Stick and Stitch Embroidery: Embellish with Water Soluble Stabilizer

1. Introduction: Have you ever wanted to stitch a knit hat? How about a jean jacket or a tote bag? Tricky, right? We cannot easily trace an embroidery design onto a knit hat, a denim jacket, or even a thick textured tote bag. Luckily, this is where stick and stitch embroidery templates come in handy. We can stitch right through these water dissolving embroidery templates in order to stitch hard to trace services. These stickers open up a whole new world of stitching possibilities. The downside, these stick and stitch embroidery stickers don't usually come with instructions or the typical charts and diagrams that you would see with traditional embroidery design. So how do we know what to stitch? In this class, I'll guide you through key factors that will help you navigate free form stitching projects. Hi, I'm Lauren Webber, fiber artist and designer. I've been a quilter for over 25 years. I have been featured in Art Quilting Studio magazine and I've had quilts accepted into national shows. Part of my style of art quilting is adding in those delicate details. And embroidery is one of my go to ways to add character to my projects. I like exploring new ways to try out different stitches and to add my own artful spin to my stitching projects. Stick and stitch embroidery is a great way to dip your toes into the world of do it yourself embroidery, often stick and stitch projects don't come with instructions I know, right? But this allows us to get creative and to decide how we want to stitch our projects. We get to choose which colors we want to use in our projects, which stitches we're going to utilize, and we can explore different stitching styles to create a fiber illustration, that's all our own. In this class, I'll guide you through a do it yourself embroidery process so that you can approach stick and stitch projects with confidence. We're going to talk about how to set your project up for success. From choosing your floss colors, to categorizing embroidery stitches based on how they can be used in your project, to using water soluble stabilizer. We'll cover the ins and outs of stick and stitch project essentials. Plus we'll walk through ten versatile embroidery stitches that you can use in your projects. For your class project, you will stitch your own unique embroidery project using water soluble paper. This class is for confident or experienced stitchers. Beginners are welcome to follow along, but may want to check out my introductory embroidery course to make sure they feel confident loading an embroidery hoop, knowing how to use six strand flaws, and even how to thread an embroidery needle. Without a doubt, stick and stitch embroidery can be a great resource to add to your creative tool box. By the end of this class, you'll not only have the confidence to navigate stitching without instructions, but you'll also have a resource for stitching hard to trace surfaces. These techniques will help you expand your embroidery skills and will help you add your own artful spin to your stitching projects. So if you're ready to expand your embroidery knowledge, join me now and let's get stitching. 2. Embroidery Overview: Embroidery is the art of stitching thread, floss or string onto a fibrous surface. There's hand embroidery and there's machine embroidery and lots of different projects in between. With embroidery, we can embellish handbags clothing, wall art, hooped fabric, art quilts, regular quilts, pillows. There are so many different types of projects. The technique we're going to talk about in this class is for hand stitched embroidery projects. You see stick and stitch embroidery is ideal for transferring patterns and designs onto hard to trace surfaces. With most hand embroidery projects you're going to be working from a design unless you're an expert embroiderer and you're okay for free stitching and just making a design as you go. A lot of times we're going to be working with a set pattern or a set motif that we want to stitch onto a surface. Usually when we're working with these designs and patterns, we are able to either trace them onto our piece of fabric, or we can use a light box, a window, or some other means of taking that original design from the pattern and transferring it onto the piece of fabric that we're going to be stitching. But what happens when we want to embroider something like a denim jacket or a knit hat? It can be pretty hard to transfer a design onto these types of surfaces. Right? Well, that's where stick and stitch patterns come in handy. In this class, we're going to cover the groundwork for using stick and stitch water soluble paper to transfer designs and patterns onto those hard to trace surfaces. Because when we're all done stitching, we're going to rinse away that stick and stitch template since it's water soluble paper, leaving your beautiful embellishments to shine. The other interesting thing about stick and stitch projects is they don't usually come with instructions. So if you are making your own or if you're purchasing one, say off of Etsy or from another fiber artist, a lot of times they don't automatically come with instructions on where to place each stitch. Traditionally, embroidery projects will come with stitch keys and color keys. And you can put this stitch in this location, in that color, in that location. Well, stick and stitch projects are a little bit more advanced. They're for intermediate to advanced stitches. And usually you have to choose your own stitches for the project. Now, this can be awesome because we have so much creative freedom with these types of projects, right? We can choose our stitches, we can choose our colors, We can fill a space, We can outline a space. We can decide exactly how we want our project to go. But on the downside, we have created freedom which can come with overwhelm. I totally get it. I have been there in this. I'm going to walk us through the whole process. Things to keep in mind. Stitches to consider when you're working on your project. If you don't have instructions to follow some color examples and the whole process so that we can break it down and make it a little bit easier. If you're ready to get started, let's talk about our class project and where we're going from here. I can't wait to get started. 3. Class Project: In this lesson, we're going to talk about your class project. Your project will be to use water soluble paper to stitch an embroidery design on the project of your choice. So you can opt to practice with a traditional piece of fabric in a hoop. Or you can get a little bit creative and choose a project that's a little bit more outside of the hoop. I mean box, so you're going to choose your design, your template, your pattern for this project. If you're feeling overwhelmed by choosing a design, I do have some that we can practice on. You can go over to the class resources and download those to use for your project. You're going to apply the pattern to whatever surface you choose to stitch on. You're going to decide which stitches you want to use in your project. Don't worry, I'm going to cover a few basic stitches that will work with just about any stick and stitch project you have. It'll be a great place to start. And of course, you're going to rinse out your water soluble paper template. You're gonna let it dry, and then I'd love to see it shine. So be sure to take a picture. Share it with a group, Drop it in the class projects, and I cannot wait to see what you create. So if you're ready to get started, in the next lesson, we're going to talk about water soluble paper. All the ins and outs, how it works and how you can use it for your project. I'll see you there. 4. Water Soluble Stabilizer: Let's talk about water soluble paper and how to use it. I prefer to use sticky fabric, solve by Sulky. The principle version, it's sheets of a fabric, like paper or mesh that rinses away in water. We can use this mesh to print our embroidery designs. We can cut them out and then use them like stickers. On our embroidery projects. We can stick it to our embroidery project, stitch right through it, and when we're all done, it will dissolve away in water. I like the principle version because it can be used like printer paper in my home printer, which is awesome. So I can take digital designs and print them right out on these sheets of paper, cut them out, and use them for my projects. This process works best with line drawings filled in pictures or shapes tend to fade as you're stitching on them. So if you're printing your own stick and stitch stickers, I highly recommend just using simple line drawings and then filling in with your embroidery floss as you stitch. So if you want to print your own stick and stitch stickers, be sure to find a paper size that's compatible with your printer. In my case, these printable sheets are eight a 2 " by 11 ", which is a very standard paper size for my home printer. I highly recommend doing a test print with just regular printer paper to make sure that the design that you're printing is going to print at the size and scale that you want for your project. We'll dive into this a little bit more in a couple of lessons, but basically, you want to make sure that the template that you're printing is going to fit the space that you want to stitch. The sheets can be a little bit pricey, which is also why I recommend doing a test print on regular paper first, just to make sure everything comes out just the way you want it. You also want to do a test print to see how your printer loads and feeds. Because there's two sides to the water soluble paper, at least the one that I use. There's the backing, like a sticker backing that we're going to be peeling away. It's just a waxy, shiny piece of paper. And then there's the fabric mesh that has a sticky back that we're going to be using to stitch through in our projects. You want to make sure that your printer is printing or that you're drawing onto the mesh because that's the part that we need to stick to our fabric. So you want to know how your printer is going to load and process your paper so that it prints on the correct side, on the mesh side, and not on the backing that we're going to be taking off into. Not using. In my case, I have to load my printer with the mesh side facing down and then it will print properly on the mesh side as it runs through my printer. So once you're feeling confident with the size of your project and how to load the paper into your printer properly, you can go ahead and print out your project. But be sure to follow the manufacturer's instructions for the water soluble paper that you are using. Make sure it's going to be compatible with your printer because you don't want to gum up your machine or have any issues with your printer and you don't want to damage your printer. So be sure to follow all of the instructions for the paper that you are using. Occasionally I find that the paper will get stuck in my machine and I can usually easily get it out. But more often than not, it runs through my printer at home just fine. If you're unsure and you don't want to risk putting the paper through your printer. You can also generally use a water safe marker. So a marker that's going to be permanent, it's not going to run in water. You can use this on your water soluble paper mesh. You don't want the ink running on your fabric. So if you're not sure if the ink from your marker is going to run, then do a little test patch. I always like doing a little test patch just to be safe. It doesn't hurt to test out your tools before you get them onto your final project. I'll have a few templates for you that you can use to trace using a window or a light box if you want to trace onto your paper or if you want to print using your printer. That you can download in the class resources so that you can follow along with this class. If you don't have your own design templates that you want to use, if you have multiple designs on one sheet, you can go ahead and cut them out. I like to leave about a half an inch or so around each design just to make sure that I have enough space to stitch without the sticker peeling up as I'm stitching through my fabric. Once you're ready to start stitching, we're simply going to peel off the back of the sticker and stick it onto our project. We're going to stitch through it, and when we're all done, it'll dissolve away in water. Don't worry, we'll go through this process in later lessons. But I wanted you to get an idea of the full process as we're moving forward so you can know where we're heading. If this feels like a lot and you don't want to print out your own stickers or draw your own designs, then you can also buy stick and stitch stickers already made from independent embroidery artists. A lot of times you can find them on Etsy and these usually come in thematic packs. They're super cute, so a lot of times they will be in packs, you know, winter themes, or you might find ones that are fall themes. They come in all these cute little themes usually, so that you can find stickers that you'll enjoy working on for multiple projects. So now that we know a little bit about how stick and chickers work, we're going to go ahead and talk about our stitching surface or the material that we're going to be stitching on. Whether it be a tote bag, a denim jacket, a knit hat, whatever surface you're choosing to stitch on. We're going to talk about some considerations for how to make sure that you have a successful project. As you're choosing what type of surface that you're going to stitch your project on. If you're ready to hear those details, go on ahead and meet me in the next lesson. 5. Stitching Surface & Stabilization: In this lesson, we're going to talk about what surface you're going to choose to stitch on and stabilization. With most traditional hand embroidery projects, you're going to be using a piece of fabric and an embroidery hoop. This piece of fabric is usually cotton, or linen, or something loose in light that's easy to stitch through. And you're going to use an embroidery hoop to make sure that that piece of fabric doesn't pucker or tuck. It's important to stabilize our project, the base material, because we are adding heavy thread work to our project. That's how embroidery works. A hoop or a stabilizer will prevent warping, tucks, and puckering that can crop up With this heavy thread work, it helps to give the fabric some extra support so that it can carry the weight and density of the floss. Heavier stitching surfaces like denim, might not need a lot of extra support or stabilization. Because denim is a thicker fabric. But something thin, like cotton, you'll absolutely need to stabilize your project before you start stitching. Well, we're going to use similar concepts with our project. The thing is that we can apply these stickers to other fun surfaces that can be a little bit bulkier, a little bit thicker, a little bit stretchier than traditional cotton. So let's talk about that. So the first thing you're going to need to consider with your project is what surface you want to stitch on. Are you planning to stitch on a pair of sneakers? Are you planning to stitch on a jean jacket? A pocketbook. What is that material like? Is it stretchy? Is it, is it, why is it like a knit where you can see right through it? If you're opting to try one of these fun stitching surfaces, here are a few things to keep in mind. You need to consider the density of the fabric that you're choosing. Is it two dense? For example, if you're using something like denim, it can be a pretty dense material. It can be a little bit tough to stitch through. You might have to make some adjustments. I'm going to recommend only stitching through one layer at a time. If you're anywhere near a seam or where multiple layers are stacked up, it's going to be pretty tough to stitch through. So you're going to want to find an open space if you have a thicker material and not stitch through any major seams or any bigger thicker areas. This goes for hats too. If you notice the seams and baseball caps, sometimes it can be a little bit too thick to stitch through. Or sometimes there's even a stabilizer at the front of the cap that's nearly impossible to stitch through. So be mindful of how thick and how dense your project is, so if you are determined to try one of these thicker surfaces, but you're having trouble stitching through it, you might want to consider a sharper thinner needle that will be able to slide more easily through your project. You also might want to consider using a thimble because sometimes if you're placing extra pressure to really get your sewing needle through these tough thick surfaces, it can be tougher on your fingers, so you might want a thimble or some sort of finger protection as you're working. And honestly, if it just becomes too much and too difficult, you might want to consider just changing surfaces entirely to something a little bit thinner, a little bit easier to work your needle through. The other thing to keep in mind, we touched on this briefly, is the material water safe? Is it going to be damaged? Is it going to get ruined in water? Water is a key component in our project because we're using water soluble paper, which means this template needs to be able to wash away in water. You want to make sure that you're using a material that is going to be able to hold up when it's exposed to warm water. That way you make sure that your project isn't going to warp, get discolored or disintegrate when it's exposed to water later on in your project. The next thing to consider is stretchiness. I run into this a lot when I'm working on knit hats. I love stitching knit hats. I just think they're fun and cozy and awesome. One of the things you can run into sometimes with knits though is that they kind of stretch, Which means that as we're stitching them, they can get warped. With something like this, you might want to use a small embroidery hoop around your stitching area just to stabilize your project. I sometimes use an embroidery hoop and sometimes I don't. It depends on the level of stretchiness. If your project is really, really stretchy, you might want to stabilize it. The good news is, the water soluble stabilizer that we're going to be using is already a stabilizer. Now usually the stick and stitch stabilizer that we're using for our template will provide a good amount of support and stabilization. If you think that you need additional support and stabilization, you can always add an embroidery hoop into your project. The other consideration as you're choosing your stitching surface is texture. Is the material that you're going to stitch on is flat? Does it have ridges? Flatter surfaces are easier to stitch on. If you choose a project with ridges or bumps, like a knit hat or a sweater, you might need to use a bulkier string or yarn so that your stitches don't get lost in the valleys and the hills of the material. For example, if you try stitching thin lettering on a ridged hat, it might get lost in the valleys. But using a yarn will work much better to show off your work. If in doubt, I'm going to recommend definitely choose a flatter surface, especially when you're getting started because it'll be much easier to work on. So now that we've talked a little bit about the surface materials we can use and stabilization, how to make sure that our stitches come out looking nice and beautiful. We're going to go on ahead and talk about pattern selection. Which designs we might want to choose for our project. If you're ready to talk about which patterns to choose, go on ahead and meet me in the next lesson. 6. Design Selection: So now that you've decided what surface you want to stitch on, whether it be denim or knit, or sleeker or pocketbook. Now we've got to think about which template we're going to use for our project. So when you're thinking about which embroidery design you're going to use, I want you to keep a few things in mind. The first one is the size of the template. Will it fit within the stitching space that you set aside? What scale is it going to be? Right? Also, is the template going to be too big for your stitching surface? Remember in the last lesson we mentioned that you might have to be careful of seams or thicker folded areas. I recommend being mindful of how much stitching area you have available to you. If you have something like seams or bulky materials that are impacting where you can stitch in your project. Keep that in mind as you're choosing your design. You want to make sure that it's going to fit into your space with a little extra wiggle room on the sides. And especially if you're planning to use an embroidery hoop. That way you can make sure that the hoop will fit snugly and you'll be ready to go for your project. The next thing I want you to think about is the designs location. Where are you going to place it? Do you want it perfectly centered? Do you want it off center? Do you want it angled? Think about how you want your template oriented within the space. What I like to do is if I have my template all ready to go, you can spin it, twist it, turn it, or scale it up and down. If you're working off of a computer designed to make sure it's going to fit into your space, You also want to consider your designs shape. Now some templates come as all around patterns. You can place them anywhere. It won't make an ounce of difference which way it's going, whether it's the flower side up, flower side down. They can be spun around. It doesn't matter too, too much. But some templates are actually made for specific areas in your project. For example, you might see some templates that are created with a right angle. These are great for placing at the corner of something, a corner of a pocket, the tag on a hat, something along those lines. You might also see ones that come with just 180 degrees, just a straight line. Again, these are great for coming out of pockets, at the edge of seams, coming out of a seam, or coming out of a space, or at the brim of your hat. Keep in mind how you might use certain templates in certain situations. You also want to consider how much time you want to spend on this project. Embroidery is a slow stitching project. These are not necessarily quick projects. They're probably going to take you a couple hours to create at least the more intricate and the larger the design you choose, the longer it's going to take you. So if you want a faster project, you can choose a smaller design or one that doesn't have as many details. And if you're working from a stick and stitch kit or something where you have multiple designs, you can also mix and match. So you can use multiple designs within the same project along similar lines. You can also subtract from the designs you already have. If the design that you like is a little bit too big for your space, you can trim away certain parts of the project or just simply not stitch them. No one is going to know what that original design looked like, because we're going to wash away that template. Just stitch the areas in the project that you like best. And feel free to cut them out, rearrange them, do what works best for the space that you have and the project that you're envisioning when you're already. Make sure that the design is going to fit in the space. Don't unstick it yet. We've got a few more things to talk about, but I want you to kind of place it on your project. Look at the orientation, does it fit in the space? Does everything work? Is it fitting the way that you hoped? Do you need to trim it up a little bit? And when you're already, we're going to go ahead and move on to the next lesson where we're going to talk about color selection. 7. Color Selection: In this lesson, we're going to talk about color selection. What's great about traditional embroidery projects is usually you have a little color key. And it tells you exactly which DMC floss, numbers and colors to use to get it to look exactly like the original project. But in this type of a project, we have to choose the colors on our own. I'm going to break down just a few things that you might want to keep in mind as you're choosing which colors to work on your project. And again, I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but make sure whichever floss you're using, it is color fast, which means it's not going to run when exposed to water. I personally love DMC, six strand floss. This is what I generally use. The other thing I love about it is that it has a numerical system. So if there's a color that I love that I know I'm going to love over and over and over again, I can write down its number code and I can make sure to get it again next time. Or if I run out of that color for this project, I can make sure I have the exact same color again. So I use DMC six strand floss. But use what's going to work best for you. Just make sure that that color of whatever floss that you choose to use or whatever string or thread you're going to use is not going to run in water. So the first thing you're going to want to look at is what is the base color of your project? What are we stitching on? What color is it that's going to impact which colors? You're gonna want to choose for your floss. You're also going to want to think about based on that color, do you want your stitches to blend? Do you want them to stand out? Do you want them to pop? Consider how much contrast you want your thread colors to have. I have personally seen some beautiful, monochromatic and even tone on tone embroidery projects where the base of the project is a cream color and all of the floss that they used is also cream colored. And it was gorgeous, super elegant. But keep in mind that that's going to be a far more subtle project than say, a project that has a very dark base and a bunch of bright colors popping off of it for embroidery. So keep in mind which effect you want to go for with your project. In general, I recommend using some colors that are going to contrast with your project. Now you're going to look at the design that you chose to stitch on. Are there different elements in it? Did you choose a floral pattern that has leaves versus flowers? Or maybe you chose a mushroom that has a mushroom cap and little mushroom dots and it has some grass and a couple little flowers. Do you want each of those elements to be a different color or is it okay to repeat the same color in a couple areas of your project? If you're not sure, you can also take just a plain piece of paper and start drawing your coloring on it to see what's going to look best. See how you might like it. See which areas and spaces you want to fill in or outline, and how you want the final project to look, and how many colors you're going to need to get that final look. Ultimately, the colors you choose are going to be up to you. You might even want to take a few colors, a few floss colors, and lay them out directly on the base surface that you are going to be stitching. See how they look. Are they blending in too much? Do you have enough contrast? How do they all look together as a project? If you're totally not sure where to start, this is generally a good place to kind of get the ball rolling. You're going to want to choose a main color for your project, so if you're stitching a mushroom, this might be the color of the mushroom cap. Okay, You're going to want to choose a lighter color and a darker color relative to that main color. So you've got a main color, a lighter color, and a dark color, and then you're going to choose a nice accent color. Okay? This is a good place to kind of get the ball rolling. You can always change your mind and swap out colors later. Or place them against your base material and see how they look and then make some adjustments from there. So once you've chosen your colors, the next thing that we're going to look at is how are we going to stitch this? What stitches do I use and where? So in the next few lessons, we are going to be talking about some of the key stitches that I love to use in my stick and stitch projects. These are going to be great, regardless of which projects you're going to use, they're going to be a good core sample of stitches that will work with most projects. If you're ready to learn some new stitches and see which stitches to use, when and where in your project, go on ahead and meet me in the next few lessons. 8. Stitch Categories: Stitching by Design: In this lesson, we're going to talk about stitching for impact on the bright side. With stick and stitch projects, you have created freedom. You can use whichever stitches you want and whichever location you want. But how do you know which stitches to use? Where? Well, that's what we're going to break down. There are going to be four categories of stitches that we're going to cover. Now, These are my categories. I've broken them down into categories that I like to use. Feel free to take this and roll with it, or you can make your own categories. But these are the four categories that I think are most important with this type of project. The first category are line stitches. These stitches are ideal for creating outlines or linear elements within your project. Or whether you're creating small little lines that tend to pop up in embroidery designs. Those little added embellishment lines. Think, anywhere you see a line, if you see a line, whether it's curved or straight, these line stitches are going to be what you're going to want to use in this class. I'm going to be covering three line stitches that are going to work for most parts of your project. They're easy stitches. You're gonna love them. I'm going to be working on the backstitch, the whipped back stitch, and the straight stitch. The next category that we're going to talk about are fill stitches. These stitches are to fill in a space, so if you have a large area in your project that you want to fill in that you want to fully cover with floss, you're going to want to use a fill stitch for these types of fills. You're going to want to consider what type of texture you want to use to fill in your space. There are going to be two key stitches I'm going to teach you that are fill stitches. One is a satin stitch, it is smooth and it is flat, and it is very, very pretty, it just goes from edge to edge, filling in a space. The other fill stitch I'm going to teach you is the long and short stitch. So you're going to use it for anytime you want to have like a gradient of color in your project where you're blending or where you want to fill in a space that's not easily filled from edge to edge. The other way that you can fill in space is with dots or decorative stitches, which are the next two categories we're going to cover. So let's talk about dots and knots. So these are for any circles in your project. Knots can be used to fill a space, but often they're used for accents or for details in your project. Common knot stitches include the French knot, the colonial knot, the accidental knot. No, I'm just kidding. Please, I wouldn't do those. So primarily, the colonial knot, the French knot, the one that I like to use the most of the French knots. So that's the one I'm gonna be showing you in this project. If you have a larger circle that you're gonna fill in, you're going to want to use the woven wheel. Why? Because it's gorgeous and also because it's super easy and you can fill in larger circles. If you just need a little accents, you're gonna want to use a knot stitch. If you have a larger circle that's gonna take a while to fill in, you're gonna want to use a larger stitch like the woven wheel, which is a gorgeous stitch. Trust me, you're gonna love it. Gonna love it. Now, the last type of stitch that you might want to use on a project like this are going to be decorative stitches. And there are a ton, and I mean a ton of decorative stitches. We're not going to go over them all. I'm going to use just a few that I like to use in my projects. Basically, I like using the fishbone stitch and the lazy daisy. These come in handy so much Lazy daisies can also be used as any type of teardrop shape, petal shape, leaf shape. The stitch is awesome. It's really versatile and can be used on a lot of your stick and stitch projects. The other stitch I like to use is a fishbone stitch because it's a really pretty fill stitch for things like leaves, foliage, and vines. These stitches are great, they tend to be unique. You can also use them for borders. They're just all around good stitches to know when you're filling in your project and you've got these little spaces. And you want to add just a little extra touch beyond the simple basic stitches that we're going to cover in the other categories. So in the next few lessons, I'm going to cover each of these stitches. I'm going to break them down by category. So I'll make sure to list in the lessons which category they fall under. So that if you're looking for, hey, I need a line stitch while I'm working on my project, or hey, I really want to fill in this space of my project. You can know which stitches to look at to decide which one you're going to want to use for your project. So I'm going to do all four categories of line stitch, fill stitch, nuts and knots, and decorative stitches. And I'm going to do a few stitches in each one so you can decide which ones will work best for your project. Keeping in mind that line stitches are great for outlines and lines, whether they be straight lines or curved. Okay, fill stitches are going to fill in areas of your project. Even with these two categories alone, you're going to be able to fill in a ton of your project. Even if you just know these two categories, you're going to be able to get the project done. Okay? Dots and knots are great for accents and circles in your projects. And decorative stitches are great for details. Adding a little extra embellishment, little extra flourishes along the way. If you want to practice some of these stitches, I have a stitch sampler that you can use to keep track of these stitches. Test them out, and see how you like them. It'll also be an easy visual reference when you're working on these projects to see where you might want to use some of these stitches. It'll definitely help you keep organized as you're learning these stitches and preparing to do your stick and stitch project. So we're going to go ahead and break down a few of my favorite stitches that I love to use with my stick and stitch projects. So if you're ready to get started, jump on down to the next lessons so that you can see how each of these works and you can add them to your creative tool box. It's good to know a few different stitches and to have them ready and on hand for when you get going on your project. I'll see you there. 9. Line: Straight Stitch: We're going to start by talking about line stitches. The first line stitch that we're going to cover is called the straight stitch. The stitch is fantastic for any type of straight line. It's used a lot of times for little dashes, little accent marks. And it can also be used just to create nice straight lines throughout your work. If you're ready to get started, let's check out the straight stitch. Start by bringing your needle up through the fabric. Simply take a stitch back down the length of your line. This will create a straight stitch and a very simple line. You can straight stitches in any direction, They can vary in length. Straight stitches are ideal for adding small accent lines throughout your projects. Now let's take a look at an example of this stitch in a project. Here's an example of some straight stitches used to create rays on a sun. In a simple hoop project, in this hat you can see the sunflowers have little grass growing at the base of their stems. And that grass was created with a series of little straight stitches. And there you have it, that's the straight stitch. If you're ready to learn another line stitch, in the next lesson, we're going to talk all about the backstitch. I'll see you there. 10. Line: Backstitch: Now let's talk about the backstitch. The backstitch is a fantastic stitch. It's a nice easy beginner level stitch. The backstitch is basically going to look like a dashed line that's connected. I like it specifically for creating lines. It's great for curves. It's basically going to be giving you a nice connected line that you can use throughout your project. So if you're already, let's go check it out. Start by taking a simple straight stitch. Bring your floss up through to the top of the fabric and bring your needle back down through the fabric at your desired stitch length, usually about a quarter of an inch away. Now you're going to bring your needle back up to the top side of the fabric, one stitch length, about a quarter of an inch away from where your first stitch ended. And now you're going to bring your needle back down to where that previous stitch ended and pull your floss through to the back of the project. Again, you're going to bring your needle back up to the top side of the fabric, one stitch length away. And then you're going to bring your needle back down where that stitch ended and you pull your floss through to the back of the project. You're going to keep continuing these steps until you have the length of the line that you want to create. So you're going to leave a gap and then stitch back to the previous stitch. You're going to leave a gap and then stitch back to the previous stitch. Try to keep your stitch length consistent to create uniform, tidy stitches. And be sure to leave yourself enough room to tag a knot before you run out of thread. Now let's take a look at an example of the backstitch in a project. You can see in our hat project that there are a number of little line details around our main floral design. I'm stitching these accent lines with a simple backstitch. I also use the backstitch for the baseline on this floral hoop design and for the stems of each of the flowers. Awesome. You've tackled the backstitch. If you like the backstitch, you're going to love the next stitch. The next stitch is also a line stitch. It's called the whipped backstitch. It's basically a way to make that nice dashed backstitch look a little bit more fluid, a little bit more connected. If you're ready to check it out, go on ahead and meet me in the next lesson. 11. Line: Whipped Backstitch: In this lesson, we're going to take the backstitch one step further with a stitch called the whipped backstitch. The whipped backstitch builds on the backstitch by taking your floss and weaving it between the lines within the backstitch. This technique creates beautiful curves and fluid lines within your project. If you want fluid straight or curved lines, you might just want to call on whipped backstitch. Let's check it out. Start at one end of a backstitch line. Bring your needle up at the end of the line of stitches. Now, weave your floss under the nearest stitch, but do not actually bring your needle through the fabric. Simply weave under the nearest stitch and then back around to weave under the next stitch. Continue weaving until the row is complete. Once you've reached the end of the row, bring your needle down through the fabric and secure with a knot. This should give you a nice cohesive line, and we call this the whipped backstitch. Now let's look at an example of the whipped backstitch in a project. In this floral hoop example, you can see the petals of the flower on the left were made with the whipped backstitch. There you have it, there's the whipped backstitch. I absolutely love the stitch for creating fluid lines. I use a lot for font work or for lettering. I also like it just as a nice outline for some of my shades, so I hope you love it too. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about the satin stitch, which is a beautiful fill stitch. If you're ready to check it out, meet me in the next lesson. 12. Fill: Satin Stitch: So you're ready to learn the satin stitch. The satin stitch is a fantastic fill stitch. It's pretty versatile, you can use it to fill in spaces within your project, particularly wide open spaces. It is a beautiful stitch to use because we're taking our floss and we're moving it back and forth across the space. It gives us a nice texture and a nice, smooth look within our project. So if you're ready to check out how it works, let's stitch it out. I like to use six strands when I'm filling in a larger area with a satin stitch, because it will fill faster. If you want a more delicate finish, you might want to opt to use fewer strands. Using two to three strands is very common. I separate and recombine my strands to give them more volume. Once your needle is threaded and you've tied off a knot at the end of your floss, it's time to start stitching. There are two ways you can try this stitch. The traditional method and the floss saving method. Let's start with the traditional method. We're going to be running our stitches parallel to each other, across the space that we want to fill. Decide which direction you want your stitches to run. In this case, my stitches are going to run from the bottom to the top of my square. With the traditional satin stitch, we bring our needle up at one edge of the space that we want to fill. Then we place the needle back down across the space on the opposite side of our filling area, just outside of the perimeter. We're going to start our next stitch at the bottom of the square. And we're going to bring our needle back down at the top of the square from the bottom to the top. What makes this method traditional is that we start our next stitch on the same side that we started our previous stitch. And you're always stitching in the same direction. For example, from the bottom to the top. And then you're going to start back at the bottom and then go back up to the top again. You might want to create guidelines to help keep your stitches parallel as you're stitching. Continue stitching from one side of your shape to the other until your space is filled. This version of the Seton stitch, the traditional version, leaves just as much floss on the back of the project as the front as an alternative. Let's chat about a floss saving method. The concept is the same, but instead of starting each stitch in the same direction, bottom to top, this time we're going to alternate where our starting position is. For each new stitch, each new stitch will start on the same side where the previous stitch ended bottom to top, and then top to bottom. This saves a lot of F because we aren't taking long travel stitches on the back of the project. To jump back to the original starting point. Again, you're going to bring your needle up at one edge of your area to be filled. Take a stitch across to the other side. This time instead of traveling back to the other side of your shape. To start a new stitch, you're going to start your new stitch right next to where your previous stitch ended. Now we stitch across the shape in the opposite direction, continue alternating until the space is filled. You can see with the second technique, we aren't using nearly as much floss on the back of our project. A little pointer as your stitching. You can use your needle to brush the strands, to help them blend nicely. And once you're all done stitching, remember to knot off your floss on the back of your project so that your stitches won't unravel. Now let's take a look at the satin stitch in action on a project. In our six in two floral project, you can see the leaves of the second flower have been created with the smooth satin stitch. And the petals in the flower all the way to the right have also been created with a smooth satin stitch. So that's the satin stitch. The next stitch we're going to talk about is also a fill stitch. It's called the long and short stitch. So if you're ready for a nice blending fill stitch, meet me in the next lesson and we'll talk about the long and short stitch. 13. Fill: Long and Short Stitch: In this lesson, we're going to talk all about the long and short stitch. The long and short stitch is another fill stitch. This stitch is a lot of fun because it gives a little texture behind the fill. And I personally love to use it when I want to create a gradient or shading within a space of my project. If you're ready to check out how the long and short stitch works, let's go ahead and start stitching. We're going to create a row of parallel stitches that alternate long and short lengths. If you're at the edge of an area you'd like to fill, be sure to adjust your stitch length so that it aligns with the edge of your shape. For example, to fill this square with a long and short stitch, we can start by making a row of alternating long and short stitches along the bottom edge of the square. Each stitch should be perpendicular to the bottom edge of the square and parallel to each other. The bottom edge of each stitch should run with the edge of the square. While the upper edge of the stitches should be alternating stitch lengths. You can opt to make your long stitches the same length and all of your short stitches the same length. But personally, I like mixing the heights of my stitches. I think it creates a nice blended effect. The choice is up to you for what will work best for your project and style. I recommend keeping your stitch a half an inch or less so they don't get too long. Keep repeating long and short stitches across the first row until you reach the edge of the area that you'd like to fill next. It's time to start the next row of stitches. You're going to create another row of alternating long and short stitches directly above the first row. Remember to align your stitches with the perimeter of your shape to keep the edges nice and tidy in this square. I don't have to worry about my top edge just yet, so I can freely stitch long and short lengths without worrying about the top edge of my shape. For now, each new stitch will be positioned above the stitch in the previous row. And I'm going to continue alternating the lengths long, long, and short. As you're stitching, you might need to add a stitch or two as you go to fill in gaps. And that's totally okay. Aligning stitches is more of a guideline to help you get started rather than a hard and fast rule. The key is to ultimately make sure that the space is filled. If you need to add a few extra stitches, go for it. As another style, you can opt to stitch a little bit into the previous stitches. This would create a more blended look. Continue adding rows of long and short stitches until you reach the edge of the space that you're filling. Be sure to adjust and align the length of your stitches to stop at the perimeter of your fill area. Once you get to the edge so that you maintain the integrity of the shape that you're filling. Now that we've seen a long and short stitch here in our example, let's go ahead and see how this would look in a project. In this first example, I used a long and short stitch to blend three colors into this monogram. Next, in our floral hoop project, I use the long and short stitch for the petals on the second flower, and I use the long and short stitch for our mushroom gap. That's a long and short stitch. I hope you loved it again. This stitch is fantastic for blending. It's a nice, easy, quick fill to use when you have some irregular shapes that you need to fill around. It's one of my favorite fill stitches. It's definitely worth adding this one to your creative tool box. In the next set of tutorials, we're going to start talking about dots and not stitches. In the next lesson, we're going to go ahead and get started with the French on if you're ready to check it out. Meet me in the next lesson. 14. Knots & Dots: French Knot: Now we're going to start talking about our dots and knot stitches. These stitches are fantastic for adding little circles in your project. The first one we're going to talk about is the French knot. This knot is a classic embroidery stitch. It's used with not only a lot of embroidery projects, but also with a lot of cross stitch projects. And it's worth adding to your creative tool box. What's amazing about this stitch is it not only can be used to add little accents and details to your projects, but it can actually double as a fill stitch if you take the dots and move them close enough to each other. You can also do multiple colors with your knots. If you're clustering them together to create even more dimension, the stitch is fantastic. So if you're ready to learn how it works, go on ahead and let's check it out. To get started, you're going to bring your needle up through the fabric at your desired knot location. Now you're going to hold your needle with your stitching hand. And use your non stitching hand to grasp the floss about 3 " away from the fabric. Use your non stitching hand to wrap the three inch section of floss two to three times around your needle. You can use the index finger of your stitching hand to anchor the wrapped floss in place along the shaft of your needle. Gently lower the needle tip so that it's touching your desired not location. You're going to push the needle tip through the fabric until it can stand on its own. I'd say about a half an inch or so through the fabric. Well, keep your needle upright with your stitching hand. Use your non stitching hand to lower the three inch floss strand to the base of the fabric. That way the loops are going to drop down along the needle shaft and rest right against the fabric. Now you're going to readjust your stitching hand so that your thumb is holding down that three inch floss section against the fabric. Slowly, you're going to pull the needle the rest of the way through the fabric with your stitching hand. And once the majority of the Flostrand has been pulled through the fabric, slowly release that remaining three inch section under your thumb to form your French knot. Now keep in mind, with French knots, the more strands you use, the larger your knot is going to be. And the more times you wrap your floss around the needle, the bigger your knot will be. If you need bigger knots for your project, then you're going to want to either use more strands or you're going to want to wrap your floss more times around your needle. And if you want a smaller knot, then you're going to want to use fewer strands or wrap your floss fewer times around the needle. Now that we've seen how to make a French knot, let's see how we can use the stitch in our projects. In this first example, this knit hat, I'm using French knots to create very details around our main floral design. In our next example, the floral sampler, we have French knots in our fourth flower, in the center of the flowers. So we can use French knots to create floral details within our projects. You can even see I used French knots at the base of this mushroom design. In our last example, this pumpkin ornament, you can see I actually used French knots to fill a space. French knots can be used as a fill stitch if you have a lot of knots filling up one large space, what do you think? Do you like the French knot? Sometimes the stitch people love, sometimes people really don't love this stitch. I think it's worth knowing just so that you have it in case you want to use it for any of your projects personally. It's a stitch that I love. It does take some practice to get used to. So don't feel like this is one that you have to know overnight. This one does take some practice to get used to the rhythm, to get used to the hand motions. But once you've got down, trust me, it's going to be really useful for you and your projects. Now, the next dot that we're going to be talking about is for larger circles. In the next lesson, I'm going to be talking to you about the woven wheel. So if you're ready to check out the woven wheel, go on ahead and meet me in the next lesson. 15. Knots & Dots: Woven Wheel: Ready to add some circles to your project. In this lesson, we're going to talk about the woven wheel. The woven wheel is a fabulous stitch. Not only is it great for making circles, but I often like to use it my projects for circular fruit shapes like oranges or cherries, or grapefruit or something along those lines. But also for rosettes, it makes a beautiful flower stitch. So whether you're trying to fill in the circles on say, a mushroom cap or you're trying to make a beautiful rosette or a floral piece with your project. The stitch is a great one to know, it's great for larger circles, whereas the little French knots are great for smaller accents, or filling in spaces and using them for shading. If you're ready to see how it works. This one's a fun one. It looks so complicated, but you're going to love this stitch. If you don't love the stitch, I'll be surprised. But this one's pretty cool if you're ready to check it out, let's get stitching. If you want to add a woven wheel or a rosette to your project, you need to make sure that you have evenly space guidelines or spokes inside of the circle that you want to fill. You want these guidelines to be evenly spaced, as close as possible. Now, this is low pressure, it's okay if they aren't perfect, but the more evenly spaced the spokes are, the easier it's going to be to fill your circle. For a whole circle, you're going to want to use an odd number. I usually use five, sometimes I'll use three for a really, really small circle, and I'll use more spokes for an even bigger circle. But five is my go to number. Once your needle is threaded, start by bringing your needle up at the end of one of the spokes. I prefer to start stitching on the outside of my circle rather than in the middle. That way my knot won't create extra bulk in the center of my woven wheel. You're going to stitch straight stitches along each spoke from edge to center, or center to edge until all of the spokes are stitched. Personally, I like to use all six strands for this stitch. In this video, I'm using six substrands, but I'm only going to be stitching with one strand, it isn't doubled over. Next, you're going to bring your floss up in the center of your wheel, and weave your needle under every other spoke. As you work around the circle, you do not actually need to bring your needle down through the fabric as you're weaving, you're merely skimming the surface of the fabric and weaving over and under the floss spokes on the top side of the fabric. You're going to continue weaving until you've reached the ends of the spokes. As a tip, it might be easier to use the backside of the needle to weave in between the spokes. I'll speed up the weaving a bit so you can see how to finish up a rosette. This stitch uses a lot of floss, so you might need to pull your needle to the backside of the project to knot off before re, threading and continuing with a new strand. You're going to bring your needle back up through the fabric and continue weaving. If you need to re thread, try not to pull the floss too hard asa, especially as your wheel gets bigger. Because pulling too tight can cause the floss to distort your wheel shape. Once you reach the end of the spokes, you might want to add a few stitches around the perimeter of your wheel to round the edges a bit, and to mask any uneven spokes that might be sticking out a little bit. If your spokes weren't drawn evenly, you might notice a little uneveness here. Now that we've seen how to make a beautiful woven wheel or rosette, let's see how we can use the stitch in our projects. My favorite way to use the woven wheel in projects is as a flower. I think they make a beautiful rosette and they're easy to add to floral projects. I also love to use them as fruit like oranges, grapefruit, citrus, fruit, any kind of round fruit. I know that it still has a lot of texture, but I think it's a great substitute when you're making a round fruit design. And in our floral sampler, I used the rosettes as little dots on our mushroom cap. So that's the woven wheel. Now in the next lesson, I'm going to give you a little bonus. Because not all of our circular shapes are well circular. Sometimes we have half circles or quarter circles or partial circular shapes. So I want to show you how to do a partial woven wheel. So if you're ready for a quick bonus lesson, go on ahead and meet me in the next lesson, and I'll show you how to fill in some of those partial wheel shapes. 16. Knots & Dots: Partial Woven Wheel: In this lesson, we're going to talk about the partial woven wheel. If you're already familiar with the full woven wheel, the partial woven wheel is going to be similar. The differences. Instead of doing the full circle, we're actually going to do a partial circle. This is great for circles that are at the edge of something. I use this a lot with my mushroom caps. Again, some of those circles are not full circles, they're going off of the edge of the mushroom cap. So there's a fun, easy way to fill those in if you don't want to use a traditional fill stitch. And I'll show you how to do a partial woven wheel in the next few steps. So if you're ready, let's check it out. The partial woven wheel is very similar to the full woven wheel with a few key differences. With the whole woven wheel, we used an odd number of spokes in our wheel. With a partial woven wheel, we want to use an even number of spokes. In this case, I have two perimeter spokes radiating from the center of my half circle and two inner spokes, four total. We start the same way, use a straight stitch to stitch all four spokes. Then you're going to bring your needle up near where all of the spokes meet, in the center of the half circle. Again, we are going to alternate weaving our floss under every other stitch, but this time we're going to change directions every time we reach one of the outer spokes. Here you can see that I wove under my third spoke. So now I need to go over my fourth or outer spoke and then back under it again to change directions. I continue weaving until I get to the other side. I'll go back over the third spoke, under the second, and then over the first spoke, AKA our perimeter spoke. But now I need to change directions again. So we'll bring our needle back under that same spoke to proceed again to the other side. Repeat this weaving process until you've filled your half circle and reach the ends of the spokes similar to our whole circle. You might need to add a few stitches to round off the edges of your half circle. Once you're happy with your partial woven wheel, you're all set. Be sure to tie off a knot. If you want to see a few examples of how I've used this stitch in projects, let's check it out. In our floral project example, you can see I've used partial woven wheels in my mushroom cap. Any of the circles that are on the edge of the mushroom cap need to appear like they're falling behind or they're curving around the mushroom cap. So this is a good time to use half circles or semicircles, which is when we're going to use a partial woven wheel. All right, and now that you've learned the partial woven wheel, in the next group of stitchutils, we're going to talk about a few decorative stitches. These are ones that I use fairly frequently in my projects, and I thought that they would be good stitches for you to know and to learn. And the first one we're going to cover is the fishbone stitch. 17. Decorative: Fishbone: All right, we're on our last category of stitches. These are our decorative stitches. Decorative stitches are fantastic for filling in spaces within your project, adding fun little details that may not have fallen into any of the other categories. Honestly, this is a nice little catchall category. And the first one we're going to talk about is the fishbone stitch. The fishbone stitch is basically a crossing technique used to fill a space. I personally love using the fishbone stitch for leaves, foliage, and vines, but can also be used to create zigzag style accents in details. So if you're ready to check it out, let's go on ahead and walk through it. This stitch is perfect for leaf shaped areas, ovals or tear drop shapes. To get started, bring your needle up at the top of your shape. Take your first stitch a third to a four of the way down the center of the shape you are filling. Essentially, you're going to be dividing your shape in half down the center. Draw in a center line, if it will help you guide your stitches, Bring your needle back up at the top left outer edge of your shape directly next to the starting point. Now you're going to cross over the center line and bring your needle back down next to the bottom right of your starting stitch. Now bring your needle back up to the top right of the starting point, along the outer edge of your shape. And you're going to cross over the center line again and bring your needle back down next to the bottom left of your starting stitch. Continue alternating sides, crossing over, and ching slowly down the center as you stitch. If stitching a leaf shape, your stitches will likely get wider in the middle of the leaf and will become shorter as the leaf. As you reach the base of your shape, your stitches will meet at the bottom center of your shape. You can add a few stitches to the bottom edges as needed to fill out the rest of the space. I'd like to add a few extra stitches at the base of my leaves to keep the bottom edge nice and rounded. Now that we've seen how to do the fishbone stitch, let's take a look at a couple examples. In this hat project, I kept my fishbone stitch tight to create delicate looking leaves, whereas in this hat, I made a looser fishbone stitch to create a cute little accent detail in my floral pattern. One of my favorite techniques to use with the fishbone stitch is actually to create an ombre leaf by changing my floss color about a third of the way through the stitch. And then again in the last third of the stitch. This could be a fun technique to play with different colors to create a fun new style for your project. So that's the fish phone stitch. Pretty cool, right? I love this one. I think it makes super elegant leaves and foliage. That's what I primarily use it for. But feel free to use this stitch where you see fit. It's great for oval shapes. It's also good if you want to stretch it out and make it a nice abstract geometric shape or accent within your project. The next decorative stitch that we're going to talk about is the Lazy daisy stitch. This one is a lot of fun and it is super versatile. You're not going to want to miss it. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 18. Decorative: Lazy Daisy: In this lesson, we're going to talk about the lazy daisy stitch. Now, I'm not sure what makes this stitch so lazy. I'm not sure why they call it that, but I think it is a super hard working stitch. It can be used to create tear drop shapes, flowers, petals, basically the foundation of a chain stitch. It can be used to fill in spaces, accent spaces. This stitch pretty much does it all, it's worth knowing. The base of it is essentially a tear drop, which is awesome. We can use this to, again, create flower petals, accents, leaves within our project. It is a super versatile stitch. If you're ready to see how it works in ways that you can use it within your project, let's go check it out. We're going to start by learning the basic teardrop shape that is the foundation for the lazy daisy stitch. Start by bringing your needle up where you'd like the pointy end of your tear drop to be. Bring your needle back down in nearly the same location. But do not pull your floss all the way through the fabric. Leave a loop on the top of your project. Next, you're going to bring your needle back up through the fabric and through the loop in the location where you'd like the rounded edge of your tear drop to be gently pull the flostrand through the top of the fabric until the loop rests gently on your flostrand and has made a nice tear drop or petal shape. Place the needle back down on the outside of the loop to tack it in place. This is the base tear drop shape that can be used in a variety of ways. With a lazy daisy stitch, you can repeat the shape as desired. If you're making a daisy, continue making this teardrop shape radiating around a central point. Make sure the pointy end of your tear drops are in the center. And you can use five or more tear drops to create petals. If you would like your daisies to be uniform in shape, make the petals the same length. If you'd like your daisies to be a little more exciting, turned at an angle, or if you'd just like them to have some character vary the petal lengths and sizes within your daisy. Now that you've seen how to create the lazy daisy stitch, let's take a look at a few examples. In our hat project, you can see I use this lazy daisy stitch to create the classic daisy floral accent. But over here in this tow bag floral project, you can see I used the tear drop base shape to create leaves. And also stacked daisy flowers, which could be a delphinium or a lilac or other fun flowery shapes. You can group lazy daisies together to make them look like bigger flowers in your projects. There you have it. That's the lazy daisy stitch. It's a great decorative stitch. It's very versatile. Let me know in the discussion how you plan to use some of these stitches. So now that we've learned all of these wonderful stitches, if you're feeling confident, we're going to go on ahead and I'm going to show you how to get started on this project. I cannot wait. We're finally getting to the fun of it. So if you're already, go on ahead and meet me in the next lesson. I'm going to show you how you can use the sticker from your template design and the water soluble paper to get started and to prepare for stitching this project so that we can finally get started. I'll see you there. 19. Sticker Placement: We just did so many stitches. That was amazing. Okay. So now you have all of these stitches in your creative tool box ready to use for your project. I think it's time to start sewing. We just did so much background work. It is ready. Let's start this project. You ready? I'm ready. Let's get going. So you have your base material, you have your stick and stitch project. Remember, we figured out our orientation. We know exactly where it's going to go. If you find that before you're sticking on your sticker, it needs to be trimmed a little bit. Go on ahead and trim it a little bit. I recommend keeping it within like a half an inch, four of an inch, of the design. If you have too much extra template, it's going to be more that you're going to have to dissolve away later and the dissolving process takes a few minutes. So if you have less of the template to dissolve, all the better. Keep in mind you want a little bit of a gap between where the inky lines end and the edge of your sticker, just so that it's a little bit easier to stitch sometimes if you're a little bit too close to those lines where you're going to be stitching the template and kind of starts moving, which just isn't fun. Once you're ready, you can go ahead and score the back of your sticker. If it's tough to get it unstuck from its backing material, you can use a needle to score the backside and just peel away that backing. Make sure you peel off the back layers, place it where you like it. Try not to remove it more, two, two too often, but you can absolutely pick it up, put it back down if it's not quite in the right spot. It's not like the end of the world. If you got to, you know, move it around a little bit, no big deal. And then once you're happy with the location of your sticker, go ahead and press firmly. Make sure you give it a nice firm press. With your fingers or your hands or your palms, not with anything heat related. It's firm press. Make sure it's going to stay in place as you're stitching. You want to make sure there aren't any air pockets or any air bubbles. If there are, just go ahead and try to work them out. Or relift part of the sticker at that side of the edge and just work it back down. Once you have everything in place, you're going to be ready to start stitching. In the next lesson, I'm going to give you a few more key tips as you're sewing so that you can feel confident working on your project and getting started. So I'll see you there. 20. Stitching Order & Tips: So now we have our template ready to go. We're ready to start stitching. The question is, where do we start? We totally get it. There's a lot, right? So let's break down where to start stitching in your project. Because this is not the type of thing where you go like top, bottom, left to right. So let's talk about where to start and which order to fill in your project. In general, I like to work section by section or stitch by stitch. And there are a few key tips you want to keep in mind as you're working. You might want to start by working with the larger elements in your project or the key focal elements in your project. This will help anchor your project and make sure that it's all coming out the way that you envisioned. Sometimes as you get stitching, you have to make adjustments and it's easier to adjust the smaller accent details rather than the bigger elements in your project. Now if you aren't feeling super confident with your fill stitches, like if you have wavy borders on your fill stitches, a lot of times you want a nice crisp edge. You can either do your fill stitch and then go ahead and outline around the edge of your fill. This is going to help give you a border that you can use to make sure that you have a nice, crisp edge with your fill stitches. This works especially well with a sentence stitch. The other thing to keep in mind as you're deciding where to start is consider. Does your template have a lot of details? Are those details going to get covered up? Are you going to remember where those details were and if not, put in some of those accents, some of that line work in ahead of time so that you don't forget where it is once you cover it up. If you're filling in with a fill stitch, a lot of times when I'm working, say on a mushroom cap, if I want to fill in the dots, I'm going to fill those in with my woven wheels first so they don't get covered. As I'm filling in the rest of my mushroom cap with a long and short stitch or with a satin stitch, It's just that way I make sure that those dots don't get covered up. And also remember that not everything has to be filled. Sometimes I like to leave things outlined. A lot of the leaves in my projects, I'll leave them as outlined or I'll alternate between a fishbone stitch and an outline Just because I think it's going to give the project a little bit of extra character. Not everything looks as uniform. It's just going to add a little bit more variety to my piece, which is my personal style. That's what I like to do. So if you like doing the same thing, feel free to mix it up a little bit. Use different stitches in different spaces, or add some variety to your work. Not every space has to be filled. Some things can be outlined. See what works best for your project and your style. Go ahead and fill your project in space by space within the big spaces that you're starting with. If there are accents and details, go on ahead and fill in those accents before you forget where they are and you cover them all up and then work your way through your project. Don't forget to take pictures of your progress as you go to and upload them. Get them ready for your class project, because I'm excited to see what you're creating. Once you're all done stitching, we're going to go ahead and wash away that template. So if you're ready to see how that process works, meet me in the next lesson. 21. Dissolving Sticker Template: Awesome, now your project is all filled in. It's time to wash away that template. We want to get this all cleaned up and looking nice, so let's check it out. Remember to follow the instructions on the template that you have that you're working on. I'm going to show you what works best for the water soluble paper that I used on my project. But you got to work with what works for your project, so be sure to read those instructions. For my water soluble paper, the manufacturer says to rinse in warm water. So there's a couple ways I can do this. You're going to remove your project from the hoop. If you have a hoop, the best way to rinse out the stabilizer for my projects is to rinse under pretty warm water. The warmer it is, the faster it comes out. Obviously, I'm not going to be using scalding hot water because I don't want to burn my hands but rinsing it under warm running water while agitating it. Meaning you're going to kind of rub your fingers through a little bit. Works the best. Now, you don't want to rub your fingers too hard. Just some gentle agitation as it's running. That works best. Now, when I want to save water, if I have a lot of projects to do, I don't want the water to be running constantly. I fill up a bowl full of warm water and I let my project soak. You're going to make sure that you're kind of agitating under the water. It's going to be nice and warm and you're going to get the major stuff rinsed out. If that water gets too cloudy and murky and you still want to keep rinsing it, go ahead and you can dump that water. Fill up the bowl again. After you're all done rinsing it in the bowl. You're still going to need to run under the tap, but you won't have to run it for quite so long. Then you're going to go ahead and let your project air dry. I usually like to lay it flat to dry. Once it's dry, if you still see some dark remnants from the ink or from the paper, or still feels tacky or sticky, go ahead and give it a second rinse. Sometimes I have to rinse my projects two to three times to really get them totally clean and ready to go. So you might have to rinse it two or three times, but eventually that stabilizer is going to come out and it's going to look good. And again, my trick lately that I've been using is really warm water. If the water's nice, don't burn yourself. Do not spell it yourself, I will be very upset. Okay. But make sure that the water is a little bit warmer, not on the cool side. A little bit warmer. And it rinses out much better if you're trying to avoid wrinkles as your project is drying. And you have a hoop that is metal free. Okay? There's absolutely no metal in the hoop, because if there's metal in the hoop, it's likely going to rust on your wet project. And we don't want to rest on our projects, but you can let your project dry in a hoop that is metal free. And this will help prevent wrinkles or your project from warping a bit as it dries. If you opt to lay your project flat to dry, it might get a little bit wrinkled and just a little bit warped from where the fabric relaxes near the heavy thread work. Especially if you're using a thinner fabric. But never fear, simply use an iron or a bit of steam to reset the stitches in your project and to work out any wrinkles that you see. But a hoop can also help reset your stitches once you have it mostly ironed and your project is now dry. That way we get our project looking it's best. So go on ahead, let your project dry. This is the exciting part. It's kind of like, you know, waiting for your project to be in its final stages. So we're almost there. We're really close. So in the final lesson, I'm going to give you just a few more notes for care handling and just my final couple of thoughts. I'll see you there. You're so close. I'll see you in the next lesson. 22. Care, Handling, & Final Thoughts: Yeah, you did it. You need to give yourself a big round of applause. I'll wait. Perfect way to go. So now we're going to talk about just some final care instructions, handling instructions so that you can enjoy your project and really enjoy all of the effort behind your work. Keep in mind that with major embellishment projects, you might want to hand wash the material that you're using if it ever does need to be washed. If it's clothing or a hat or something along those lines. If it gets dirty, you might want to consider hand washing it. Your stitches are delicate, right? I mean, yes, they hold up, but you want to take care of them. You worked hard on this project. You don't want them to get beat up with a washing machine. So consider hand washing whenever washing is needed. Also going to want to probably lay it flat to dry. You're probably not going to want to put it in a dryer. And don't forget to upload a picture of your project to the class gallery. Share with a group, share with the community. I can't wait to see what you create and what you stitched on. I want to see what you made. You worked really hard and I tell me a little bit about it if you want, but please upload a picture to the class project gallery. And if you enjoy this class, let the community know. I would love for you to leave me your review. Let me know your thoughts on the class. And this helps other students find courses and materials that they will also enjoy. And I love and appreciate your feedback. Helps me know what types of things you want to see in the future where I can work on so that I can make you the best class as possible. Thanks so much for following along to the end of the class. Don't forget to upload your class project. I can't wait to see what you create until next time, friends. 23. Bonus: Tote Bag Project Part 1: Hey, there it's me again. I just wanted to pop in with a quick bonus lesson. I know that theoretical embroidery knowledge and talking through the process is all well and good, but I think sometimes it's easier to actually see all of those principles put into action. So I wanted to jump in here for a quick lesson to stitch up a tote bag with a simple floral design. Using our stick and stitch techniques that we talked about during this class. I've created this extra video to show you exactly how I would stitch up this floral design onto this tote bag. I'm going to talk you through all of the different decisions I'm making along the way so that you can see how I would work through this process. And I know that every project is a little bit different. So your project may vary relative to my, but I thought this would be a really fun project to work on together. So if you're ready to get started, we're going to jump right in. When I was selecting these tote bags, I wanted to make sure that it was something that I could stitch through. This is a heavy ish canvas. Actually, I'd say this is a mid range canvas. It's not super, super thick, but it definitely is thicker than say, a quilting cotton. So I wanted to make sure that I could stitch through it. And I had seen a number of projects where people who had used these bags could do embroidery on them. So I knew that the project was going to be successful, that we would be able to actually stitch through this bag. And I wanted a bag that had a little zipper. So it's got a little zipper on the top. And just something that I knew could be useful that I could actually take to a farmer's market and enjoy. So without further ado, I'm going to talk you through my stitching process. So let's dive right in. Okay, so to get started, we have our tote bag. I did just a really light iron toward the center of this bag just to kind of get rid of some of the wrinkles. Honestly, they're going to come out more when we go to rinse off our project. But at least at the start, and I printed out my project, and I'm going to be doing this smaller floral bouquet. I'm going to go ahead and cut that out. I used a full sheet to cut out these templates, but we don't need a full sheet of them. I'm going to stitch right around the edges. Because this is a botanical project, it doesn't need to be perfectly aligned in the center. But I would like it mostly centered. I don't necessarily want it in the center of the bag. I think that will look a little bit on, I kind of want a third of the way up the bag, give or take. And then I'm going to try to center it between, I could go from end to end to bag, but I think I'm going to use actually these two handles to get a good idea of where the center is. So let me go get my ruler. Okay, I have a simple ruler here. It looks like it's about 8 ". And actually I might use that as a marker here. We want to mark at the four inch mark, I have a frixion pen. This I'm hoping we will basically cover with our stitches, But if not, it comes off in heat, so I can just use an iron to get it back off again. We said we wanted it to be about a third, which that's looking close to a third. I'm just going to mark roughly the center here. Just a small dot just to give us an idea. I know that that's like really tiny. I'm going to take my sticker, I'm going to score the back with a needle so that it's easier to take off the backing. I might try, I might just put the center of my rosette there, actually. That way we know it's covered. I won't have to worry about it. I think I like that location. Okay. That's looking really good. I chose colors already. For this project, I'm going to be working with some springy colors because I am ready for spring right now. We just had a long, cold winter. So these are going to be my flower colors, and these are going to be the colors that I'm using, foliage and my leaves. Now I wanted to choose some brighter colors, colors with a lot of contrast. Because if I use any white bezier cream on this canvas bag, it's going to blend right in. The closest I have is this buttery yellow color. And it gives us some variety between the brighter and the darker and the lighter colors. But it still will pop a little bit against this canvas. I think it's going to be passable. To get started, I'm going to work from my rosette in the center, and then I'm probably going to fill in my other flowers, followed by my accents and my foliage. Let's get started. Okay, something important to keep in mind as you're stitching through unusual projects like hats, pants, jacket. In this case, a tote bag. You don't want to stitch through all of the layers, because if you stitch through both layers, then your project is going to. You won't be able to open the bag, I got to make sure. And I've already done one larger floral on the back of this project. I wanted a smaller floral on the back side. I'm going to actually stitch upside down so that I can make sure that I'm not stitching through both layers. So I got to be able to have my hand in the bag and potentially scrunch the bag a bit so I know that I'm not going through to the other side now. I'm not using a hoop for this project. And the reason is, don't panic all my hoop lovers out there. I know I love a good hoop too. But this canvas is heavy enough that I don't need the extra support. The stick and stitch stabilizer is stable enough. I haven't had any warping and didn't have any warping issues on this side. We're doing great on this side. We are also not going to use the stabilizer. I also need to be mindful of my handles to make sure that I don't accidentally rope them in while I'm stitching. So you'll probably see me throughout this video, kind of moving them, tucking them out of the way, just depending on what we're working on. So I'm going to start in the center with my rosette. I am going to make my little spokes. And throughout this project, I may speed up these stitches just because you have the tutorials so you know how they work. But I'm going to guide you through how I'm going to fill this out step by step. But I might take some of the stitching portions and either speed them up or kind of cut through them, but I'll try to keep you updated along the way. As I'm going from here, I'm going to start working the edges of my rosette. I'm running low on spoke space, if you will. This side I still have a little bit more room, so going to come back up, angle it when I'm coming up too, that it tucks back into the rosette. So the petals look like they're coming from the center of the flower. This bottom side you can see here, you can still see a little bit of that spoke, I want to fill in just a bit more. Let's go ahead and work on that just a little bit more. I'm going to go ahead and come all the way around. Actually, I'm going to keep, this handle is trying to tuck under here and I don't want it to get caught, so I'm going to pull it out of the way. I'm actually going to guide this strand down and along the edge there. Good. I might take a couple smaller strokes. Partial ones that was a much longer one. We're going to go a little bit shorter this time. I think one more along this edge right here just to fill that out again, no one's going to know where these original lines were. If you're happy with your rose, you can stop. You totally don't have to do what I'm doing here by adding in more filling Exactly to the line. Make this project your own. Okay? I do want this to look a little bit smoother. To do that I'm going to come from underneath. We're just going to take a small stitch. And again, we're going to tuck our needle under the rosette. If we can get it in there. There we go. That way it looks like it belongs. I think we're happy with this rosette. Let's flip it around, make sure. Yes. Okay. So we've got our main focal rosette. Now we're going to work on our flowers that are around the edges. So I'm going to do a couple yellow lazy daisies right here in that buttery yellow color. I'm going to use three strands, because I want them to be a little bit thinner. I don't want super, super thick daisies here. I'm going to pull three strands out of this. Let's start with our little daisies down at the bottom. I tend to like to get the bigger parts of the project out of the way first. It makes me feel like I am making progress. I also, with this tote bag, know the deeper I go, the harder it is going to be to stitch. I like to get out of the way just then, I'm not leaving the hard parts too, too late. Although I will be doing these stems somewhat last, but that's okay. Okay, so those are my daisies. I'm going to wind up putting French knots in the centers, but I want to do it in a different color and I have my light yellow right now threaded. And I don't want to unthread, just simply to put in 2 knots, I think I'm going to do a darker yellow, which should be the same colors as these knots. When we do these knots, we'll also add those knots. This will just save us time. 24. Bonus: Tote Bag Project Part 2: I'm going to go ahead and I'm in a lazy daisy mode. I'm going to add these stitches up here, and I'm actually going to add them in lavender. This color here, 3727. It's a slightly lighter color as well, but it's okay. You're allowed to add colors as you go and make changes. I want this to look like a lilac or a piece of stock or some other type of flower that's not just simply a daisy. I'm going to do that by changing the color to give the signal that this is a whole different flower. Okay, so I'm going to add these little lazy daisy esque flowers up here. But they're going to, in my world, I would like them to be like a lilac or stock or some sort of upright flower. So we've kind of grouped them slightly differently and they have a different number of petals to our daisies that we did in yellow. But we're in a lazy daisy mode. So sometimes it'll save time if you're working on one type of stitch, if you just keep on working with that type of stitch, if you kind of have a rhythm going. So that's something else to think about while you're working on your projects. I'm actually pulling out toward that pedal, it's gonna make that falling place a little bit nicer. There we go. Okay, so here's our progress so far. We're getting there. Next I'm going to do these little flowers on the side because I like doing my main floral elements first. And then we'll start filling out some of these details. Okay, so we're going to be using 3824, this peachy color. I am again using three strands because I don't want them to be super thick. And these little flowers you can see are actually made up of little lines. Actually just going to be little straight stitched flowers. They almost remind me of dianthus or Flo. I'm just going to be taking little straight stitches from the center. And I'm going to actually start on the outside because I don't want my not in the middle cause we're gonna keep coming back to the middle and I don't want to catch my knot. But we're just going to take like two or three straight stitches. Gonna be three or four per petal. I'm gonna kind of stagger them a little bit. I'm kind of following the lines, but yeah, these are really easy flowers to make. It's slightly different look than the daisy. And I'm going to keep bringing these straight stitches right back to the center so that they look kind of petally. There we go onto the next one. Okay, so two are done. We have one more but I'm running out of thread, so I'm going to re thread and then we'll do this third flower. Okay, those main flowers are done. I think it looks super wild flower and pretty. I'm really happy with that. Next we're going to add our French knots to make a little poof kind of seed sort of flower, and to add our centers to our daisies. We'll do that next. For this one, I am using 742, We're going to be using our brighter yellow to fill in our French knot space. So let's get started. I'm going to start all the way at the tip here and work my way this way so that I have a shorter travel stitch to get to my two daisy flowers when I want to fill those in. Again, be careful here because I'm going to be putting my needle down, but I want to make sure that I don't go through both pieces of fabric and accidentally stitch my toe back together. So be mindful as you're doing your French knots, how many layers you're stitching through, because you don't want to accidental sew your project closed if it's not supposed to be sew enclosed. We defend that knot was just a little too tight in the loops around. This is a really thick material like this is one time when like pulling your loops too tight might make it harder to pull your needle through the fabric, You might just want to make slightly looser knots, which is okay. It's not a bad thing. It's just a slightly different style. But instead of me like pulling super tight with the needle, I'm going to let them be a little bit looser on there because I am having trouble getting it through the fabric because these knots are at the base of this flower. Generally, the flowers or buds do get bigger as they go down the stem, so it's going to look natural, which is fine. But keep in mind that if you're working through a thicker surface, the French knots might be a little bit trickier. I think next time I might use a slightly smaller needle and see if that helps me at all. There we go, Get the rest of that through. I know there isn't a dot down here, but I think it needs one more just to cover that gap just a little bit. We're, we can go off script a little bit, but we're going to stick one more knot right here just to create just a smidge more balance at the base of this set. I think it looks like Solidago or golden rod personally, but wild flower here. There we go. That looks much more balanced. I am going to take just a couple quick travel stitches and just do these 2 knots over here while we're in the vicinity. Three, just to give our daisies some centers help distinguish them from our lavender flower at the top. Make them look a little bit different. We go and one more. Okay, perfect. Let's take a quick look at that. Okay, so we have most of our flowers done. Next, we're going to start working on our foliage accents. 25. Bonus: Tote Bag Project Part 3: Let's start with these bigger pieces, and then we will do our T. This is actually a lazy daisy esque flower at the end. Let's get started on that. Hey, we're going to start with this little set of leaves or accent details if you will. And these are just going to be really long straight stitches. I'm not going to even backstitch them. I think they're going to look really cool as long straight stitch strokes. Just something nice and simple. And we're going to kind of again, bring them all down to the same point. I really like that. I think it's super cute. If you're worried that these stitches are a little bit too long, you can tack them in the center with a tiny little overlay stitch in, similar to the one that you use when you're tacking down your lazy daisy. But I'm not super worried about it. I think it's going to look just super adorable. I am going to knock this off here though, because I don't want to travel stitch with stitches that are this long. But yeah, how quick and easy was that? Pretty cool, right? So for this leaf, we're going to do the same type of leaf. I want the same kind of type of style. I could see it was a little off my mark there, but it's okay. No one's going to know because we're going to wash away that line anyway. So it's going to be fine. We're okay with it. Our stitching doesn't have to be perfect, which is awesome. Okay, last one. Now I am going to start stitching down some of these stems. And I want some of them to be green and some of them to be our like Eucalyptus blue. Because this leaf is attached to this stem, I also want it to be green. And for this I am going to be using a back stitch. Okay. And I'm going to quick just whip this backstitch so that it looks a little bit more fluid. I think I just prefer whipped backstitch, but that's just me. Feel free to make your backstitches just plain backs stitches. Or if you want them to look a little bit more cohesive too, that is totally understandable. Okay. And I'm going to go back down. Not off, there we go. And we'll add just a little bit more green. We'll choose a couple more of these stems to fill with green before we go ahead and we do our blue leaves. It looks like these two daisies are going to be attached to blue. So we're going to make this outer one blue and maybe the second one in blue. And then let's make the third one in blue. We're going to do like every other, let's just do every other one green. That way we have a nice blend of blue and green in our stem work. And I do want to this stem here, we're going to make this one green coming down that way we have a mix of blue and green stem, so it looks like a little bit more blended. Okay, so we have our green leaves and green stems filled in. Now let's tackle our Eucalyptus blue, which we are using 37684. We're going to be doing a combination of Mac stitch, whipped back stitch, and a lazy daisy stitch for this portion. And again, I am using three strands. Okay, so to get started, let's tackle this leaf on the side. I'm going to just be doing a quick back stitch down the main stem just to give us a little bit of support. You don't have to do this, but you theoretically could just do the. The tear drop portion of lazy daisy along the edge. I like how it looks with the backstitch in the center. Just a little bit better so, but I'm not going to be whipping this backstitch. Okay, now we're going to be taking just a little lazy daisy stitches on the edges to fill out this leaf. Let's do that by, This petal looks a little bit small here. I'm going to probably make it just a touch bigger than what the line work is showing. Okay, this leaf is done. Now, I'm just going to go ahead and fill in my stems. We're going to, again, just do a whipped back stitch on the remaining stems in this project. One of the other things I guess you can see based on how I did this project, was I try to do all of the same thread color at the same time. Because if I already have my needle threaded with that color, it saves me time. Rather than changing thread colors and re threading and unthreading and threading again, one way that you can approach your projects as you're working on them is by thread color. You can do all the areas with the same thread color, or most of them, or some of them that might give you a direction when you're thinking about how you want to approach your project. Okay, so we're all done stitching up our little flower bouquet. I need to rinse out this sticker, and I actually need to rinse out the sticker on this side as well. So I'm going to go ahead and rinse those out. And then I will lay them flat to dry, and I will show you the final results. Awesome, we did it. Our bag came out great. I hope that this lesson was helpful and that you picked up a few pointers along the way. If you love this project and you want to see another project, let me know and I'll try to put together either another class or another bonus lesson for you. This was so much fun and I'm so glad that you took the time to hang out with me today. Thanks so much for being here friends until next time.