over the top and place the long thread. I'm going to wrap it around the tip of the needle a few times. And I want to wrap it around the sharp but not the eye. If you wrap it around the eye, it doesn't work. You have to do the sharp pointy bit. So I have a number of reps on there that you can just see. I'm going to close them gently between my thumb and my forefinger and just gently pull everything through. And that should leave you with a magic, not your guy. This is my center pin and you can just see the mark there on my frame. I'm going to remove that. I'm then going to pass the needle back and forth in the fabric a couple of times to make some securing stitches. Your thread will want to get wrapped around your pins, which can be quite frustrating. So you want to draw your needle straight up if you can. John Travolta fashion. So I like to work from back to front, so bring the needle towards me. Similarly, I have students and colleagues that work away from themselves. So taking the needle down from the herringbone tape and threw it away from themselves. Both work. There's no right or wrong in that regard. So I'm going to bring the needle up through the fabric, pulling on my thread through and moving on to make the next stitch, stitch. Pulling all my thread through. I'm going to work my way along the top, the tape just like this. I'm trying if I can't keep them all around about the same depth and spacing. Now, I'm going to measure my stitches so that you can get an idea of the scale I'm working too. So they are approximately to mill deep into the fabric, which is roughly an eighth of an inch, I would say. And you want them to be about that in distance as well. So they will be approximately two mil or an eighth of an inch apart. I'm going to work my way along the bar, stitching like this, trying to keep them all as evenly spaced and depth as I can. Again, I'm making that straight upward motion In an effort not to get my threads wrapped around the pins. And I'm trying to ensure that my spare threat is kind of in front of where I've just stitched because that keeps it away from the pins. As you encounter a pin, you can remove it and put it to one side and just keep going. Whilst the process is almost identical for countered fabrics, the stitching is slightly different. In the instance of accounted fabric, we make a series of long and short stitches alternating between the two. Because this spreads the load of the pressure. When this fabric is under tension, the stitches are gonna be under quite a lot of pressure. So if you have a fabric where all of the stitches land in the same place on the same grain line. You will have all of that force and pressure being exerted on 11 grain line. And that can actually rip your fabric out. So if you vary the length of your stitch, you will vary the pressure where the pressure is being put. Which means although the end of the fabric will be under a lot of tension, it won't all be concentrated in one area. So it's less likely to come apart. So I'm going to work my way to one side and I'll show you how to finish off. I've completed the stitching up to the very edge of my fabric. And just take a minute to note that they're not all perfectly spaced. They're not all perfectly even. It's more of an overall approximation. So if you happen to have minor variations like I do in my, in your edge, like mine is. Don't worry too much about it. If there was massive variations and anything smaller than that to mill eighth of an inch, then I would be concerned. But the fact that it's not razor-sharp perfect, nothing to worry about. So I'm now going to work back in a similar fashion for about an inch. So just taking my thread over and bring it through. Again, trying to keep my stitches is level and his evenly spaced as I can. I'm just going to work my way back for about an inch. And then when I'm satisfied with that, I'm going to pass the needle back and forth through my fabric to make a couple of stitches, bring it back up. And then I can trim that. I can just trim the excess away. Now, I'm going to repeat this entire process on the other side, and then I will pin stitch on the other ball. 12. Adding arms to a larger slate frame: Now I've attached the fabric on the bottom and top edges. I can add in the sidebars and use the whistler to tighten up the wing nuts if I need to. So to start, I'm going to take one of my site us and just loosen the wing nuts slightly. These are designed to clamp down. So you can see there's some movement there in this open section. And the idea is that the sidebars we'll slot in to this groove. And then the wing nuts designed to clamp everything down around the wooden balls. So I'm gonna take my frame. I'm going to try and slot this open section into the recessed area. I found wiggling motion works best. Now this is a noisy endeavor, so do bear with me. But I'm going to do same on the other side. And then I can repeat with the sidebar. With that done, I'm going to try and roll both bars at the same time. And that's going to evenly, relatively evenly distribute my fabric. I can then tighten up with just my hand. I can tighten the wing nuts. At the moment. I don't want to use the Twistlock. I'm just going to hold this one in place as well. Going up. And the idea is that you just want to get everything slightly stabilized so you can work with it a bit better. Then going to call this one a bit more. Quizlet. Really tighten that up to hold it in place. Then I can stand it up. And on this slide. Now you can hear that squeak, which is what you want. And then I could do up with a twist here as well. Just allows you a bit more purchase on the wing. Now, if I were to try and to do this with my hand, it would actually cut into my fingers. It doesn't necessarily cut your skin. And I've never given myself an injury from doing this. It just, it's very hard on the fingertips, so I like to use the twist law for that. With this done, I can now move on to the next section. Now we're going to take a quick look at Slate frames because the arms are slate frames work slightly differently. But before we get going, I wanted to point out that my fabric is attached top and bottom on the roller bars and the herringbone type itself is sitting on the role of bar. I could fill this a little bit further. And you can see there the fabric would sit recessed in the frame, which is what I don't want. But also, I would be putting quite a lot of strain on the staples here. So what you do is you have the webbing itself sat on the role of bar. You can wrap extra fabric around these roller bars if you want to. And I'm asleep frame you won't lose tension in the same way that you would do a roller frame. So I'm going to take my arms. I like to marry them up. So you can see here the top holes are both on the left hand side. And then what I'm gonna do is flip one of them so that they're actually mirrored. You can just see there. And then I'm going to slide them through these holes on the top and bottom arms. And then I can take my split pins. And if we start on the left here, I'm just going to count the inside row, 1234567. And then I'm going to count the same inside row on the right hand side, 234567. But put that pinning, you can see the pin isn't quite resting against the bar there. So all I need to do is just to push it up slightly so that I can then move on to the bottom half of the frame. So now I just have to put the final two split pins in on both sides of the frame. Again, I want to count the holes to make sure I'm getting them in the same place on each side. Now, you can do this with your hands and ease it out. It often helps to do both at the same time. You can see my bar there was lifting up a little bit stuck on the inside. So I can just push it with my hands. This is actually a very soft stretch, but it will be enough for us to move on to the next stage. So I've got 12345678 there. And I will repeat that process on the other side. Now, I have quite strong hands from doing this a lot. So I can just kind of push with my hair as you can see there, I could get a little bit more out as well. Similarly, you could brace it against your hip, which is only just out of sight just here. So I would push this up against my hip. That will allow me to just pull this down a little bit easier. It's not the last stretch we're gonna do on this fabric using these bars. Once we have finished the next step, we're actually going to put off on this section here to push it down even further. So before we move on, I just wanted to take a quick look at the cotton herringbone tape. This is applied to the edges of our fabric to help us achieve that four-way stretch that you saw in the early videos. Most of the tape you'll see me using these videos has been used before because you can do that. You can reuse tape multiple times before disposing of it. You can see these two here look a little bit less well loved. And that's because I've ironed them. I do have a colleague who maintains that if you are in the tape that comes together a bit better. You can see this one that is on ions is little bit more disrupted. Now most of the tape I have is a four band cotton herringbone tape. You can see there you've got these very distinct diagonals that make up the tape. It's a cotton fiber that's been woven in this quite distinct manner. And it's important to look at your tape because this can actually be really useful. When I apply this to the edge of my fabric. I want half on the fabric and half off. To achieve that, I can use this central line that you can just see where the two V's meet down the middle there. If you are reusing webbing, just make sure that it covers the expanse of your frame. And you have, I like to have just a little bit of excess at the top here. You can see it's sitting across the webbing on the bar and it does the same thing at the other end. So I know that's going to be long enough my frame. If you're cutting new, you just want to make sure that you do cut with that little bit of excess. So just roll out across your frame just to make sure you've got enough at the bottom. Make sure it's nice and straight. And then with a sharp pair of scissors, you can just trim at the top. 13. Adding herringbone tape to a large frame: I'm going to start by laying my tape along the edge of my fabric and ensuring that the excess tape is distributed evenly at the top and the bottom. Because I'm right-handed. I'm actually going to start on the left-hand side of my frame. And what that allows me to do is to get my hand in an under the fabric so that I can start manipulating the tape. And then I can use my right hand, put the pins in, and the pins go in horizontally. So I'm just using my fingertips underneath the frame to try and manipulate the central line that we looked at onto the edge of the fabric. And I'm just doing that by feel. I'm just using my fingertips underneath the frame to check. And then I can put in the horizontal plane. I'm then going to continue working my way down the piece of fabric, manipulating the tape over where I need to, and adding pins in about an inch or so apart. So now I'm ready to start stitching on the tape and I'm going to take that button thread again, measure it against the width of my frame, stretch it and let the twist dropout just as we did when it came to stitching on along the role of ours. I've then put my thread into a size nine embroidery needle placed and not on the other end. Alternatively, you can use a size 2014 Neil needle, but you will still need the knot in the end. Where I have access to the tape along the role of bar. I like to start my needles there and I'm just going to weave it through the layers of fabric. If you don't have access to the webbing along the top, just put your needle in as close to the bar as is comfortable to do so. When I'm placing my needle, I want to use my tape as a guide. My stitches need to sit within the edges of the tape and not breach the edges of the fabric. I don't want to bring the needle out and round the edge of the fabric. So in order to do that, I'm using this edge of my tape and the center line that we looked at. If I keep my stitch length in-between those two points, I know I won't be coming out and around this edge of the tape, but also won't be breaching the edge of the fabric as well. So I'm going to pull my needle through. I'm going to pull it as tight as I can. I'm going to stitch in the same place. You tend to find the starting point where the fabric is meeting the bar or actually into the webbing tend to be the hardest areas to pull up. They just quite tight. So when you pull them, they don't pull as much as that as that will do the rest of the way. But for context, the section I'm stitching in is around two centimeters wide, which is three-quarters of an inch thereabouts. And my stitch itself is approximately 12 millimeters wide, which is about half an inch. Then I'm going to take out my first pin, move down, placing my needle, checking to make sure I haven't breached either one on my boundaries. And then pulling everything through and pulling as tightly as I can. You can see that puckering up. That's what I want to see. I'm just going to repeat this process all the way along. Now I'm just going to flatten that out slightly because again, the context, my stitches are about a centimeter and a half or so long, which is just shy of three-quarters of an inch. You can see I'm making this quite pronounced diagonal line along the fabric. I'm just going to work my way down a bit further, pulling up as much as possible as I go. You'll notice that the top edge, the top edge relaxes slightly every time I let go of my threads. You can see it's really tight there. Let go of it and it all starts to expand slightly. So the previous couple of stitches will relax. But you can see this one up here. It's starting to hold. So if you pull on every stitch, you should end up with quite a pronounced ridge. Now, this process is actually achievable on this canvas that I'm using. It's easier on softer fabric such as the linen tool can Calico, that kind of thing. But with each stitch, pulling them as tight as I can, I'm just going to work my way down, pulling the thread as hard as I can to create that ridge, which will be important later. Removing the pins as I go. I'm trying to keep my stitches consistent in depth and width. I've now worked my way down to the other roller bar. And you can see I'm at the bottom here. Now I could just cost off using a couple of stitches here on the fabric. But as I said earlier, where I have access to the tape, I like to start in the tape and end in if I if I can. So I'm just going to bring that stitch down and go through in the same way that I've been doing. Pulling as tightly as I can on those last couple of stitches. Again, just overstating it a couple of times to cement everything in place. There we go. One more. Gets a little bit tough. And then what I like to do is bring my thread round in an anticlockwise motion, catch a little bit of the fabric and bring my thread up in that loop and it creates a little buttonhole stitch. Going to do that a second time. And that should hold everything in place. Can then trim that threads and repeat on the other side. Now I'm done with the stitching. I just wanted to show you that you can see my webbing has dipped in quite a lot and then flared out at the top and bottom. And it's actually created this very pronounced ridge on the fabric. And that's exactly what I want to see because when I come to tension it with the string, that ridge is going to flatten out. So if I turn it over, you can see how it's all folded in. Giving me the appearance of almost like a him on a shirt or a pair of trousers. But at the top and the bottom, you can see that it flares out again. And that's because where it's attached to the webbing, everything is a little bit tighter. So pulling it up to the same degree actually is, I'd say near impossible. But again, you can just see how it's all folded in. One of the most common mistakes I see students make when they are framing up is to be conservative in how much they pull these stitches up. Really pull it up as hard as you can if you hear a ripping sound. So you should be listening as you're doing this. If you hear a ripping sound, you'll need to take it out and take a look at what's going on. But in my experience, doesn't happen very often. And as I say the Canvas you have to work a little bit harder with because it's thicker and tougher than the other fabrics that will ease with one side done, I can just do the same thing again on the other side. So now I've got the tape on both sides of my frame. I just need to do that final stretch that I talked about. Now we're ready to stand on our frame. And by that I mean, we're going to put a foot on one side of one of the roller bars just to push it down a little bit more. And we can then move that split pin out a little bit further, increasing the tension on our fabric. And it's actually easier to do it with your feet than it is with your hands and arms. Now, this is actually a process you can do on your own. And I frequently do this on my own without assistance. But having a second pair of hands to work with you on this is actually quite useful. They can stand on the frame and you move the split pin or vice versa. If you are doing this on your own, I would caution you not to stand in front of anything that is glass or fragile. I have never fallen over whilst doing this, but I have lost my balance somewhat. So standing front of anything that might be glass or breakable is just not recommended. Coffee socks are entirely optional in this process. So I'm just going to place my foot on the bar and pushed down. And you can see I can definitely get it out one on the outer run, but I feel like there's a bit more give they're going to push it a bit more. And you can see the whole directly below where the pin is has just been revealed. So I'm gonna move it one down on the inside. Then going to repeat this process on the other side. Pushing down gently, moving the pin. Now, I'm just going to test it because I can actually get some more out there. So what I'm actually going to do those turn the frame over. I prefer to kinda spread the load when I do this kind of thing. So I'm going to turn the frame over and repeat the process this time pushing down one, place me on the outside, and just doing the same on the other side as well. And that's feeling quite tight on having angle. There we go. A little bit of problem. They're pushing this down simply because this is now so type. If I tap it, I'm starting to get that drum like sound. 14. Stretching and lacing a larger frame: I'm now ready to add strings to my frame. And I have actually clamped my frame to the table. This is not necessary. This is not something that you will need to do. I've just done it for the purposes of the video so that I can work with a stable frame hands-free and you guys will be able to see the process properly. These clamps were bought for the purposes of embroidery. They are clean and you can see they are just touching my fabric there. So I want to make sure that they're not going to transfer any on any dirt. I have checked them. I've chosen to lay my slope frame on a set of tassels. You don't have to do this. You could lay it on the edge of a table. But I've done it too because it is a common pitfall that I wanted to give you guys a heads up about. So you can see here I've got the arm of my slight frame, and this is the edge of my tape. This section that you can see here in the middle is actually the trestle itself. And what I've seen a few students do is plunge down through there webbing round the top bar or the trestle around the arm of the frame and continue on. And what that means is they're lacing their frame to the Tesla itself, which you don't want to do. Let just lacing the frame itself, you don't need to attach it to your support system below. So there's two options you have in this situation. You can simply move the frame over and work along the side. And you can see the top of the trestle there is just out of sight so you won't be catching it. Or you could swing the frame around so that you actually work across the gap between each of the triangles. And that way there's no fear of catching the trust little. If you are reusing string like I am, you just need to make sure that it's gonna be long enough. And given that this is such a short run, it should be fine. There has been times where I have put all the strings in and come up short. It can be really difficult to estimate how long your string is when it's bundled up like this. So sometimes you just have to go ahead and do it. But much like the webbing string can be reused a few times, when it starts to shred out at the ends. You can trim these bits off. You can see you can trim it down if you need to. But if it starts to look very loose and shredded out all the way along, you need to dispose of it. So now I'm going to take my bundle of string and just don't fail some of it. Because I have a small container down here on the floor that I'm going to put my string in because I don't want it coming into contact with the floor and getting dirty. If I can avoid it. Then I'm going to take the end and pass it through the eye of the needle. So in this instance, I'm gonna be taking my string directly from the real. And I, again, I have a container to place it in. I'm going to put it on the floor. When you take from a real like this, you don't want to cut a length and then start lacing the frame. You just want to take it directly from the real. You don't know quite how much you're going to use. And it varies if you were to roll in the fabric little bit, obviously you would have a shorter length and would not be using as much string. So it's best just to place the real on the floor and take directly from it. Now, when I start this process, I want to think quite carefully about what I'm doing as a right-handed person. I'm going to start on the left-hand side and travel towards the right. If you're left-handed, you're gonna do the opposite by starting on the right. I'm traveling towards the left. And it's really important to remember which direction you work in. Because when you come to pull up the strings and tension them, you will start at the same place you did when lacing your frame. So for me I know I always start on the left-hand side to lyse, which means I'll start in the left hand side to tension to lace my frame. I'm going to look at my webbing again now we've talked about how it's split into four sections. And I'm looking again for my center line. And I'm gonna go just shy of it. So just a little bit before it, placing my needle squarely in the second section of the herringbone. But I also want to make sure that I'm not piercing the fabric underneath because you don't want to go through both layers. You are just going through the herringbone tape itself. And that's why I like to kinda pull it out and stretch it slightly because I know when I do that I'm lifting it up and away from any excess fabric. Now if you've put your tape on properly and created this ridge that we've talked about. You should be able to fold your webbing back and not see any of your fabric adolescence at the top and usually a little bit at the bottom there. So I'm just going to pull slightly on my webbing and place the needle in. And I like to start quite high up if I can. I'm going to just pull that through. I'm putting through a certain amount of excess as well. I guess roughly about an inch part. I'm going to place the next string. I'm putting my needle in and I'm trying to keep it level if I can on, on par with the first one. You'll also notice that I'm working from the top down. I'm working in such a way that the needle is going down through my webbing and not coming up through my webbing. If I were to bring it up through my webbing, I have the risk of stabbing myself in the chest or face. If I'm in a room with adults, I could catch somebody else with the needle, which I really don't want to do. That being said, when you're taking it down, you want to make sure that you're not taking it towards your thigh because you don't want to catch yourself in the leg. So I tend to shift my weight slightly to one side when I do this. But also be aware of your surroundings. So you may be in your home and have small children or animals running around. You just want to make sure that you don't catch them with this needle, which we've looked at before and it's very sharp. Now you can also see that I'm making sure my strings stay loose. Lacing your frame and tension in your strings are two separate processes. And when I say tension in my strings, what I'm talking about is pulling up all of the excess, stretching out my fabric. My thread here has gotten quite short. So I can just place that carefully to one side and pull up some more string and pull it through again, making sure that mice threads stay loose and are not pulled tightly. And I can just continue to work my way along. Trying to keep the spacing is even as I can and trying to keep all the string placements level. Again, the last string I want to take quite high up and close to my bar if I can. Now with that done, I have a rather short end here and quite a lot of excess here. So I'm just going to pull up a bit more string to even out where the excesses sit. And I'm going to have a lot of excess, but these were probably used on a bigger frame. It's better to have a large amount of excess than to have to show a string then becomes fiddly to work with. And again, I'm not mentioning them. I'm not pulling up. I'm just moving the string along. So with that done, I can now repeat this process on the other side. So to finish off, I like to make sure that the very end of the string is just grazing the ground. So I will pull enough through so that when this drops to the floor, it's just touching the ground. And I will trim my real at floor level so you can just see it down here. I'm just going to take a pair of scissors and snip it off. And then my strings are ready to be tensioned. Just before we tend to him, the strings on our frame, I wanted to pop in and say I'm not going to be demonstrating on this frame, particularly just because the spaces are so narrow and I have tried a couple of times to film it. And what I've been finding is my gigantic hands tend to get in the way and you can't actually see what's going on. So I am only going to be demonstrating on the slate frame. Now that being said, the process is exactly the same for this type of frame, the roller or rotating frame and the Victorian or millennium frame, there's absolutely no difference to it at all. It's just that the slight frame has got bigger gaps and allows me to get my hands in there a little bit easier. And the technique to pull up the strings is a little bit more visible to you. 15. Tensioning Strings: So now I'm ready to stop tension in the strings on my frame. The first thing I'm going to do is to take the excess string on the left-hand side, is to wrap it around this bar. And then going to take what's left of my string, fold it in half to create a loop. Pass the under the first string, take the tail and pass it through the loop I just created. Pulling it tight without pulling the tail through. And then I'm going to repeat that process. I'm going to take what's left at the tail, pull a section of it through, and pull the loop tight. So now I'm ready, start pulling on the strings. And I can just lift them up one by one and pull everything through. Except that's not a good idea because you're not holding onto the excess. You're pulling the string up and then releasing the tension, which means there will be some pulling back. Some of the tension will release back into the strings you've just pulled up. I see a lot of students just doing this along and it doesn't work. You have to pull in a particular way in order to get the tension right. So the first thing is when you pull on your string, you want to brace it against something. You want to hold the tension you've put it under here. You want to hold it somewhere in the best place to do that is along the bar. This is why I am pulling from this end because I can hold my string against the bar before I pull the next one through five, we're doing it this way. I would be pulling down against the webbing, which could rip. I'm putting too much tension on the webbing here when I put it down because I wouldn't be pulling this way through. You can see that you can see the tension there on the string. We'll be putting too much on the webbing. So the best way to do it is to tension against the bar, which is why I start on the left-hand side. And you want to pull the excess string through, holding it in place. Now when I'm doing this, I'm watching my webbing. Because what I'm looking to do in this first poll, you will pull more than once. So I'm looking to do in this first poll is just to lift all of this spare thread out. Just to get the slack out of the strings and get them more consistently typed along the bar. And I, so I'm looking at my webbing to try and keep it straight if I can. I'm looking at the whole thing. I'm looking at the ridge. I'm looking at this edge. I'm trying to make sure the whole thing stays relatively straight. What you don't want to do at this point is pull so hard on this side that all of your fabric shifts over and goes off center because we spent a lot of time putting it on center, keeping it square and centered in our frame. If we pull too hard now it will shift over to one side. So I'm just going to lift the slack out, watching my edge here and holding onto the excess so that it doesn't pull back through. I'm also listening. This is Calico. I have ripped Calico before when I've been a little bit too vigorous, I'm pulling my strings. So I'm looking and listening and watching what I'm doing. So when the string gets a little bit excessive, you can just lift most of it through. Then I'm going to go through and just work the strings again. This side, I'm going to wrap the excess around my boss. But I'm not going to tie off wrapping it like this for this process should be enough to keep everything in place whilst I flip the frame over and do the other side. So this is the other side of my frame and it's actually the opposite corner to the one I tied off on the other side where I started is actually over here in the top right-hand corner of the frame, just outside. So I am starting at the opposite corner, which is why I have to watch so carefully to make sure that everything is staying straight because I don't want to make everything lopsided. So I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm going to wrap any excess thread around the bars, taking what's leftover, tucking it under the first string, pulling a loop of it up whilst holding onto the tail and pulling that loop tight. Doing the same thing, pulling a loop up. I'm pulling it tight. Now one of the tricks I've learned over the years is that when you do this process, you want to pull from down and around the bar, up into the center, down and around the bar, and up into the center. I make quite a significant movement where I take my hand under the frame and pull from underneath and round. Again, just pulling out the excess Slack. Just making sure everything is nice and straight. Wrapping the excess around the ball, just hold it in place for the time being. So this looks like it's curving up with a little bit. So I'm just going to go back and pull it down bit more firmly to try and bring everything into line. There we go. Each pass you make, you will find that the strings get tighter and harder to pull. Here we go. So with this side done, I can go back to the original side and repeat the process. Now strings are gonna be tighter this time. And I'm going to be looking to pull on them harder. But again, I don't want to pull them to a complete tightness because I don't want the fabric to shift too much in this direction. And you can see here this tape has come down and it's lifting up here where I have intention the threads yet. So I'm trying to keep this all straight. You can also see this ridge is starting to disappear. If we didn't have this pronounced ridge from where we stitched on the webbing, you wouldn't actually be able to get as much stretch. And that's because this is starting to flatten out and give. So I'm just going to keep pulling, trying to keep it all straight, listening. I don't want my fabric to rip too much. If it rips a little bit, it's not too much of an issue. But I have had a large L-shaped tear before now, which was not fun. Now you can see the stress that the webbing is starting to come under here as it pulls out. But that's okay. You'll webbing shouldn't rip. It should be thick enough that it holds up to this kind of thing. I have only had webbing ripple me once. And that's because it was quite thin and not great quality. So again, wrapping that excess round and going to the other side. Now this side is either going to be even tougher to pull because the fabric is starting to get quite tight now. So that my key test when I'm doing this and the webbing and sorry, the fabric and the string is starting to get really tight. Is how easily can I get my fingers on the here? And actually, that is not hard at all. What I want to do is struggle and have to wiggle to get my finger in and under. So I'm going to pull tightly on this. And then I can check the strings on both sides. And again, you can see it straight here, starting to pull up there where the strings haven't been tensioned. Once again, my ridge is flattening out. This is all what I want to see. When I'm mentioning a frame. I'm listening even more carefully now because the tighter the fabric gets, the greater risk is from ripping. You can also see that I'm not making jerking motions. I'm pulling quite carefully and I'm pulling down around the bar. My hand slips under the frame and I pulled down and round. Always at the end as well. This has a habit of going a little bit slack. So always just give it a bit of a pull before you start wrapping that thread round. Still quite loose, I think so. I think I can get some more out of it. Once again, just like when I was pushing my bars out and putting in the split pins, my hands are quite strong. I tend to find I can usually get a little bit more slack out that my students, because I'm used to doing this and I'm used to the tolerances, the fabric and the frame will take. So now I'm having to work harder to pull the strings and definitely making that down around and up into the fabric motion. So I'm pulling down on the string, pulling it around the ball, and lifting it into the center, towards the center of the fabric. So this is getting harder to slip my finger in underneath the string, so I'm close to being done. But whenever I pull one side, I want to be at least checking the other. When you're framing up like this generally if I pull one side, I pull the other as well. So I'm going to turn it round and do the opposing side. But when you do this, you want to do it in even measure will pass on this side, I think I've almost entirely lost my rich. Certainly here where I'm potentially the strings. Think I heard a clicking sound a minute ago, which could be some of the strands and my fabric starting to break here. So I'm gonna be gentle, again, lifting round from underneath and trying to keep this straight as I can. So with that done, That's what I'm looking for. I'm really struggling to get my fingers in there now, having to work quite hard to get them in and under the strings. When you lift them, they are very tight. That sounds good. That's exactly what you want to hear from your drum tight frame. So I'm going to leave it there, but before I do so, I'm going to tie off the string on this side. So I'm going to fold the string over to make a loop. Under the final string. Keep hold of the tail. Lift some of that thread through the loop and pull it down tight. Created another loop there that I'm going to pass string through. Pulling it down, holding it tight, and I just need to talk the other side and then I'm done. So where are we? We're here folding over my string, taking it under, pulling it through the loop. Tight, polymorph through the loop, pulling it tight. Now, the reason I like this method so much is because it acts as a quick release. If you pull up all of your strings along here and you get to this point and you've got a big note, you're going to have to let go of your tension. It will relax back and you'll have to repeat the process with this. Now, I can get to here and go, oh, right, I'm good to go. It comes on Done. I can then whip the strings out, pull everything up, pull it all through, and I'm good to go. I don't have to if I if I forget to undo the notes, I'm not going to double my workload. We're just going to pull that up again. Something to bear in mind with all of the materials we have used in this process. Your fabric is a natural fiber. The cotton webbing, natural fiber, cotton string, also natural fiber. Natural fibers have stretching them. So as you work on the fabric, it will become loose or go slack. And you'll be able to feel that in your strings. And you'll find that this line could go back in slightly. And you may even see the rich starting to reappear. When that happens, you need to do this process again. So retention your strings again incrementally on each side until they aren't nice and tight. If you don't, you will get wrinkles in your finished piece because you, when you make stitches, you'll be gathering up too much fabric. So when you stretch it out to mount it, you'll have wrinkles and puckers within the stitching, which looks unsightly. So. In order to avoid that realistically, what you want to do is to check your strings regularly. I have a habit of every day I sit down to work on my frame. I will check my strings. Sometimes they need mentioning, sometimes they don't. They are more likely to need to mentioning if I were to travel with my frame, if I were to take it to a location with me, we generally have quite large bags that we put them in. They sit on your hip. So as you're walking along the frame, we'll bump on your hip. And that can cause the fabric to go slack as well. So you just need to keep an eye on that and check periodically, particularly when you sit down, stitch on it, even if you just leave it sat on a trestle like this for a week or so. There'll be a natural relaxation of the fibers. So you just got to keep an eye on the tension of your strings and just pull them up as necessary. 16. Review of a Victorian Roller Frame: So I just wanted to quickly review the process of framing up a Victorian role of frame or millennium frame. It is near identical to a slight frame in that you find the center of your bars with the webbing on them. Attach the fabric in exactly the same way. Middle out, webbing and strings go on and exactly the same way as well. But it's these bars here that are slightly different. You can see just here in this top corner, this section is a screw thread, goes to a plane bar here and back into a screw thread on this side. And you can see it both end above and below the bar. You have these disks. So when I put these arms in, I have to ensure that I've got the disks on and they get screwed right down into the center here. You then thread one arm through from inside. You need to go from within the two bars and you screw up because this section here, the arm has got a screw thread in the center. And then having moved this one in and got enough clearance, you can then screwed this one back in as well. You're obviously moving the disks around. As you're doing that, we'll need to come into the center to be out of the way. Once you've got it equally proportioned, you can move them down to the bar and place these ones on. Because turning the disks either end is actually what's pushing your bars out. So you don't have the split pins like you do with the slight frame. You'll just twisting these disks to push it further and further out. Because you don't have the split pins, you actually need to take a slightly different approach because you don't have those split pins. It's really important to take a tape measure and measure from the bar itself, not the disc, from the bar itself. To see the distance between the two. You want that to measure the same either side. I often will have tolerances of two to three mils. So if this side is two to three mill wider than the other side, I can cope with that. It should be fine if you are multiple centimeters or an inch or so out. So this side is wider or smaller than the other, then you need to rethink what you're doing. You need them to be as close as possible. And as I say, a couple of millimeters, but 16th of an inch or so. You're you're okay. Bigger than that and you need to revisit what you're doing. And you might actually have to compromise and have one side slightly slacker than the other. Sometimes it works like that. The other thing you want to look out for and you can just see it slightly. On the left-hand side here. This bar is Boeing quite significantly, which does give me cause for concern, but my fabric is quite talked, which I'm happy with. I have worked a little bit on it because yes, professionals do have abandoned projects as well. But you can see this bar is Boeing quite significantly. And that is mainly because these bars are thinner from the site frame bars. They are going to be a little bit more flexible and looking at it on camera. I think this one is as well, just because of the way I've strong it and the tension I've achieved there. But you can see this line is actually relatively straight. It's never going to be perfectly straight, but you can see it is mostly straight. So that's how you treat a roller frame. Essentially the same processes we've already looked at, but you just have to take a slightly different approach to these arms. 17. Equipment for Drawing on: Now that we've finished framing up, we need to transfer our designs onto the fabric. And this is a crucial stage and it should not be rushed. You need to take your time over it. And unfortunately, I've seen a number of students over the years to do just that rush through it. Now, precision at every step of the probe, whatever process it is you choose to follow is crucial to getting those clear, well-defined outlines, which in turn are easier to stitch and we'll give you a better overall appearance. If you are looking to improve your embroidery, more careful attention at this stage could actually totally change the results you're getting. For any design transfer process, you will need a printed copy of your design to scale. It's worth just measuring to make sure that the piece has printed to the correct size. If you are looking to stitch something circular, which we often do with particular stitches, you will want to have a circle template. It's really hard to draw or paint on a perfect circle. So we actually will lay a circle template down on our fabric and usually use a pencil or similar to draw on something to secure your pattern. Mostly I use pins because it's going directly onto the fabric. But if I were working off of a light box having some tape, just to tape down my pattern to stop at shifting around actually is quite useful. All of the methods of transferring on that we're going to look at. Tracing, track and trace and painting can be worked under tension with your fabric in the hoop or in a frame. Or if the fabric is simply loose and has not yet been framed up. On a personal note. I prefer to have my fabric under tension when I do this, I tend to find that if you do it on, on tensioned fabric, when you come to put that into some sort of frame to tension it, you can find that as you stretch the fabric, the shapes can become distorted. 18. Choosing the right transfer method: This is a light box. It's quite a small one and it wasn't particularly expensive. When switched on, you can change the lighting settings and you can use it with slightly thicker fabrics for the tracing method of transferring on your design. If I'm being a 100% honest, I do not use this as much as I thought. I would also need a pen or pencil. And your choice, we looked at these in one of our previous videos. Now my preference is almost exclusively for mechanical pencil in most instances of surface ditches or play case Dunkirk, that kind of thing. If I'm doing a Canvas piece on Canvas, I would often use a pen like this. This is a permanent pen. When it comes to something like white work, I would go for either a water-soluble pen or a watercolor pencil to transfer on. So first we're going to look at the tracing method. And to do that, I've put my light box on the table. I put my pattern on over-the-top, and I've just added a piece of tape in each corner to secure and hold everything down. And I'm gonna look at a variety of fabrics to see what would work with this method. And essentially what we're looking to do is to be able to very clearly see our design through the fabric. Now you can see with this calico that I've just laid down, that works very well. And if I turn my light box on because I haven't actually switched on until now and change the illumination that's taking it darker and taking it up to its brightest, it just gets better. And I know from experience that using my beloved HB pencil, mechanical pencil will work nicely. But similarly, if I wanted a stronger line, I could use the fine liner going to a slightly thicker fabric. I have some Normandy linen. And actually even in person that's not coming through to strongly. So I'm going to go select box on a light box would be appropriate in this instance. Now, having worked on this fabric before, I found that my beloved HB pencil actually blends in with the gray tones of this fabric sometimes. So the fine liner would actually be a better marker to use on it because the black line will stand out more against the fabric. Linen twill. Again, you can see even less of the pattern through this. If I switch it on at full illumination, it's not too bad. There's a couple of indistinct areas that I would have to be quite careful about. Because of the rigid nature of the linen twill. The HB pencil, I know can be a bit challenging as you run it across the rigid fabric, it tends to jump around a little bit so you have to be careful. The fine liner would work. But again, I want to just be very careful that I'm not jumping around too much and leaving marks where I don't want them. Mountain Milk fabric. Not too bad, slightly better than the twill there. And if I turn the light box on full illumination, that's absolutely perfect. Now, I could use my beloved HB pencil to draw on. The problem with that is on a white fabric and very white fabric like this, you run the risk of smudging the lead, particularly if you are using white threads. So this type of fabric we do mount malloc work on. And we use white threads for that. And as you pass the white threads through the fabric over the pencil lines, they can actually pick up the pencil and turned gray. So this wouldn't be appropriate. I could use the fine liner. Generally speaking, if I am doing a piece of white work on this, generally speaking, we wash white work. So this is more than likely going to bleed leaving stains in my fabric. So my better options would be the water-soluble that would wash out, or a watercolor pencil or just a regular coloring pencil, which may wash out, but also will give you such a fine line if you keep the point sharp that the threads should cover the paint lines so that if that doesn't come out of the fabric, it shouldn't be an issue. What about open weave fabrics or countered fabric? I have a couple. Here is some Edinburgh Lenin. And again, you can see, even without the light box on, that comes through perfectly. Again, pencil, not necessarily the best idea. I do use it occasionally if I'm doing black works, specifically, black work, you use black threads on a white fabric so it does pick up any of the pencil from the drawn lines. It's not going to show it because it's on a black thread. Again, either one of the two blues would work. Particularly once again, white work pull thread, John thread bread around glaze, that kind of thing. I could use the fine liner, honestly, given that it's a white fabric, I'm really not keen to. I'm just a little bit worried that the pen may stray from the line and then you've got marks that you can't get out or get rid off. Well, if you do try and wash it to get them out, it will just stay in the fabric. So the other counted fabric is Canvas. And again, you can see that very clearly. I could, if I wanted to put a bit more light behind it. But in this instance, I would be using a permanent pen because that will just cover the fabric a little bit better. Again, with this open weave, the fabric is a little bit bumpy. So as you're drawing on, the pen can jog. So you'll get a more consistent line with their slightly broader pen. So when we start looking at decorative fabrics, we have to take into account the color. So there is limited visibility through this blue patchwork cotton. But once again, if you put the light box on, does come through quite clearly. Drawing on with the pencil or the pen would work. If we look to these darker patchwork cottons, you can see the pattern itself is not visible through either one of them. If I turn it on in-person, I can make out small amounts. And if I were feeling lazy, I could potentially on the red particularly, I might be able to draw on using the lightbox. But realistically, the parents and paint method would be much better because there's potential for me to miss the ends of lines, points, small details, that kind of thing because the fabrics are so dark. But once again, if I was feeling lazy, I could just about managing on the red. If I were to use pencil, it would probably not really be visible on either one of the fabrics. So pencil or even the black liner would not work. So I'll be looking to go to a gel pen. I've got two here, I've got one silver on wanting gold, white would also work because lighter colors are gonna show up better on the dark fabrics. Now, given that both of these fabrics, the red and the green, have a touch of golden them the most sensible choice would be the gold pen. If any of the design lines were to be seen after the stitching or complete, it will look like it was part of the pattern because it's already got this gold detail in it. The same is true of silk. You can see very clearly through the white design lines there. And if I just switch on the light box, the blue works very well as well. These are both much lighter in tone. If we put the red and yellow in, yellow, not too bad. If I switch the light box off. Again, very diminished. So I would need the light box for this, the red. I can't really see anything at all. It's very faint. So the pricked parents and paint method would be much better for the darker color. 19. Tracing on to Fabric: I have decided that I'm going to put my design on a piece of calico. And since I already have the lightbox on, I can just put the Calico straight down on top of it. Because the tracing method will work perfectly for the technique and the type of fabric I have. Again, my choices were drawing on all the HB pencil, all the fine liner. I could go to a gel pen, but I would have to make sure that the color I used to transfer on is slightly darker than the fabric. And out of the two I have here, gold and silver, the gold actually is the better one that will show up better against the fabric. I am going to use my favorite which is the HB. If I find the lines aren't showing up on camera, I will switch to the black pen so that you guys can see what I'm doing. But before I get started, I want to make sure that the design is central in the piece of fabric. I'm looking at the rebate. I want the sides and the top and bottom to be the same. I also want to be mindful of my bottom line. I'm going to vary the edge of this stitch when I put it in. So I want to make sure that I don't have to thin a rebate here to accommodate that. So I just want to make sure that I'm looking at it properly and that I have enough space to accommodate not only the hoop, but all of the stitching as well. You also want to line up the design to the vertical and the horizontal grain if you can. Now, if you have a straight line on your design, you can use that to line everything up to that works really well. You can see I don't, so I'm going to have to judge it by eye designs like this. You do have a little bit of flexibility, so I could tilt my fabric a little bit one way or the other if I wanted the design to sit further round or sit upright, I want it to sit as it shown in the design here. So I'm going to try and line it up as best I can, just doing it by eye. Now, I could draw a vertical and a horizontal line through the center of my design and use that as a reference point to line up with the two grains. The risk you run with that is that you can obscure some of your design lines, which then makes transferring on a little bit tricky so that you can muddy the waters. Essentially, you might lose some of the fine detail when transferring on. I've done this enough that lining it up by I should be okay. And I encourage you guys to do the same thing. There's a lot of things in embroidery that learning to do by eye is actually beneficial. Constantly referring to a ruler or a crutch like that to get things done can be quite limiting. It can undermine your confidence a little bit. When you do this, you want to try and hold your fabric as stable as possible and try and make continuous lines if you can. One of the tricks I was taught was that you have a pivot point here in your wrist. If you hold loosely, hold your pencil, pivot at the rest, you should actually be able to create fairly perfect curve. And the same is true of the elbow. If you hold your elbow as a pivot point, you should be able to create bigger curves. So I try and use that to my advantage if I can. I'm trying to do I'm just lightly pressing the pencil onto the fabric and drawing as far as I can in one smooth motion. And you can see that I've just moved my hands along, so I'm using my left hand to brace the fabric and I'm drawing with my right hand because I'm right-handed. I'm trying to keep that line as smooth and directly on the line underneath as I can. What you don't want to at this point you start adjusting your lines. So if I decided this hillock needed to be steeper, I wouldn't be looking to draw on a steep angle. I would be going back to my basic drawing and making the adjustment there. Troubleshoot on paper first you get all of your design lines settled into place first before you start drawing onto your fabric. I'm just going to work my way quite methodically through the different lines. Again, trying to create that smooth motion. What I'm not doing is making sketchy marks. Over here out of the way. I'm not making this kind of scrappy emotion. I'm trying to keep the lines as smooth and consistent. And if I need to, I can come down from the other direction to make the lines meet. Because sometimes it's easier to draw the line down then is up where my lines meet or crossover. I'm trying to make sure they don't overlap. I don't encroach into the area. So here I'm trying to stop. So just at the point where I'm meeting the wing, I'm trying to stop at my pencil line rather than encroach into this wing area. The other thing I'm trying to do as I do this is breathe. I have yet to have a student turn blue and pass out. I would rather keep that winning streak if it's possible. So do remember to breathe as you're doing this, I see a lot of students holding their breath. And I think it just increases tension. Now, you may hear me pausing a lot as I'm talking. That's because trying to concentrate to do this and talk at the same time is near impossible. So hence these strange pauses, but that's actually a clue to a good way of doing this process. You should be concentrating. You should be focused on what you're doing. Focused on creating those beautiful, smooth lines that are accurate to your original design. Because the more you're distracted, the more likely you are to make mistakes. So it's a good opportunity to close the door on irritating fellow housemates, whether they be partners, children, or flatmate. And just take a moment of quiet contemplation to accurately and smoothly drawn all your lines. Now that being said, if you find there is an accidental line. So for instance here, if I bought that point a little bit too far down, I can just stitch a little bit further. It's not too big a deal. If I were to have drawn on a completely wrong line, I have the opportunity to launder my fabric, which has the potential to get a pencil out, particularly if you are using pen, you may find your little less successful. So you have to choose your weapon wisely as it were. You can turn your Again. It depends on how you're transferring on the medium you're using with pencil. If I got something wrong, I could pretty much just turn this piece of fabric over and start again on the other side. It shouldn't be too much of an issue if you happen to have dropped your pencil or pen or drawing on implement and you have a tiny mark somewhere on your fabric, you can always introduce a new creative element. Again, I would troubleshoot that on paper. What shape is going to make the most sense? Say, if I dropped my pencil here and I had a great mark pencil, you could try lifting it out with the eraser. That could make things worse. It could smudge things. But you can introduce a new elements. So I could sit down with my original design, draft a new shape, and just take my time to make sure that it sits nicely in the appropriate place. And it looks like it works within the design is not just kinda slapped on there, which sometimes happens. So I could just troubleshoot an extra element to go over the affected area and then you've covered it and it's fine with that last Mark made. All I have to do now is draw on the circles. And as I've said before, drawing a perfect circle is near impossible. So that's when we bring in the circle template. I'm just going to I'm just looking there to see what size these circles are and find the one that is the right size. I blind my template up. I like to do with the mechanical pencil, particularly it's just extend the leg out a little bit more so that you've got plenty of pencil to get into that shape. And just go over a couple of times to draw the circle. I'm just going to repeat that all the way down. I tend to find, okay, so my patent has shifted. I'm just going to align it, a backup. And I'm looking over all of the different lines to make sure if many of them are sitting where they should do as possible. So I'm checking all the way down and around before going back and finishing off. So I just now need to check his eye, which is the smallest one. There we go. I'm done. So if I switch that off, you can see all my pencil lines there. I've put on the bare minimum I can get away with while still being able to do the design. Because every mark you make on the fabric, I have actually twisted that lead in so I can just draw with my pencil. It's fine. Every mark you make on the fabric has to be covered by the time you finished stitching. That's really important. It's a great way of elevating your stitching is making sure that the design, once you put on fine, thin as you can possibly make them as sparse or as limited as you can possibly make them so that it's much, much easier to cover them. If I decided to put an open stitch down here and draw in lines to mark out where I'm going to put the stitches. I could end up with some of those lines showing. So you can see I've just lift this hillock bear as I've left, the other elements bear as well. Because the more lines I have, the more work I have to put into it to cover them. This basic technique that I've just demonstrated to you, tracing on is suitable for many, many different types of embroidery. And it's pretty much the same process. The materials may change. And when the materials change, you have to consider what type of pen you are using. But it is the same principle. I could just as easily lay a piece of bed and Berlin and down and draw on with either my water-soluble or watercolor pencil and just transfer on exactly the same way to do this piece is called thread work. If you are doing an oblique a piece. And again, as we looked at those applied fabrics, Patrick cotton silk, if they are thin enough to see-through, you can transfer on in the same way. Again, just be mindful of the type of pen or pencil you're using. If your fabric is already in a frame, you can simply lay face down onto your design, centering it nicely so you have access to all of the areas of the design. Making sure that your fabric comes into full contact with your design itself. If you have a gap between the fabric and the design, you can end up with distorted shapes because obviously your perspective on them can change slightly so you want it to have full contact if you can. From there, you can draw on as normal. In this instance, I would use the pencil. Of course, your design would be on the back of the fabric. So what you would then have to do is to take this piece of fabric out and turn it over so that the design itself sits on the front. There are occasions where I don't have my fabric under tension. If you are using a smaller frame, this is a six-inch. You may find that it's uncomfortable or difficult to get to some of the shapes. And that's because this frame particularly has those deep sides and with the smaller area to work in, it can make life just a little bit harder or trickier. If I'm using a six inch frame, I could cut my fabric to fit in an eight inch frame and transfer on from there. Or I could just draw directly onto the fabric, can omit the frame entirely. If you are using one of the thinner hoops, you shouldn't be too much of a problem. You do have the overall smaller size to contend with. But because the hoop is thinner, you can actually gain more access and get your hand in there a bit more easily. So that could be an option as well if you have a thinner frame when working on one of the larger frames, whether it be a role of frame like this, a Victorian roller or millennium frame, a slight frame. It's important to remember that the fabric is recessed at the back. So there's a gap here. And you're working on the smooth surface on top, you can lay a book down first, which is roughly equal in height to this recessed area. You can then place your design on top of the book. And if you have a tracing, put a piece of white paper behind it so that the lines show through properly. Then you can lay your frame on top again, center it nicely, make sure that it's well-placed. This instance on the canvas I would be looking to draw on with the permanent pen. 20. Equipment for the trace and tack method of transferring on: Tissue paper. Again, it has to be white because any color pigments that may be in tissue paper, if you had say green or pink or something like that. If it were to get wet or damp or even possibly in on some occasions from the sweat from your hands. It could transfer through onto your background fabric. So white or bleached, you know, that's not going to happen. You also want it to be fairly lightweight. You can see my table there through if you want to be able to see your design through it so that you can transfer on. It also needs to be lightweight so it can be stitch through and torn away. Attacking threat. On the right-hand side here I have a machine threads, which comes in relatively large schools. There's usually quite a bit of meters. So on this one you can see there's a 100 meters. They're relatively inexpensive to buy. And given they've got so much on them, they do last a long time. If I'm working on a white fabric, I would generally go with a light blue because it can be seen better against the fabric. And blue actually makes white look whiter. So if, for instance, a little bit of the thread were to be left behind when I take out the attacking. It's less noticeable because it's blue in color. It on this side I have a ray on. I like round because it's quite a shiny threads. Again, the quantity I have on this reel is quite a lot. You don't use much for attacking and it was quite inexpensive to purchase. Tacking is something that always comes out. So it's almost wasting thread. So you want something that will slip out easily from your fabric, which the shiny ray on we'll do. The machine thread does work well in that regard, but it's not quite as shiny and smooth and kinda slippery as the, as the Ryan. Again, since it's pretty much just going to go into being something that's not going to break the bank has preferable. So to start the trace and tack method, I have placed my design directly onto my surface and just added pieces of tape in all four corners to stop it moving around. Then going to take a piece of white tissue paper and place it over the top. Now you can see that I don't have the light box in this instance because I feel like I can see the pattern very clearly through the tissue paper. I don't need to worry about having that background illumination to see anything. Obviously, if you felt that was necessary, you're more than welcome to use a light box for this process. Just in this instance, I don't think I'm going to need it. I have cut down my piece of tissue paper. I've left myself a rebate about an inch and a half, be about three maybe four centimeters on all sides so that I can use that space to fix my tissue to the frame. When I come to tack on. With that in place, I'm just going to add a little bit more tape to hold the tissue paper in place. So we're just going to put a bit of tape in each corner just to make sure it's held nice and smoothly in place so I can smooth any excess out to the corners. If I get wrinkles in my tissue paper now, I run the risk of it distorting my shapes, so I want to keep it as smooth as I can. And much like with the drawing on, I'm just going to use my beloved HB pencil and really use the same principles we discussed in that video. I'm going to use the pivot points in my wrist and elbow to try and create smooth curves where I can. I'm going to try and draw them in as long and consistent line as I can manage, providing that I am staying on the design line and not wandering off of it. What I'm not gonna do once again is this kind of sketchy thing which generally leaves you with broader, more irregular lines. Again, I'm just going to start in a fairly logical position and draw a smoothly and consistently as I can. I tend to find drawing on to tissue paper is a little bit easier than fabric. Again, I'm trying to take care to make sure that all those lovely smooth lines that we've created remain smooth. Because this will become the outline that we stitch two and tack on. Now when it comes to the circles, drawing them on, I would normally use the circle template. But I can tell you that tacking a perfect circle, circle is just as difficult as drawing it freehand. So what I'm actually going to do is just put a dot in the middle of each of the circles as I get to them. And that dot I can add a stitch onto as I come to do my tacking, which will then become a marker that I use to draw on the circles with the pen of my choice. Once again, the punctuated silences suggests that working this process in a quiet environment with no distractions is preferable because you do just like the tracing and we did straight onto the fabric. You want this process to be calm and focused? Sometimes I'll shift my body so I change angle. And if you do happen to wander off the line, just correct it. And make sure that you do have the proper line in place. And then we go. Now, much like with tracing directly onto the fabric, you want to make sure that all of your lines are settled in place. You don't want to be like I've explained before, you don't want to be looking at this line here or these lines up here and going actually, I want them to be narrower or broader and so on. You want to make sure that you're happy with your design before you start working these processes. So with that done, I can release the tape and you want to be careful, you probably will rip the tissue that does happen. You just want to make sure that you don't rip through the design or extensively into the edges. So just take a little bit of care to get the tape off with as little damage to the tissue as you can. And just as I lift it up, I'm just looking to make sure that I've got all the detail on there. It's not advisable to go back in. Because obviously you've shifted the design. But it's a good way of checking to make sure that you've got everything. The same can be said of the pattern. This can now come off of the table and be put somewhere, safe somewhere. I mean, you could be in your pattern if you wanted to. I personally like to keep my patterns and I file them away in a lever arch folder. So now I've completed the trace element of this process. My design has been traced onto the tissue paper. I need to look at the tacking elements. So I need to look at the fabric. I'm going to be tacking onto what fabric is this technique suitable for? All realistically any of them, definitely Calico, but also the other densely woven fabrics such as Normandy linen, twill, not malloc fabric. Also the decorative fabrics we looked at, such as patchwork and of course, the silt. So we looked at as well. I am however going to show you how to do it on Berlin because I most frequently use this technique for things like BlackRock or white work. So I most commonly do it on this type of fabric. You can also put it onto Canvas. My approach to Canvas is a little bit different. I tend to find that because the fabric has been conditioned, It's a lot stiffer and thicker. So plunging my needle through the fibers is actually quite hard working. It can be somewhat painful on your fingers. So I tend, when I tack on Canvas, I tend to do it in straight lines or diagonal lines, so I will show you that later. But also with my fabric choice made, the Edinburgh linen threads somebody going to use, well, I've gone through my stash and I happen to have some ray on in blue. And because I'm working on that white fabric, using a blue thread is a good idea. Now, ideally, I would use this paler one because the paler color is closer in match to my fabric. So if I were to leave any behind, the fact that it's blue and pale would mean it was less discreet. Ideally, all of your tacking would come out when you're finished the piece, but sometimes fragments get left behind it does happen. So using something pale that has less of a contrast between your fabric and your thread is a good idea. However, you can see when I laid the thread out, you can't really see it on video. So I've decided to go for a much darker blue, which will be visible against both the fabric and the tissue paper. 21. Trace and tack method of transferring on: So I have my fabric framed up and under tension at most again, this is 36 count Edinburgh Lenin. I'm going to take my trace, my piece of tissue paper and I'm going to lay onto the fabric trying to line it up. So there's gaps on all sides and get it nice and centered in the frame. And I'm just looking to see if the design is on the grain. And I think that looks good. Again, I could draw pencil lines if I wanted to. I could also do a running stitch attacking down one of the grain lines and Mary all up if I wanted to. But again, I think it's good to practice doing this by eye. I think allows you to develop a certain sense in a certain instinct for things. So I think it's important to give it a go if you want it to be really precise and pedantic about it. As I say, you could just run the thread down one of these green lines between the two threads of the fabric, both horizontally and vertically. Draw the same cross on your tissue paper and then line them up together. But now that I've got them in place, I'm going to need to pin the tissue on so that it holds in place. I also have my tacking thread, my scissors handy, and I have a piece of thread ready to go. I'm using a size nine needle. Similarly, you could use a size Twenty-six shinier needle or a size ten embroidery needle. So I'm going to smooth my tissue paper along the edges. I'm going to put in a pin to hold it in place. I'm gonna do the same on the opposite side. I'm just I've got a little clamp just here. It's getting in my way. So I'm just going to tear the tissue with a bit so the tissue paper will lie flat. Then I can pin that down as well. I'm going to pin on the two outsides, so I tend to do the compass. I do north-south, east-west, smoothing that tissue paper as I go trying to make sure that it lays nicely against the fabric. Because again, if it shifts at this point, you may have problems with the shapes becoming distorted. So I want to make sure that every section is pinned down as smoothly as I can get it. You can see I'm having some troubles with the tissue paper rippling. But as well as long as nothing is to refold or two, shifted out of place, I should be fine. So one more here. If I were working on a larger piece, say on Slate frame, a larger piece of tissue. What I would actually do is start off by painting it like this, but then doing a big series of stitches all the way around the outside to hold it in place. That way my hand isn't going to keep getting caught on the pins as I stitch. So as I say, I've tied and not in one end of my threads, thread it into needle. And what I want to do is start in the center of my design. So that way if I start in the center, it's that same principle of if in doubt, middle out. So we start in the center with smoothing everything to the outside edges. Because I have these dots where the circles are going to sit. I'm going to start on the bottom one. I'm just put my not there. I'm then going to come up that marks the center of that first. We'll then just gonna make a little stitch over the center of every one of the dots to mark where they sit on the pattern. And you can see that I'm leaving gaps between my stitches. So I'm actually, we refer to this as trailing the thread. So there's a big stitch on the back and a small stitch on top. Generally speaking, we try to avoid this. Having trailing threads on the back of your work will often stretch so your stitches go slack on the front. The difference in this instance being that the stitches I'm making now will all come out. Then what will eventually be removed? Because tacking is a temporary measure to get your design onto the fabric. So i've, I've chosen quite logical route. I started at bottom, made my way up, across and down, which allows me to start at the bottom of this line. And I'm just going to make a straight stitch along my pencil and I've come up right at the tip. And I'm just going to make a series of straight stitches. Now, your stitch length is dictated by the line you are stitching. If I were stitching a straight line, I would be doing much, much bigger stitches because the straight line will allow me to do that as it is because I'm coming around a curve on keeping them fairly straight, fairly short. I also tried to make sure that I have small gaps in-between each of the stitches. Because if you leave big gaps in-between, you are losing your line, the tissue will all be ripped off. By the time I'm finished with the tacking that I'm doing now. So the little specks of gray I can see between my stitches will disappear. So I'm essentially losing my line in that area. Now. Losing your line means losing information as to what's actually happening there, which I don't want. So if I keep the gaps in-between small, I have visually more information, I have a more continuous line then if I have large gaps, I'm sticking to my drawn line as well. Because once again, we've taken a lot of time and effort to get as accurate tracing as we can. So I want to stick to it. I don't want to be deviating from those lines I've created. Asm when your thread gets caught up, just on, just detach it, just on, catch it and keep going. Tacking on can be quite laborious process. So if you have another method that is suitable for transferring on this slightly quicker, that is more preferable. So as I approach where my two lines meet up here, I'm actually going to make a shorter stitch and I wanna make sure I plunge on the line that goes across so that when I come to make the stitches going over the top, I'm going to come up to one side of it. I'm going to make sure that it goes across so that I have an area where the lines meet so I know exactly where that shape ends. Gonna do the same thing at the point. I'm going to plunge on the point, come up away from it and plunging the same place. So again, I know where that shape ends, where lines and meat, you want to make sure that you have them crossover and, or, and, or meet so that you can see exactly the shape that you're stitching to. Now as I've worked my way round that corner, my stitches who've gotten very small because it's quite a tight curve and you can see as it straightens out there getting slightly longer. I've come to the end of my line. So I plunged my needle right on the very point of this shape. And I've come to the end of my thread. So I'm going to bring the needle up in my shape. And I'm just going to work a very, very tiny cross or plus sign to end the thread. So I know it's secure and it's not going to unravel. I'm then going to bring my needle up again inside the shape because I know I'm going to fill that shape. I don't know what I'm filling yet, but I know I'm going to fill that shape. So I'm then going to snip my threads as close to the fabric as I can. That is my thread secured and I can now take another one and just continue on. I'm going to plunge my needle in the shape itself so that my knot sits on top. I'm going to come up right at the point of that shape and continue on. Now, working with knots in this way is somewhat unique to tacking. I will be showing you how we cast on and off for decorative stitching. Usually we have a process of securing the thread and cutting off the knot. You can see I haven't cut the knot off in this instance or when I started down here. And that's because the tracking is temporary. There is no need to secure it properly because that will actually be a really good place to go back to, to take the knot out and start removing my tacking thread when I'm able to. So you can see now that the shape is complete. You can see also that my stitches are quite close together where I've started and ended my thread. Now the stitches average between three to four mil. One. There is just a single mill in length, which is smaller than a 60 or about a 16th of an inch. I think that is a 16th of an inch too. What probably an eighth of an inch or just over. So that will give you an idea of scale. But as I say, your stitch length needs to be as long as it can be in order to accommodate the shape you are stitching around. So I've got some curves here. So I've had to go with slightly shorter stitches. And you can see every point or dip in the shape. I have made sure that my stitches come together to create that defined area and where they crossover. I have made sure that the new stitch crosses over the end of the old one. So that again, I know where that shape starts and ends. You can also see where my tissue paper appears, bubbly and some areas where I've stitched it is now flattened out and is actually very smooth. So whilst it seemed like it wasn't sitting flat on the fabric, it actually isn't doing too badly. That's gone down quite nicely. I just have the rest of the shape to do. And to do that, I will look back into my center and see what's next. So I will probably start with the bird and come down. And with the tree. I will probably draw that roughly midline. So sort of somewhere through here and work down. And I will then work up to meet this section. Sticking with that principle of working from the middle out and smoothing my papers, I go. 22. Removing tissue: So I've now finished all other tacking on. I finished that off camera because it did take me really too long for a video. But I followed those same principles. I've made my stitches longer where I can get away with it. Still leaving those small gaps in-between anywhere the lines meet or crossover. I've tried to make sure I have two stitches meeting so that I have the full boundary of the shape. With that done, I can now remove all the pins. And again, if I detect this on, I can take out those stitches that are just securing the tissue down. And this is the fun bit because you take the tissue and you just go. That's a bit like cluster. You just start pulling it off. You just tearing away all that tissue, which is great fun today. Trying to get as much of it offers you can. Now, I do tend to find that little bits get caught up in the tissue. So even after you finished this process is quite common to find little bits of tissue still left behind. So what you can do is go in with a thin pair of tweezers and just use them to release some of the thinner areas. But this is really quite an enjoyable process. And even as I'm doing it, you can see that the lines are staying in place and really creating that defined outline that I was looking for. These narrow areas tend to be places where the tissue just doesn't come through. So narrow shapes that go quite pointy is often where I find bits of tissue leftover. So I can just see a little bit tissue just there. It does hide, particularly with the gray pencil. It can become almost invisible. So as I said, don't be surprised if you find tissue paper left behind even after you're done taking a while. Very good. I think that's all done. It might be just a little bit left in there. There we go. Right. I think that's all of it. So if we take a closer look at the central element where I've got some circles on it to draw on. I'm gonna do that with a pencil and my circle template. But you can see the stitches just about see that one here. And this one up here. I've lost them. I've lost one there. That gap, that whole I'm pretty sure is this tab is one of the steps that shows that I made. But I've lost it through here. So I'm just going to have to refer to my pattern and try and place that one. I think it sits between roughly between these two here. So my plan is to draw on these four to use that as a guide to place this one. If it happens to drift slightly away from my original pattern, it's not gonna be too much of a problem. If it ended up over here. Obviously, it wouldn't be a problem, but if I place it roughly where it should be and I think I can actually see something of a split thread there. So I might use that as my own code. I don't think that's coming up on the camera. But if I place it roughly in this area and look at my spacing between where this circle sits and the line sets, I should be able to get an approximate position, which will look good. So much like the previous transferring on I've done. I'm just going to place my circle template onto the fabric. And I'm trying to make sure that I'm lining that dot. I made that little stitch I made up in the middle of my shape. Then I'm just going to draw around a couple of times, holding the template quite firmly. And I've got my circle there. So I'm just gonna go across all of them. This one, I'm going to use the note. I just want to lift that tail up out of the way. So I can get a better idea of the placement. I'm just going to draw around. I'm now going to put in these two because I can definitely see them. Looking at my shape and back at my original drawing. It sits roughly on par with this one. I'm just going to play with the template little bit. As I said, I think I can see a little catch stitch there. I'm just going to play with it a little bit. I think that's gonna be okay. There we go. I've just got the last one to do. I need to pull that tail through the circle just because it's going to kind of get in my way. So there we go. Just pull that through. And then I'm gonna go in with a pencil squaring that up nicely, lining it up nicely, and just putting in a little mark that I can just about see. Deduce the chin. There we go. Ready for stitching. 23. Equipment for Prick, Pounce and paint method of transferring on: Tracing paper, it comes in different weights. This is a fairly lightweight one at 63 GSM. It's preferable to go slightly heavier, but this is the only stuff I could find local to me. They're usually good for at least one pricking, possibly two or three, maybe even more than that. But good-quality tracing paper. Not only for designing if you wanted to design your own work, but for the pants and paint method as well. Fricking Matt. This is quite a specialist piece of kit. I don't know if anyone's manufacturing them. I don't think if they are, it won't be on a big scale. You may be able to find small independent stitches that have the same background as I do that might be manufacturing these. But essentially it's a piece of board with some wording so that you can work a pricking on it. This is not an essential piece of kit. It's a nice thing to have, but it's not essential piece of kit. You can just take a clean folded up towel or sheet, kitchen towel or something like that. You just want a soft surface that you can lay your design onto to ***** holes in for the pants and paint method. As I say, it has to be clean. You don't want any kind of grease or dirt getting onto your pricking that will then transfer it onto your piece of work, onto your fabric. I was taught that this is called a picker. I've always been a little bit dubious of that term, but I have Googled it and it seems okay. Although I didn't stray past the first page of results, It's also known as a pattern per kilo, which might be a more suitable term to be searching for. Some precursors have a fixed point on them. This one is adjustable so you would unscrew the top section and you have a crosshair that you can slip a needle into, then tighten it up two, hold it in place. That gives you control over the size of the needle you can use. Generally speaking, I would use a size ten embroidery needle. However, it does depend on the next item we're going to look at. If the parents you have is very finely ground, you would need to use a smaller needle. If it's very course, you would have to move up to a larger needle, pounds. This is a gray powder that you use in combination with an applicator to transfer on the basic outlines of the design. Most of the kits or sets I have seen for sale come with three containers of powders. This one, the gray pants, is the one I use most frequently and the black and white are often used to make more of the gray. So you mix these two together to create a gray pants. And the gray pants works in most instances where it's appropriate to use the ***** pants and paint method, the black powder is often ground-up charcoal. The white powder is, I think these days more likely to be chalk. But historically it was ground-up cuttlefish. And as I say, the two are mixed together to make the gray. There are times where you might need a lighter or darker version of this powder. And if that's the case, you can just introduce some more of the black to make it darker or more of the white to make it lighter. The one thing I would say with pounds, as you can get messy quite quickly and storing them, you can see this is a well-loved so I've had this for awhile. It gets everywhere, so storing it in some sort of container so that it doesn't get everywhere is a good idea. Also advisable to wipe down any surface you may have and wash your hands when you're done. Receptacle for water. And a mixing palette are useful. Also, some sort of tissue or paper towel to clean your brush with. If you're gonna be using paint, you will need a paintbrush. And this is a three slash 0 paintbrush with a quite short stubby tip. When I first started painting on, in this very traditional picked pounds and paint method, I really struggled with this type of paintbrush. I just couldn't get very fine lines using it. So one of my instructors suggested I go up to a bigger size. So I've got a two slash 0, which I use quite frequently. And it just has slightly longer tip. I've found with that little bit of extra paintbrush, I can create much better. Final lines when I'm painting on. So do try the first one, the three slideshow. But the two slash o might work a little bit better for you like it did for me. Over time, you may find that the brush tips deteriorate. And at that stage, I tend to relegate them for when I'm using glue because we do occasionally use glue and embroidery, not very often, but there are occasions where it's useful. So these are now because the tips have frayed out slightly and just become a little bit messy. I now use them for glue. I like to have a larger brush size as well. And you can see I have a square tip to one here on the right-hand side and just a bigger overall brush on the left-hand side. You can see it's bigger than my biggest painting on brush. And I basically use these two for mixing the paints because I'm going to use a little bit of white, a little bit of the color, either black or yellow ocher and then a touch of water. So I need something to mix all that together. And a big brush just does that a little bit faster for me. And if they happen to get into bad condition, this one's not great. As long as it doesn't leave fibers in my paint. I'm not that worried I can keep using them because again, I'm not looking to make fine lines. I'm just looking to blend paints together. Paint, specifically watercolor paint. There is another type you can get called gouache, which is not recommended. I've had drawing issues with that. A student used it. It didn't dry properly and she ended up catching it on the side of her hand. She was stitching and blotted wet paint across her piece. So it's got to be the watercolor, and it's got to be the tubes of watercolor. The blocks you have to put so much water with that, you dilute it to a point where when you paint onto the fabric, the lines would just dissipate into your fabric rather than staying where you want them to. So you end up with stains rather than design lines or paint lines. The brand doesn't matter. These were all in the discount then when I went to the workshop. So the brand doesn't matter, but I tend to have some kind of white. In this instance is Chinese white. Titanium White works just as well. I have ivory black there. There are different types of black that would work just as well. And I have yellow ocher for some reason I have to open containers of yellow ocher. And I will use either a combination of the black and white to make gray to look like a pencil. Or I will use a combination of the white with the yellow ocher just to dilute the color, to knock it back a bit too. Just take the vibrancy out of it. Generally speaking, I use the yellow ocher when I'm doing gold work, and I'll use the combination of black and white for pretty much anything else I do. A soft bristle brush is useful. It can be used to dust off excess pounds either after you finished painting or if you are not happy with how the lines have gone on. It's usually a baby brush, so it's used to brush baby's hair. So you can see the bristles there and nice and soft. They have that, I think they're plastic, so they have a little bit of rigidity to them. But they're not going to do too much damage or abrade your fabric when using it. 24. Creating a pricking: So much like the other two processes, *****, pounce and paint, starts off with your design. And the first step is to make a pricking. So I'm going to take a piece of tracing paper and place over the top of my design. Now, much like when I was making the tracing for the trace and tech process, I could take my design to the table, but there's another way you can do this. And again, you can do it with the tissue paper in a during tech and trace. What I'm gonna do is actually solid take my tracing paper to my design, which will use my design free to move around. So just a couple of pieces to keep it stable. Top edge as well. Now, when it comes to tracing paper, I much prefer thinner tracing paper rather than the thicker. You generally can seem more through the thin of tracing paper. So if you're working on a particular detailed piece that has subtle details, a thinner piece of tracing paper will allow you to see through more easily to pick up on those details. The downside of being, if you want it to do that same piece multiple times, you would have to rework the pricking multiple times as well because thinner papers will deteriorate more quickly when combined with the pounds. So much like the other two, I am going to draw on with my beloved HB pencil. And the same principles apply. I'm looking to make those clean, smooth lines. And the beauty of having your tracing attached to your paper like this is you can angle it to your heart's content. So I'm going to try and make those smooth lines again. Just like last time, take my time to make sure I get those lines accurately. But since we're now working with a paper rather than a fabric or tissue paper. There is actually another way. What I now normally do is print directly onto my tracing paper. I cannot stress this enough. I'm not telling you to go to your printer and put tracing paper in it. I'm telling you it's an option. I have a very old printer Print Center. Actually it does photocopies as well. And it is quite cantankerous. If I were to put this tracing paper into draw number one and print from my computer. The tracing paper would get all scrambled up. Everything would stop and it would start yelling at me very loudly. Now, if I put the same tracing paper in the same drawer and photocopy onto my tracing paper. It will work. I haven't worked out why it prefers that method, but it does. So it's something to be mindful that you can do. But I don't want anyone running their printers when they start using inappropriate papers in it. So it's something to explore, but not a necessity for this course. You can trace by hand if you want to. With my design onto the tracing paper, I'm going to take a clean folded cloth or my pricking that place. The pricking on top. I'm going to seize my pre-K. And again, I've got a size ten embroidery needle in there. That's a nice size for the type of pounds I have. The pounds I have is quite fine. So attention to work nicely. And I'm going to stop making holes. I'm going to stop punching holes along my design lines. And it's really important that you stick to your diet design lines. Once again, you don't want to be changing lines at this stage. You go back to your original drawing, you troubleshoot on paper, and then you recreate your pricking if you want any of these lines to change, I'm happy with them so I can go ahead with it. The first thing I'm going to do is anywhere a line ends, four lines meet, I'm going to make a hole. That means that where those shapes and me is gonna be very precisely recorded. Because I have, I do that in advance. I'm making those marks and advance. Knowing where my lines join an end is going to overall create much better shape. So when I get this onto my frame, so I think that's all of them done. And what I'm actually going to do is just hold it up to the light and you'll be able to see pin ****** coming through where you punch the holes. So I'm just going to look over all of the ends and joins to make sure that I have done them all. And I have much like with the trace that we did earlier, I'm going to make a mark or make a hole in the center of each of the circles or as close to the center as I can get it. There we go. So with that done, I can now go back to the start and I'm looking to make holes every two to three mille, which is probably about an eighth of an inch. And when I do this as well, I'm trying to make sure I take the brca straight down and not angle it. Well, I don't want to be doing is going through a 45-degree angle when I'm doing this. Now, as I've approached the hole that I have here at the join, I have just tried to place one final step in-between my last hole and the one. The marks that join the spacing here is probably a little bit bigger. But that's okay because I didn't want to have too many holes in it. If you cram too many holes and you'll lose the definition. So it is something of a judgment call that does come with practice. I think you have to use the process several times to understand the dynamics of it. But you don't want to go more than about three to four mil three-sixteenths of an inch, something like that between them, just so that you don't lose the information that you're trying to commit to the fabric is much like the spacing of stitches in the trace and tack method. Now, I don't know if it's just me, but I do tend to find my hands get quite hot. Sometimes feel a little bit sticky. When I do this process. As you work through this process, it's really, really important that you stick to the drawn lines. I've seen quite a few students stabbing away, wandering off of their design line and not really thinking it's an issue. Once again, we've taken a lot of time to get nice drawn lines, not only on our original design, but on the tracing as well. If you wander off them now, you're not gonna get anywhere near the original source image that you chose to do. So it's really, really important that you ***** on your paint lines. Now occasionally the needle will slip and go off your paint line. And that's fine. That happens. Having £1 mark outside of the line is not going to ruin everything. You can work around it. Having a dozen entirely changing the shape will cause issues. So when you see your needle slip, you just want to correct it and make sure the next hole you make his own your paint on, on your design line itself. Which is why you have to pay your full attention to the pricking when you're doing it. Again, it's one of those processes that you want to have. Quiet is n time to do so you can give it your full concentration. I'm going to finish the rest of this off camera because it is quite a lengthy process. So I will join you in the next video having completed everything. So my pricking is done and I can now get going. Except before I do that, I just want to double-check. There is nothing more frustrating than pouncing on and realizing that you've left a couple of little sections and done. So we're going to hold it up to the light and I'm going to show you that next. So I'm going to double-check by holding my pricking up to a light source. And I'm just moving it around because I'm looking to see the spark of life through all of the pricked areas. And immediately I can see right here, I haven't done so I just need to ***** that line. So we're just going to do another double-check. Yep. So it's just that line that I need to do right at the bottom there. Lethal bits like this are often easy to miss. So I just need to pick that section and I'm good to go with my pricking. So we've established that this section here, I haven't yet, correct. So I'm just going to quickly go over it and we are done. I will check it one more time just to be on the safe side. But we did check it quite thoroughly together, so I'm quite sure that all the lines have done. Now, the one thing I would say when doing this method, so I've obviously printed this rather than traced it. Today has been quite hot. So as I've been working in my hands and felt quite warm and I can see bits of the printing coming up from my hands. And you can see in places where it's smudged. Now I have done this process before using a printed pricking and I haven't had any issues. And given that this side of the pricking will not come into contact with my fabric. I'm quite satisfied that this isn't gonna be an issue because I'm going to lay it down on the fabric, as you see here, with the underside in contact with the fabric. If you choose to print onto tracing paper to create your pricking, you will need to leave it to dry because the ink obviously doesn't soak in as well. So you will need to give it time to dry before you start working as a pricking and just take care. On a hot day, you're not smudging the lines too much. You'll also notice that the tracing paper is looking to curl in. And again, that's as a result of the heat and my hot hands. 25. Pouncing on: So now that I've got my pricking completed, I am ready to start passing onto my fabric. So this is my slight frame and I have a piece of linen twill. I'm going to take my fricking. I'm just trying to line it up so that it looks nice and straight on my fabric, much like we did with the track and trace method. And with this settled in place and me happy with its placement. In going to take a couple of pins. And just in the corners, I am going to just place them smoothing. We're tracing as I go. I'm going to put them in each of the four corners. And because this is quite a long stretch, I'm going to put one in the center of each long edge as well. Now, it's really important that when you put the pins in, you can see up here, I have just placed it straight down into the tracing. I haven't been tipped back and try to bring that point up in the rest of the fabric. When you do that, your pattern will move around. So it's important just to step straight down and leave them standing upright. With my pricking secured. I'm going to dab my applicator into the pounds and squeeze and dust off some of the excess. Then I'm going to start in the middle of my design. I'm going to use my fingers to brace the tracing and I'm going to stop applying the pounds in the very center of my design, using circles, a circular motion to apply the pounds. And the idea is that the pounds is going to be forced through all the holes we made in the fricking. I'm just going to slowly make my way out time to ensure that I have covered every inch of the design. If I need to, I can pick up some more pounds, again, squeezing the applicator and dusting off any excess. And then returning using my fingers to brace the tracing paper. I try not to go over the same areas twice if I can avoid it. And I know I'm complete when I can see a shadow across all of the areas. So you can see it's coming out to here, up to here. So I've definitely covered this section of my fricking. I haven't come too far down here, but I'm used to doing this process, so I know it should be okay. I could have probably come a bit further out here just to make sure I've got this section covered. But overall, I'm satisfied that I've covered all of my areas. I can now take this pricking off. So I'm going to reseal my pot of pounce and put out of the way so I don't knock it. Then I'm actually going to go and wash my hands because I'm a little bit dusty and I don't want to be transferring the dust onto any other area of my fabric. I can now take out all the pins. And to do that, I want to place a finger either side of the pin to stabilize the tracing and just gently lift it out. Now, the reason I do that is because there is still some pounds left on the surface of the tracing. So I don't want to accidentally knock that back through the holes and blow. I've done. So. I'm just going to very gently and carefully remove all of the pins, just holding the tracing paper in place as I do. So once you have pounce on your frame, you do want to be careful about not knocking it too much. If you go to kind of bump the fabric or the frame too much, you might find that the parents can lift and then your lines become obscured. So I'm going to pick up my pricking by the very edges. And I'm going to lift it straight up and away from my frame. Again, there is an excess of pounce on your pricking. You just want to make sure that you don't lose any of that back onto your fabric. You can also bring the two edges of your tracing together to collect all of the excess pants down the middle and transfer it back into the pot. Again, there is excess pounds on there. So whatever you do however you handle it, you just need to be careful to make sure that it doesn't go everywhere. It doesn't get on your clothes, on the floor, that kind of thing. And particularly on your fabric. Now, when I'm looking at my outline, I'm looking to see are there any particularly thick areas that might be confusing? Most that on-camera does look a little bit confusing. It's it's a little bit, there's a lot of parents there. I think given the simpleness of the lines, the simple, elegant curve, I think I can probably cope with that. This area here is looking a little bit light, but I do have the information I need because the parents line comes out to here. Lost. This looks particularly faint in person. It's actually quite a clear line once you kinda look closely at it, it's quite clear line. Again, a little bit faint down here, but there's enough to be able to paint on. So I'm overall satisfied with a tail again, here's a little bit faint sometimes, and this happens when you're painting as well. If you were to put your hand in to create shadows, I've got light coming in from the right hand side here with that guy. And you can actually see the tail line is a little bit more obvious. So sometimes direct light can be useful, sometimes not. So if you're ever worried about any of your lines, casting a shadow with your hands and maybe diminishing that light source a little bit can actually help. But overall, I'm satisfied that I have everything I need. Sometimes when you do this process, you can actually get a double line if the pattern has shifted. So you'll have either a thicker line or like a shadow line where you have just duplicated things, which can be confusing. So at that point, I would turn the frame over. You can take your baby brush and beat the back of your frame. That will help to knock off any excess pounds. And then we're using the bristles, the soft bristles. You do like a swish and flick motion. So you kinda come down onto the fabric and flick up to flick any of the remaining pounds away from your fabric. Some of it often does remain. You can sometimes see some very faint lines, but usually it's enough to what just work over the top. But overall, I'm, I'm satisfied that with this pouncing, I can continue with the painting on. 26. Prepping Paint: Now that my image has been Poundstone, I'm ready to mix my pink again. I have the tubes of watercolor paint. I have in the past used a watered-down acrylic. The difference with acrylic is once it's on your fabric, it's permanent. So I tend to stick with watercolor. Watercolor can be washed out to a degree. I've never done it. Myself or my colleagues have taught, talked about it. The problem being that you won't necessarily get it all of the pigment out and you may end up with staying. So it's best to just commit to the lines when you paint with them. But I'm gonna be using a combination of black and white. So I'm just going to put a very small amount of the black. Black is quite strong. You'll find colors differ in their pigmentation, the strength I have. So I'm just going to put a little dollop of black, slightly bigger dollop of white. Putting the caps back as well because they will dry out. Here I have some water, you can just see it there. I like to soak my brush, so I've got that bigger brush that we looked at. And I like to soak my brush in the water and you saw a few bubbles pop out. Then I'm just going to squeeze the liquid down the side of the paint tray. It's quite warm in the room I'm using today, so I'm gonna do that twice. Then I'm just going to mix all of that together. I'm looking for a pencil gray. You want to make sure you get all the clumps and lumps blended in as well. That looks pretty good. I also like to squeeze the paint out of the edge of the paintbrush because a lot of it will collect on your paintbrush and then it can be washed off. Then we need to test that paint on the edge of the fabric. So having mixed my paint, the next thing to do is to test it on the edge of my frame. And you can see here, this is my webbing that I've applied and the webbing that's attached to the bar. Anywhere I test my paint, I want to keep it to the very edges. So I go quite extreme and come right over to my webbing and down to my webbing. Because I know that this is an excess of fabric. And should I come to mount or present the piece further down the line? If I'm at the very edges of the excess of my fabric, it should disappear into any to the back of any mounting or into the seam of any soft mounting? I may do. So do stick to the very perimeter of your fabric. If you're working in a hoop, you can actually do this on the piece of fabric that sits outside of your hoop. I'm just going to run my paintbrush across the fabric. What I'm looking to do is not only practice my painting technique by trying to create a thinner line as possible, but I'm also testing the consistency of my paint. When I first learned how to do this process, I was told that the paint should be the consistency of single cream. Which I believe single cream is quite a British thing. So that may not make sense to you, our international viewers. The problem I have is that I don't like cream and therefore I don't eat it or cook with it. So when somebody said single cream, I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. Why I like to say to my students, it should flow across the fabric like an ink. So when you play the paintbrush to the fabric, you should be able to get a fairly consistent line in one stroke. Now, I've done four lines there and I'm actually quite happy with the consistency of my pain. You don't have to do this many lines. I've just been fiddling around with the paintbrushes I talk. But what I'm looking at all, this has all the qualities that I want in that I've been able to create fairly consistent, smooth line. I haven't had too much of it breaking up. So the first line I did here, I don't think I quite had enough paint on my paintbrush. What I am Achieving there is to run my paintbrush across the fabric without too many issues. If the paper too thick, it would be very clumpy and very fragmented. And it would be quite difficult to draw your, your paintbrush across the fabric. If you have too much water in your paint, the line will start to spread out. And you may even get a gray area around the line itself where the water is being absorbed into the fabric. So if your lines are expanding, your paint is too watery. So you want it to hold a consistent line and have it easy to move across your fabric. Now I'm in quite a hot room as I record this today, and I think it's only going to get hotter. So I need to keep an eye on my paint to make sure it doesn't dry out too much if it ever does get quite clumpy and I end up with thick spots and very fragmented, broken lines. What I need to do is just add a touch more paint. Sorry, I touch more water into my paint to loosen it up a little bit. And then again, I will come back to this area and I will test it again anytime you add extra paint into your mix to thicken it up or extra water to water it down. You need to be testing to make sure you haven't gone too far either way. Now that I'm satisfied with the consistency of my paint, I can move on. Before we dive into the painting on, there's a couple of things to consider. First of all, you want to make sure that your frame is on a stable surface. I prefer to have my frame flat, although you can angle it slightly if you need to. You just don't want to have it balanced on your knee or something like that. You want a nice stable surface. If you're on a bigger frame like I am, you can use a tabletop or a set of muscles. If you're using a hoop, it's often better to lay it on a table. If you have one of the hoops on a stalk, you can actually put it into a holder and work on it from there. You just got to be careful not to knock it too much because we don't want to disturb the pound signs that we have. Also, you can't see it, but I have my paint palette here and my water here. And in my left hand I'll be painting with my right hand and my left hand, I will have a piece of tissue to wipe off my paintbrush and I need to, what you'll notice I'm not doing is placing either my palette or my water receptacle on my frame. You run the risk of knocking it and putting you the excessive paint or water into your fabric, which is just disaster. So keep them accessible, keep them nearby, but do not place them on your frame regardless of the frame you're using. So where do we start? I found three theories on how to do this. So one theory is you start in the middle and you work your way out. The other theory is you start close to you and work away. The other one is basically the opposite. You start far away and work towards yourself. So what are the pros and cons of this? Well, if you start in the middle, you run the risk of picking up pounce on the side of your hand and removing your design lines, which means you will have no information to paint on. As you work outwards. You also run the risk of picking up paint on the side of your hand, which can then be blogged across your piece, which we also don't want. If you start at the bottom, you'll have less risk of picking up the pounds, but more risk of picking up wet paint. Start at the top. That's reversed. You're less likely to pick up the wet paint, but you're still more likely to pick up parts and remove your paint lines. So which one is better? I would argue they all have their inherent problems. So my advice to students is always start where you're comfortable. And to be honest with you, I would probably start with a smooth line, like I've got down here. That will just get me back into the habit of painting because you can drop out for these habits. You also don't want to overreach. So I often use this technique with much, much larger pieces. So I don't want to be stretching up to the top of the frame when I could just turn it round. So if you need to, if you're working on a large piece, you can work the bottom half. Turn your frame around and work on the other half. Just be careful that when you do that you don't knock the frame down onto whatever surface you want to place it gently down again because you don't want to disturb the pounds. So my key thing that I say to everyone is the side of your hand is your biggest enemy. You need to try and work to make sure that you keep it off the frame. And I do this little pinky outstretched to try and hover above the frame. If I can follow those paint lines, it can be a bit tiresome. So you do want to take your time and if you need to take breaks, absolutely take breaks, you'll get a better result if you are relaxed, calm, and not to fatigue to doing this. If you do take breaks again, keep an eye on your paint. You may need to add extra water to water it down to make it a bit thinner. And then you go over to the side of your frame and you test it there. 27. Painting on: So my process always starts with dabbing my paint brush into the water, drying off a little bit on my tissue, and then picking up some paint. And if I can, I try and roll the paintbrush along the side of the paint palette to try and taper it into a thin point if I can. So I'm going to start in the list worrisome area. And I'm going to very gently try all my paintbrush along my pants lines. I try not to go over the same area twice if I can avoid it. But sometimes you have to. If you start going over areas more than once, you can make the lines very thick, very thick indeed. And thicker lines take more work to cover. Now, if you find you do make any tiny mistakes. Try not to worry too much about it, and move on to the next area. It's also worth, if you do make a mistake, it's worth taking just a short break step back, take a breath. Because when you make a mistake like that and you get flustered, things just pile on and tend to get worse and get harder. So I've broken the ice with this line. And I'm now going to obsessively check the side of my hand. I'm looking for I'm looking for paint and you will see me flip my restaurant multiple times because I get really paranoid. I have to check repeatedly. So I'm now going to start at the top here, trying to keep my hand away as much as I can. I'm just trolling the tip of the paintbrush across the lines. Now, you'll find that the parents will collect on your paintbrush. That's why we wash the paint brush itself and dry it a little bit before we pick up more paint. And I'm trying to keep the paintbrush as vertical as I can. Because the more vertical the paintbrush, less of the paintbrush itself is in contact with the fabric. And the thinner line you will achieve. Now I spoken before in videos about having some Zen quiet to do this process. And I think it's even more true of painting on it is a NAV of the processes we've done together all the time. I'm doing this as well. I'm trying to keep an eye on my paint lines just to make sure that they're not bleeding out like we discussed. So I know there's not too much water in them. There is very, very light pressure on the paintbrush itself. I'm trying not to push down and just tickling the tip of the paintbrush across the very surface of the fabric. I'm trying not to push down too hard because that will flatten out the paintbrush and give me a broader line. A little bit of time has now passed for the paint to dry. And just to make sure that it's dry, I'm just going to place my finger on the paint. What I'm looking for is for little sticky, tacky bits of paint to come away in my fingers. And I'm going to check all over just to make sure that thicker bits and the bits that I painted later towards the end, later in the process. Just to make sure that they are all fully dry. And it looks like it's pretty good. Like I'm good to go. So the next stage is for me to turn the frame over and beat the back like we've seen before, and then brush any excess pounds off with the soft bristle brush. As I was painting, much of the parents will have gotten trapped in the paint. So not all of it is going to come off which is fine. And try not to be too vigorous when you are brushing the fabric. If you spend too long doing it and quite aggressive with it, you may fluff up the fibers of the fabric, which will kind of overall just diminish the effect of your embroidery. Everything will look a little bit worn and tired. So you wanna make sure you don't overwork it with paint on your piece as well. You run the risk of some of the paint coming away. If it isn't hasn't soaked into the fabric properly, it can actually come away as you're brushing vigorously. And you'll notice when I demonstrated the brushing, I wasn't brushing backwards and forwards. I was just making long strokes. So that's my next job is to dust off the last of the pants. So now the parents has gone Overall, how did I do? Well, it looks like the original drawing. I don't have any extra marks that might cause any issues or any missing marks which might cause me different issues. There are a couple of areas such as down here on the edge of the trunk. This looks a little bit sharp. Is maybe a flat section up here where it hasn't gone down as perfectly as I wanted it to. But there's nothing there that would stop me stitching on this piece of fabric. There's nothing that makes me feel I have to rip it off the frame and start again. These are all relatively minor issues. And they probably come from the fact that I really don't use this method of transfer on very often. And it is something you want to use frequently in order to be good at it. Now, when I was training, I was using it for every piece, pretty much. I was doing it every month, every six weeks, something like that. Whereas now this is the first time in maybe a year, but I've done this process. So if you find on your piece that the lines don't go down as perfectly as you want them to try not to be too hard on yourself. This is a very challenging technique and a lot of people find it very nerve racking. Applying a paintbrush to a piece of fabric is making a big commitment to the lines you're putting down. Try and work with what you manage and practice it again, do it for the next piece so that you can really get to grips with the technique. So one final thing to do before we are finished is to draw my circles. And again, I'm just going to lay down my circle template using my beloved HB pencil. I'm just going to draw them much like you saw me do with the blue pencil on the top and trace method. This fabric because it's rich, this is the linen twill because it's ridged. You can hear the pencil fighting across the wave of the fabric there. So you do have to take care of doing it. This little one here for the birds, I, I might just leave as a single dot. That will give me flexibility. If I want to add in just a single stitch there, I can that should cover the paint mark that I've got. If I wanted to then build around it, I could add more in, but I'm not having to fill out a shape like I will have to do with these ones. There's one thing I want to go over before we move on, and that is how to deal with lost lines. So here we have the painted on version of the motif. And the reason I've chosen this one is because if your paint consistency is a little bit too thick, sometimes we find that the paint will chip off as you stitch, so you may lose some or all of your line if that's the case. So if you do notice this happening when you come to paint on again, just really double-check the consistency of your paint. You need to have a little bit more water in there so that it will flow smoothly across your fabric and not clump places. Now the other thing that can happen that we discussed was that as you're painting or drawing on, you can pick up, pounce on the side of your hand and you may lose lines that way. So how do we deal with it? Well, you finished transferring all the lines that you can anywhere that you are not sure or it's completely gone. Do not put pen or paintbrush tool the fabric. Just ignore that for now. Get on the information that you are sure about. Then you're going to go back to your original drawing and you're going to trace on the missing elements. So for this example, we're going to pretend that this whole leaf has disappeared. So you can see here, I have drawn on the leaf itself and some of the surrounding areas. And what this allows me to do is to place my tissue onto the fabric. Specifically look at those surrounding areas to get it all matched up. At this point, I can secure the tracing with some pins on a tight frame like this. The opinion can be a little bit challenging. So what I tend to do is push up from underneath to get the pin to come through on the fabric. And every time I place a pin because you can see I'm bending it back in the fabric that will cause the tracing to shift. So every time I do that, I want to just double-check that it's in the right place with that pin down properly. Obviously, I'd be putting another two here and here. I can then tack, just like you've seen me do in previous videos. Paper gets ripped away as normal and you will then just have half and half piece. You'll have half painted or drawn on and half or an element tacked on. 28. Finishing and reviewing Painting on: The pants and paint method of transferring on is very lengthy and I would argue the most challenging that we've looked at together. I've taught this to quite a few students now, and I've seen how intimidating it can be. And I have to confess the first time I did it, I was quite overwhelmed as well. But the key to it is to stay calm breath. I don't want any students turning blue and parsing out and being aware of what you're doing, paying close attention will help you yield those better results. If you do make a mistake, is absolutely fine. Step away from your frame. Again, take a breath and just allow yourself to calm down. There are very few mistakes that I've seen made during this process that can't be covered up in some way, so it's not all lost if you do have extra thick paint line or a little bit of a smudge here and there. I also wanted to review the difference between the tracking processes we've been through together as well. When you are trying to achieve straight lines, paying close attention to the grain or the warp and weft if your fabric is really important, you may have noticed that when I was tacking on through tissue, I didn't pay such close attention to it. That's because making sure my shapes were accurate was my main goal. Now that's not to say they shouldn't be straight to the grain, but they just didn't necessarily have straight edges. So I had to place my needle where the line fell on the tissue rather than where it fell within the grains of the fabric. So if getting shapes straight to the grain was so important, why didn't I draw an extra lines or do extra tacking? Well, quite simply, every time you place a needle or a pin in your fabric, you're risking damage of some sort. That could be dirt transferred on from your needle. It could be snagged threats if you have a slight burr or hook on the end of your pin or a needle. And you can also get something called pin marks, which is where you place a needle or a pin. You just leave a little hole in the fabric. Sometimes itself hills and goes away, sometimes it doesn't. And that's true of the other issues as well. Snag threads that sometimes it's fixable, sometimes it's not. So it's best to work conservatively. You put in as few stitches or pins as possible to secure your pricking or tracing to fabric. When I do that, I like to keep those pins as stitches to the very edges of my tracing and they're very edges of my pricking so that there is less chance that those marks sit closer to the design itself. As a side note, I have to say I don't particularly like straight lines in InDesign. So tacking on that right angle, like I showed you in the last video, is not something I do very often. Straight lines, hard edges like that can be very difficult to execute and keep really neat and precise. But also on a personal level, I find them quite rigid and static and design. So I tend to avoid them if I can. For the record, no, I do not draw ***** stitch or remove tissue back quickly. I have in fact sped up the footage so that you can see the entire process without the video being too lengthy. 29. Mixing Transfer Techniques: I've placed my pricking and I've measured from the most extreme point to the edge of the webbing to make sure it's nice and centered. And I've done the same at the sides as well. And in this instance, I want to create a straight edge along the bottom and along the side of the hillock. Now in order to do that, I need to make a mark and any mark you make on the fabric needs to be cupboard. I don't know what outlines I might want to put along this edge. So I'm actually going to tack a straight line across the bottom and along the side, which I can then match up to my pricking to get everything straight. And the attacking will give me a temporary line I can take out and then I have the option to add an outline stitch if I want to. I don't necessarily have to. I'm gonna put in some pins to mark the approximate locations of where I want the lines to sit. Now if I put pins into the tracing paper, the pins or lift out when I lift the tracing paper. So I've got to mark the bottom edge. And to do that, I'm going to lay my ruler down onto the tracing. I'm going to try and place one of the longer lines marking the centimeters along the edge of a tracing paper. And then place the edge of the ruler alongside the very end of my design line up here. And right at the edge of the tracing paper, I'm just going to put in a pin. You can just sit there. I'm gonna do the same here. And what this is allowing me to do is to get a good approximate location of where that paint line finishes. Try and keep it as straight as I can. I then I then need to measure from the edge of my tracing paper to where this line sits, the lowest edge of the line. And that is 5.2 centimeters in. When you make measurements or take measurements like this, write it down. You will forget, trust me on this, you will always forget this one. It sits at 7.8 centimeters. So I now know roughly how far I have to go in after I moved my tracing. I'm just going to slide that I felt the way I have attacking thread with a knot on one end. And this time I'm using a size Twenty-six tapestry needle. Because what I'm looking to do is to get my stitches to sit between the threads of the fabric. So by using a blunt needle, I'm more likely to push the threads out of the way, rot them, paste them. So I'm going to start by placing my ruler back on the fabric level with my pin. Trying to follow the grain if I can. I'm going to measure that 5.2 centimeters up, which is about there. And actually what I'm looking to do is to start my line just a short distance away. So I'm going to drop that not on top. I'm going to bring my needle up and I'm gonna just gonna make a fairly longish running stitch. And what you can do is very carefully around the tip of your needle, along the grain of your fabric. So I just made a long stitch. I've left a small gap and I'm going to make another long stitch by running my needle along the fabric like that. What I'm actually doing is following the green line. So I'm just going to keep working stitches until I draw around level with this second pin and then we'll work the vertical line in the same way. When I do this process, I'm trying to keep my needle at quite a steep angle so that I don't jab the point into the fabric and damage it at all. I also want to watch quite carefully to make sure I'm maintaining that grain line and not just rely on running my needle across the fabric. As I draw level with pin, I want to make sure that my stitch extends just past the pen itself, much like in the tacking. I want my lines to meet and where I have a right angle like this, I can actually make them overlap, which will give me all the information I need. My pen is approximately there. And I'm just going to take the stitch, couple of threads, the fabric beyond that, so that my stitch will overlap. Since my needle has been plunged in the vicinity of where I want to start, I won't be trailing my thread too far. And I have plenty of thread left. I can actually do the other line. So I'm going to use the ruler again. Come up on the correct green line. Just going to double-check using my needle. And yeah, good. So you can see there with my first stitch, I'm going to cross over my threads and that gives me the complete corner. So I know where both of my lines and it's right where they cross. So we know from the measurements we took earlier that the top line of the hillock sits around 7.8 centimeters away from that initial pen I put in, which is just at a site down here. So what I'm gonna do is lay my ruler back on the fabric level with the pin. And just so that I get good clearance, I'm going to put the pin in about 8.5 centimeters. This will give me an overlap, kind of like I have down here. So I'm just going to put in those last few stitches trying not to stop myself with the pin if I can help it. And then we There we go. I'm going to make that same little cross outside of my design line. So I just wanted to secure my thread a little bit. So I'm gonna make a little bit of an X with attacking thread. And that should secure everything so I can trim it. 30. Drawing on against tacking: So with attacking now complete, I can bring my tracing back into place and line the very edges of my design up with my tacking. You can see there I've just got a very small amount of overlap down in the corner and a little bit more generous up here. I can now go ahead and pounce on as before. But when I come to stitch, I will need to plunge my needle on the straight lines to give myself a nice crisp edge. So in this instance of pouncing on, I'm actually going to use the fine liner pen to draw. And I have tested it a little bit on my fabric. It seems to be going down quite well. But one of the things I notice is that the pen does bump around a little bit with the grain. So you just have to be careful because it doesn't slide smoothly across the fabric like a paintbrush does it, it will jump about with the texture of the thread. Again, I've come right down to the bottom of my frame where the webbing sits just to test the pen so it doesn't encroach on the actual piece itself. So I've Poundstone and this time I have a little bit of tissue paper just to rest my hand on. I have noticed that I've been picking up some of the parents and pen on the side of my hand so it doesn't dry instantly. So there is a possibility that you'll pick it up and smudge it. So I'm just going to start with this bottom line. Gently running the pen, cross the pounds lines. Trying to achieve the best line I can. So much like with the paintbrush, you will pick up pounce on the nib of the pen. So you just want to wipe that off with a tissue. And you can see here now that I've put the lines in, my paint line sits right up against the attacking in both instances. I'm just going to slowly make my way across the piece, trying to put in the lines as accurately as I can and I can still feel the pen. I'm kind of darting across the fabric. So I'm trying to use some pressure. But if I press down too hard, that bumping action is gonna be accentuated. As I'm moving my tissue paper around. I just want to make sure that I'm not placing it over any of the lines because I don't want the tracing of tissue paper to remove any of the pounds. It will act like your hand in that way. So I'm trying to work methodically across the piece, keeping an eye on my pants lines so that they don't disappear. Once I've drawn the line on, however, I can place my tissue paper over the top and just carry on because I know it's protected. I would not do this with paint because you can get blobs of paint on the fabric. So if you were to place tissue down over the top of them, you would end up smudging it around. So now with that complete, I can leave it for 1020 minutes or so and then I can dust off the remaining pounds. So how did the drawing on go? Well, not too badly. Overall, up-close, I think my lines are more erratic than the painting on which kinda makes sense. The pen itself was moving around quite a bit due to the texture of the fabric. And paint will flow a little bit more smoothly than the pen, because obviously you've got a softer applicator. But the pen has allowed me to create finer lines. If you were to put the two together. Painting on with paint and drawing on with the pen. You can see that the lines are a lot finer in the pen than they are in the paint. Which again makes sense. I have a very fine nib that I was working with. So despite the fact that the fabric was disrupting the line, the line itself is a lot thinner. With this process. After I Poundstone, I didn't necessarily have to use the pen that I did. I actually used it because it shows up better in the footage. I could also have used the HB pencil. I know on this fabric, however, the HP isn't as obvious. So for filming it would have been probably not very good at all, but for just me stitching, I would have struggled to see the line somewhat. Now I could have used the washable pen, but I tend to find with the washable pen, your lines end up broader. The ink spreads out in the fabric and you end up with thicker lines. Which shouldn't be too much of a problem if you're going to wash your piece because that the reaction with water causes the lines to disappear. But I'm not intending to wash this piece. I may be using wool on it. And if you're not careful, we'll can felt with agitation and small amount of heat from the water. You can actually felt your stitches, which I don't want. This isn't really an option. Plus the nib is quite fibrous. I think the parents could have collected in the nib and potentially stayed there and I would have struggled to get it out. So it's not really a good option. The other one is the gel pen. I did wonder about this. The pounds I have though is very, very fine and I was a little bit concerned that it might get caught up in the roller ball. So I decided not to use that one. And again, the only colors I have, our silver and gold and I'm not sure how the gold would have stood out on camera. Couple of things I have noticed I missed the line here quite significantly, so I'm going to have to revisit my stitch plan and see what I've got planned for there and do I need to fill it in a bit more than I plan to or use a thicker thread. Maybe even change the stitch entirely. Also, here, the line coming out of the leaf comes down to the right-hand side of the point. And actually when I look at my original design, the line comes out of the left-hand side of the point. So there's quite an aberration there from the original design. Now how do I have a copy of my design nearby? I could have referred to the original and draw the line accordingly. This was an area that was a little bit congested with parents. Had I've had a reference point, it probably wouldn't have happened. This wouldn't have drawn on in the same way. Now, when I have very complicated designs, I always do ensure that I have a copy of my design nearby. This one, the lines are fairly simple. I've drawn it on a few times now. It's probably a little bit cocky, you a little bit arrogant about it. I should have just had this as a safety net and I didn't. But that being said, it's actually not a big deal. The line is coming out on the right rather than the left overall. Yes, I prefer the aesthetic of this, but this isn't enough to make me rip the fabric off the frame and start again. The line itself is quite smooth. There's nothing there that I can't cover with stitching. It's just going to look marginally different. So this is essentially a personal choice. If you were to do something like this and have an issue with it, feel free to start again. Absolutely. But I'm kinda relaxed about this kind of thing. It doesn't make such a difference that I feel it's necessary to start from scratch. So I'm gonna go ahead and work this piece. And again, the stitch plan can remain the same. I don't really need to make any changes because it's just a switch from left to right. 31. Good Practice: Dressing a slate frame: So we've done it. We have chosen our fabric threads, the frame we're going to use, we framed up and we've painted on, which means we're good to go. Except there are one or two best practice items that I want to go over with you just before we get going. Sometimes when working on a slight frame or a Victorian roller frame, you may find that the design sits to four written. So when you're sat at your trust or you might find that you're reaching in and having to stretch to get to the design itself. So when that happens, you can actually roll some of the excess fabric around the bars. It's not strictly necessary in this instance. I actually think I've got quite a lot of access to both sides of my frame, but I'm going to show it to you anyway. You can roll in both sides or you can roll in one. It doesn't matter either way. So the first thing I'm gonna do is loosen off all the strings. So I'm going to pull on my string and wrap all of my excess thread. You don't want to be standing on your frame when the strings are tight. So I'm going to pull all of the strings loose. So I need to pull just a little bit more through. And the strings are now very loose. There's a lot of excess there. And it's quite reminiscent of what they look like when we first put the strings in, when we were working with that big scary needle. I've loosened off the strings and untied the remaining string at both ends on both sides. The next thing I need to do is take out this pin because the fabric is so tight, I'm probably going to have to stand on it. And that works in the same way as I've shown you in one of the previous videos. I'm going to put my foot here, slide out the pin, and I will do that on the other side as well. I've taken out all four of my pins, so I've now got full access to move these bars around. And rather than take the bar out fully, what I'm going to do is just slide out and lift out one of those loops because I know I'm definitely not gonna need that last one can do the same thing on the other side, just outside of the camera. And with my bar now free, I can turn it and you can see that the fabric is starting to turn and sit on the wooden bar. Now I've turned it once, which means the holes that my sidebar sitting are facing up towards me. Which is not great because there's no hole on this face for the bar to slide through. So I'm actually going to have to turn it twice. Then I can take my bar and just slide it back into place. This string here is sitting on my roller bar, so I'm going to take that one out. This one is quite close, but I think there's enough clearance there. There's probably just a few millimeters of clearance there. So it's not sitting on the role of bar. And because I've got that clearance when I come to stretch it, I know that gap is gonna get bigger, so I will leave that string in place. And I'm just going to repeat the process on the other side. Now before I do anything else, I just want us to check to make sure all of my loops are still around my sidebar. And they are. I like to have this string on top as well. And I've just checked the other side. And the same thing is true. So I haven't lost any of my loops. So I don't need to restring ever anything. So I've turned my frame around and I'm just going to repeat that process. Sliding the bar up and out on both sides. Turning the bar wants seeing where that hole sits ten years second time. I'm just taking out any of the strings that I know I don't need. My, my test for that again, is the string itself sitting on this roller bar. If it is, it doesn't need to be there. So I can pull it out. With that done, I can slide my arm back into place on both sides. And again, just check to make sure I haven't lost any of those loops. So I don't need to restrain my strings when I come to tighten everything up. So much like with the framing up, I can now put my pin it back in. So I am now 1234 on the inside. So I'm going to mirror that on the opposing side as well. And from here, I will tension my frame in the same way that I've done in previous videos. I'm going to put the other pins in. I will then stand on the sides to get it as tight as I can and set about retiring the strings. Again, I do it incrementally on each side, much like the original framing up process, I am looking to keep everything centered and straight. If I can finish tension in my frame, both the bars and the strings. And one thing I did notice was after I stood on the frame putting my foot here, I'm pushing down, moving out those pins. What I noticed was that one of the holes at the end. Just opened up a little bit more. So the gap here between what would've been the first string, which is this one. And the bar was too big, so I just grabbed out the big scary needle, put the stitch back in here so you can see the gap there has been closed up. Now all I need to do is cover my frame to protect the fabric and the stitching as it goes in. So the last thing to do before I start stitching on my frame is to place something down to protect a fabric. And when I get the stitching in the stitches itself, the covers will kinda sit in place. So if you're leaning and you have your arms somewhere on the frame, you want a little bit of protection so that any dirt or oils on the back of your arm don't end up on your frame. So you can cover aspects of it that you're not working on. And also when you're not working on the piece of tool, when you put it away to go and do other things? Quite what they would be. I don't know what else is there stitching. But you want to just cover it to make sure you don't get any airborne particulate, it's dust, that kind of thing. Again, pets may jump up that you don't want them to keep trying keep them away as much as you can, but they may jump up there. I've seen pictures on Instagram. A cat curled up in a nice big, fluffy lump in the middle of somebody's frame. It's not a good idea, but it does happen. So what we're gonna do, I have tissue paper, so I'm going to put some tissue paper on this frame. Equally. You could use fabric. I actually have some reusable covers that I can just throw in the wash after each project that are made out of old bed sheets, I've done a simple him on the edges and I use them occasionally as well. So we're going to use the tissue paper in this instance. And I have some pins because I'm going to put everything down. So my first piece, I'm going to fold in half across the length and place it on one side. It's going to sit here. And that's going to act to protect the sides of my fabric. Now, we've talked before about how this is an exit. So when I draw or paint on, I test my pen or paint along this edge. So it is an excess that it should disappear depending on how I choose to mount it. But you still don't want it to get dirty. You still don't want grease, oil, particularly airborne particulates, that kind of thing on here. We're going to place a piece down one edge and you can see that it actually encroaches a little bit on the design here, and it will do here at the bottom as well. I'm actually going to pin it in the corners at the top and bottom. And again, to do that, I'm going to push up from underneath because the fabric is very tight. But what you can do, you don't want to catch your hand on the pin. So what you can do is just push the very tip of it down again. So it sits between the tissue and the fabric itself. So what this means is given it's only attached on the very extreme points, any pin marks I get from this will be on the outer edges. It also means that I can fold it back slightly to access these two parts of the design. So I'm going to repeat that process on the other side. With these two larger pieces, I'm going to pin them at the top and the bottom. But because this side comes in, I might actually do is secure them underneath. Now, the way you do this and the way you arrange it will very much be determined by the size of your tissue. I have A3 size tissue here. And as a result, the tissue isn't as wide as my frame, which it normally is. The tissue I normally use is often bigger and it actually sits the width of the webbing on my frame. So I can normally get away with overlaying my tissue like so. But because that's going to infringe on the side pieces, I might actually be better off attaching it underneath. That way I can access everything. Again, I'm going to try and keep my pins to the extreme parts of my fabric. I'm keeping it very low so that I don't get pin marks near my piece, which can be distracting when it's finished. So with that done, if I ever want to leave my frame and not work on it for awhile, I can just cover it over like this and it should be fine if I'm going to travel with it. I can put a couple of extra pins at the top and the bottom just to hold these two in place and stop everything flopping around. And when I come to work on it, I can move the tissue back. How that resting along this bar at the bottom. Fold out what I need to see. So if I want to work on this piece, particularly, I could fold that back, move that into place and work on this. And if I'm still worried about the rest of this design, I could actually take my pin out and fold it over or move the tissue over so it's a bit more protected. So you can move everything around to your heart's content. And as I say, the way you do this will very much depend on the size of the tissue paper or re-usable fabric pieces that you have. 32. Good Practice: Dressing a ring frame: If you're working in a hoop, you can protect your work in a similar fashion with either fabric or tissue. I must admit I prefer tissue because we're going to tear some of it away. But you could also use fabric that you kept. You've just got to be careful not to cut the fabric your embroidering on. So you start by removing the outer hoop and putting that to one side. Take a piece of tissue alive that over the base hoop. Take your piece like that over there piece of tissue trying to get it centered if you can. Now in this instance, yes, I have already transferred onto my fabric. I prefer to transfer onto my fabric. Before I do an arrangement like this with the tissue paper, I just find it easier, but you could equally put a blank piece of fabric in here and then transfer on after you framed up, It's up to you. But I'm going to put another piece of tissue paper over the top. So what I've actually done is protected both the top and the underneath of the fabric from the hoop itself. So I'm just going to put me out of the pond as normal. You would tighten that up to the screwdriver as normal as well. It gets a bit fiddly. What you have to remember though, is when you come to pull the fabric to tension it, to make it taught in frame, you've got to separate out those layers so that you're only pulling on the fabric itself and not either bits of the tissue. From here, I want to uncover my design so I can stitch it. So you can kind of pull a little bit at the tissue. So I've just got pulled there and I can start to uncover the fits, but I'm going to work. I could do the whole thing in one go if I wanted to, um, or I could just uncovered the bits as I go to work them and then tariff those bits of tissue so they're not getting in my way. And you can see there I haven't pulled on my fabric properly because this is just a demonstration. But you also have to remember to do it on the reverse as well. And if you have trouble getting hold of that tissue, if you are careful with a needle, you can rub it across the tissue itself and just pick up some of the tissue to tear it. You've just got to be careful that you're not scratching the fabric below. But if you're struggling, that's a good way to get in to remove the fabric at the back. If this gets too annoying as well, you can always trim it back. Now bedtime. So I want to go and go to bed to sleep because sleep is useful and good. I don't want to leave it out like this particularly white fabric that I've got in the frame. I don't want to leave it out like this with the fabric exposed. So what we're gonna do in this instance is just take one of those fabric cupboard I told you about. Try and wrap it in underneath. And then I often find when I'm using the stalk, particularly, I find the store and hold everything in place. And that's just gonna give a level of protection. Once again, much like the tissue on the slight frame, it's going to protect your work from airborne particulates, pets, that kind of thing. Then when I want to work at again, when I went to a stop word, again, I can just take it off and go to work. Let's say, for instance, that work has just gotten really busy and I'm not going to have time to work on any stitching for the next couple of weeks. Now on a slate frame, I can put the tissue over my fabric, make sure I move any needles to the edges or take them out of the frame entirely and I can prop it up. I usually stand it up on its side. I took it somewhere out of the way where it's not going to get knocked over or to dusty. And I can just leave it like that for a few weeks with the hoop because the hoop itself can leave marks and do damage, you're actually better off taking it out. So we're just going to unscrew a little bit. Take the hoop or ideally, I want to store it flat if I can, but sometimes that's not always doable. So what I can instead do is using the tube of a wrapping paper, roll or wrapping paper or from some kitchen towel, something like that. Or even just like I'm going to do it now, I can just roll it. Making sure that the embroidery sits on the outside. You're better off slightly stretching it. It's not too much of a stretch, but you're better off slightly stretching on the outside rather than compressing it on the inside. I can just roll it up in its tissue or in an extra piece of fabric to keep it nice and clean. And as long as that doesn't get squashed by anything, I can store that somewhere safe. Hoops will leave marks in your fabric in the long term. And you saw that in one of the earlier videos that can do damage to your fabric. So if you're not going to work on it for a long time, take it out and find somewhere else to store it. 33. Good Practice: General advice: When you finished stitching for the day, it's really important that you keep your thread somewhere safe. Placing them in a plastic receivable bag will help that will keep the dust off of them. Alternatively, a small Ziploc pouch that does Zip. Placing them ten or other suitable container. Or if nothing else, you can just lay them out on a piece of fabric or a piece of tissue and just roll them to keep the dust off of them to keep them safe so that no claws or insects possibly get to them. Just store them somewhere with your frame in a kit bag or similar, or if you have a slight frame, you can just rest them on top. But just make sure that they are much like your fabric, protected from environmental particulates and other things. Food and drink. Whether it be a full meal, a sandwich, or light snack, as you see here, it's best not to consume or how food around your work. It can be very easy to transfer on stains, particularly oil and grease stains onto your fabric. Crumbs and liquids can drop off on to the frame itself if you eat over it. So if you are feeling a bit pinkish, just get up from your frame and have a snack. You're feeling a bit thirsty again, get up, make yourself a cup of tea, coffee, juice, that kind of thing. But do so away from your frames and there's no possibility of splashing or dropping anything onto your fabric. That being said, I do often have a glass or bottle of water nearby so that I can stay hydrated when I'm stitching. Water generally is ok. There are a few fabrics, particularly silk, that can be water stained. But on the whole, you're safer with water than other liquids. Washing your hands is a really important thing to do before you start embroidering. You can pick up regionals on your hands through cooking, consuming food or beverages. Simply on a hot day, the sweat can build up on your hands. You also have natural oils, but your skin excretes. All of these things can transfer onto your fabric, leaving stains which often can't be removed. So washing your hands after eating food and drink. Hot on a hot day, just regular getting a promotion your hands whilst you're stitching is a really important thing to do. So where does all this information leave us? Well, believe it or not, we are ready for our first topic, which is going to be sophistic cheese. This is a fantastic way to take your first few steps into the world of hand embroidery, which is actually on thoughts subject with many different disciplines. There is a wide range or fabrics and threads that are suitable for surface stitches. When combined with the stitches themselves, you can make a wide variety of textures and effects. You could spend a lifetime studying service stitches. But our first course together, we're gonna be learning nine. And as promised, I'm going to take you through the materials and equipment that I'm gonna be using. So I'm going to be using my favorite slate frame with my favorite piece of calico and my preferred to transfer on methods of tracing with an HB pencil. This is going to keep everything from relatively simple for me, the Calico is easy to source and I have plenty of at home. The trace on method is very straightforward. There was no fast and it went down very easily. Now the slight frame is really because I'm filming it for you guys. This will give me a nice platform to record good quality video so that you can see how the stitches work. I can't stress this enough. You do not need to use a slight frame. Any of the other frames we looked at will be sufficient. And as I've said before, all of the designs are sized to go into an eight inch hoop. The threads I'm gonna be using primarily to demonstrate the stitches will be a size eight cotton pearlite. I'm choosing this thread because it's quite thick and quite stiff. So when I make stitches with it, I'm gonna get good definition, which means as a viewer, as a student, you will be able to see better the shapes you need to make with the stitches and how they go down. If I were to use, say, a wool, wool can look fluffy and because it's a softer thread, you can lose that definition somewhat. It's not to say you shouldn't use it, but for demonstration purposes is not necessarily the most practical. I could also use a stranded cotton. This tends to be finer. So visibility on screen might be a bit more challenging for people. And again, it's softer. So sometimes it can be less distinct as one of the most prolific threads available for embroider as around the world. I would actually recommend this if you're looking to invest in just one type of thread, this is probably going to be the one you will find most easily. So I would recommend the stranded cotton. Remember, you're not looking to do video demonstrations, so it won't matter, but it's a softer, finer thread. But my chief recommendation is go with what's easy to source, because easy to source is generally less expensive and this doesn't have to be an expensive endeavor. But realistically, I'm going to look to my stash because I do have a stash of threads, which is quite extensive at this point. There's a lot of world, lots stranded cotton and great big tangle of threads there. Much of what I have has been inherited from other people, which can be useful, but at times can be quite difficult. I have some threads and you can just about see here, this one hasn't really been stored very well. It's gotten a bit dusty. There's some fibers in it. If you do inherit somebody stash, check it very carefully for insects. Insects can get up and take residence in your stash. Particularly wool and silk will have potentially have a problem with moths. There's something else called silverfish, which I think go after starch, which they find in various things. So if you do find what looked like larvae or eggs or insects, dispose of the thread, don't use it. But I have checked all of this quite carefully. And a couple of things stood out to me. This one, as I say, a little bit dirty, little bit dusty. This one, I'm not sure if it's going to show up on camera, but this one is dirty. There's a different color at the end here to the bit that has been left covered for some time. So the question is, should I be using these threads? I think it's a personal question that each and every one of us has to answer. I know a lot of my colleagues were just throw these away. But we also have to look at how we're gonna be doing this course. As I've mentioned, we will be doing sampling. Sampling is important. It allows you to practice the stitch, to get to understand it, to understand how it looks, how long you can make the stitches. We essentially what the tolerance is our allows you to fall into a rhythm because you practice it over and over again. But in terms of the aesthetic of it, it doesn't necessarily have to look pretty. You can make it pretty if you want to. And I encourage you to play with color and experiment with all those things in a safe testing ground that is sampling. But also, does it matter if my thread is a bit dirty? Again, that's the question that we will have to answer for ourselves. And in my case, no, I don't think it does matter. Sampling for me is just a process to go through. It doesn't have to be a magnificent piece of art. I'm tend to be quite practical about that. If I make a mistake, I'll generally leave it in so that I can look back on that mistake and remember how I made it. So if you do happen to have dirty threats, do take a moment to think about whether you can use them for sampling or not because you can then save expensive threads for the actual piece that you're going to do that you may want to put on your wall, show other people and be proud of because threads come at different price points. So I have some cell can re on variegated threads here that would be lovely to use. But when I do use them, I want people to be able to view them and appreciate their beauty. The course itself will be available in a short while, so you should have plenty of time to source the materials and equipment you will need for it. It's also a good idea in advance of the class to download the template from the description below, which is for the grid of squares that we're gonna be using for the sampling of practicing of our stitches. Now to do that, I laid the printed template on a flat surface, placed my piece of Calico over the top, tried to straighten up the grain as much as I could. And then I simply used a ruler and an HB pencil to draw on the grid to keep it nice and crisp. If there's anything we've looked at in this course that you would like further information on. Feel free to check out the Learning Center on my website, www dot a stitching coin.co.UK. I'm also known as the stitching Quine across Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. It would be lovely to connect with you there. I can't wait for our first-class. I love surface ditches and I can't wait for you to love them as well. I will see you soon.