Zodiac Embroidery Hoop: Stitch Your Own Astrology Chart

1. Class Overview: Hi there, I'm Diana. I'm the owner and designer of peacock. And think in this class, you'll learn how to create this pretty astrological hoop project. The skills you'll learn in this class not only will introduce you to some new embroidery stitches, but you might even learn a little bit about your astrological chart. If you're new to embroidery, I'd recommend taking the hand embroidery fundamentals class first. In this class you'll learn what materials you need, how to access your own astrological chart, and how to use some of the information on it to make your own personalized to a project. As well as embroidery stitches such as backstitch, the double threaded backstitch, the star cross stitch, and the Algerian I stitch. So what are you waiting for it? Let's jump on in and let's get started. 2. Materials: Alright, so first I'm gonna just going to quickly run through the materials and tools that you're going to need for this tutorial. If you'd like any more information about them, I would definitely check out lesson two and the hand embroidery fundamentals class as some materials section, I do go into a bit more detail about the variety of materials and such that you can use. But for this one, obviously you need some scissors. For this tutorial, I'm actually just using white because I'm using a darker fabrics. I think it'll show up really nice. So I've got long coaches, DMC, Floss, It's white in French. So you can get that. You can get any color or colors that you like. I've got embroidery thread here, sorry, embroidery needles. So I'm going to be using roughly a number 6 embroidery needle for this. But anything that you have as fine as long as it's a pointy ended one and not a tapestry needle, anything will work. Obviously fabric. This is really nice shot linen. It's actually two tone. It's got the teal on the back, which is just stunning. So I'm going to be using the darker side of it for this tutorial. And an embroidery hoop. This is a four-inch hoop. So this can be used for this project. If you put your pattern at a 100 percent, this will fit into a four-inch hoop. If you want to make your pattern bigger than you can, use a much bigger hoop, honestly. And you're also going to need some marking pens. I've got a variety here just because this is a darker fabric. So sometimes you do need to get a little bit more creative with your stitching onto a darker fabric and you want to transfer your design onto it. So I'll show you this in upcoming tutorial. But what I actually did is I use a Jelly Roll pen. This is permanent. So you do have to be a little bit careful when using these that your lines are thin enough, they're going to be covered by your stitching, but it does work very well on dark fabric. And also I have friction pen. This sort of showed up on the fabric, but not nearly enough to really show up on camera. So that's why I chose to use the white jelly roll. This is a heat soluble pen. Again, more information in that other lesson if you'd like to learn more about them. And I've also got a water-soluble pen as well. Again, this did show up a little bit on this, but not quite enough for me to be able to comfortably teach you and have you be able to see it. And obviously you're going to need your printed pattern. So this pattern has four pages. So we've got our main page. This is the page that you're going to use to transfer your design sort of. And I'll explain that in a moment. We've got our recommended stitches here and I'll go over this as we worked through the pattern. The astrological glyphs. Glyphs is just another word for symbol. For all of our clips here. Zodiac signs got our planetary glyphs, all the different planets and the house numbers. And I'm actually going to be giving you a really many basic astrological class in the next lesson notes so that you understand how to use these in your pattern. So that's all the materials that you're going to be needing. And I'll see you in the next tutorial. 3. Basic Astrology: All right, so in this quick lesson, I'm going to give you a very, very, very rudimentary breakdown of basic astrology. I am not an astrologer, if you are or you're more knowledgeable about this and I am, please don't send me hate me. This is just a really, really basic breakdown, just so people kind of understand the basics of what to put in their pattern and what it means, or the very basics of what it means anyway. So as you can see in the chart here, in the pattern, there are three symbols. This is your zodiac symbol. What everybody, you know, if somebody asks, What's your sign man? That salon that you're going to be usually telling people it's where your son is placed in your chart. This one is your house. And I'll explain that in a minute. And this one is your planet to that is ruled by your your sire, that rules your sign, I should say. So. You don't need that right now. So here's your astrological glyphs. This is what we call your sign, your star sign, but in actual fact that's your sun sign. So as you can see on the chart that I've made the pattern, I've used areas. I'm filming this right at the spring equinox. So this is the beginning of areas season. So I thought it would be appropriate to use areas and it's a nice shape symbol as well. So you can kinda like place your other symbols using that as a general rough guide. So you can see we have all of the astrological symbols here, your zodiac signs and their glyphs. Capricorn his own kind of an odd one. It does have a, sometimes a few slightly different glyphs. The rest of them are all fairly similar across no matter where you're looking at it. But Capricorn does have a few slight variations on, on their glyph. You can see in these glyphs as well, just stylistic note, I put little extra fine lines and there that says a stylistic choice. That's nothing to do with the actual glyph itself. That's just to make the design a little bit prettier. You can stitch those if you want. You don't have to stitch them. I would recommend when you're drawing these out onto your fabric that you not draw the thinner lines, especially if you're using like a permanent pen, like the jelly pen, then it's just going to make drawing your, your basic shapes easier. And then you can add the extra lines later if you like. So this is your star sign, your sun sign, and your planetary glyphs. So your planets rule, your zodiac sign. So each zodiac sign is ruled by a planet or a couple of planets. And I'm actually going to put a list in the resources about which planets rule, which zodiac sign, and also some basic meanings. And also the houses. So the houses. So the general sense of the planets, the houses and the zodiac signs here is your planets are the what as an, a type of energy expressed like is it really fierce, as strong as it powerful? Is it loving? Is it carrying? Is it gentle? Is it sort of like dad vibe, like you should do this, that kinda thing. So that's the type of energy. Your zodiac signs, what we would normally call our sign, the sun signs. What we would call them as ours, are signed, but it's actually just where your son has placed. The zodiac signs are. As in how the energy is expressed. And again, I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail about this. I just want you to see the relationship between these three. And then the houses, the houses of the zodiac or the where, as in the areas of life that the energy will play out. So it could be money, it could be relationships, it could be all sorts of things. Your career, there's all these represent different aspects of your life, your personality. And again, I will put a little mini list in the resources section. And also if you are interested in learning more about this, and I'll go into this in a moment. This book here is really, really good. I got this recently from a local bookstore and it's fantastic. So it's astrology using the wisdom of the stars in your everyday life by Carol Taylor. And it's very cool. It's got nice illustrations, a fair amount of detail without visit or being too much. It's got all sorts of neat stuff in here since you have been reading it. Capricorn. So it's got a lot of really neat information in here. So if you are interested in learning more about it, That's a good one to pick up to start with. So what you're going to be needing for your chart. As I said, we've got our house, we've got our zodiac sign, the astrological sign, and we've got our planet. So again, in the resources there's going to be a list as to which ones match up with which, but your house. You probably not going to know. So in order to do that, you're going to need to do your own astrological chart. And don't worry, this is fine. No panicking. I know it looks super freaky. So there's a link in the resources as well. So you can get your chart done for free. What you're going to need is you're asked for your name and that's a silicon, put it on your chart. I'll ask for your birth location. So like the city and country are born in, it will ask for the date obviously, and it will ask for the time. If you don't know the time, usually there's a spot we can click, don't know the time, but if you do know the time, that makes it a lot more accurate. So what I've done with mine and this is my printout and I've just covered up my birth birth details for privacy reasons. If you're ever getting a private astrological reading, don't worry about giving them those details, distances. I don't know who's going to see this, so I just wanted to cover that up as it's relatively public, but and I actually typed this stuff into my chart. So the link that I'm putting in the resources for your pre-charge. This is going to produce this same kind of chart here. So I actually typed the cancer nine, Gemini 8, all that myself. So you're not going to see that. But if you look at your astrological glyphs chart, you'll be able to match up the symbols like cancer here. Is cancer here. I was just typing the same when I was learning just to make it easier for me to reference Gemini. You can see here it's kind of a more stretched out symbol and it's squatter here, tourists, so you can kind of figure it, figure it out. That way. So what you're going to want to do to find your house that you're going to put right here. And again, you don't want to do this. If you don't want to, you could put anything here if you want. It doesn't matter. But if you do want to find your house just to make it sort of go along with the three main aspects of your chart. What you're gonna do is once you get you go to that website, you fill in your details, you get this printed out. I would print it out if you want. It's kinda cool to have. And what you're gonna do is you're going to look for your son. You go through your son's sine. So sine is this symbol here, circle with a.net. So what you're gonna do is you're going to find that symbol inside your zodiac wheel. It's somewhere in here. It has to be. So for me, it's right here. So if you look up with this reason I chose this particular, we'll extend its got the houses actually numbered on the actual wheel. If you look up, I'm in the third house. So your first house, if anybody ever asks you what's your rising sign man? That's this one here, that's your first house. Whatever astrological sign is at this horizon here. That's your rising science. I'm a rising Scorpio. So to find your house, find your son's ion, which has a little circle. And then you're going to find the number there, and that's your house. So again, I'll put a little bit of information and the bottom are in the resources about what each house means. But you can like seriously go into the weeds like I've seen whole courses just on learning about your houses like all of this stuff you can get seriously into the weeds on which is why I'm not going to give you a lot of information about it. But again, you're going to find your sun sign. That's obviously going to be No out as your sign. Capricorn for me. Find that, find your house, and then look in the resources and see which planet is the ruler of your sign. There are a couple that have two planets, in which case I'll talk about that in a minute as far as charting it out. But for me it's Saturn. Can Capricorn is rule by Saturn. So that's this one here. Alright? So that is a very, very basis of astrology. If you're wondering why some of them have two signs, is basically because Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were discovered much later. So by then all the other planets have kind of already been matched up with the zodiac signs. So some of them basically a double-whammy and they got some of these new ones as well. So they're like the modern and the traditional ones. So that's why some of them have two. And once we start drafting out the pattern and I'll talk about that. And what to do when you do have a sign that has to like Scorpio has to, as does Aquarius and Pisces. Alright, I think that's it for now. If you have any questions, do please feel free to leave a comment in the discussion tabs? Because I know this really complicated. I'm not going to be able to answer any of your questions. Like, what does it mean if this planet is in this house? I can't answer that. You need to go to a professional astrologer for that. But if you have any issues with how I'm describing this as to what information you're going to need to create your own pattern. Please do, let me know. Alright, and in the next video we're going to be showing you how to get your pattern ready to stitch. 4. Preparing Your Fabric: All right, so we're back. So as you can see, the printed pattern in your chart is not the same as what I ended up drawing and that's exactly what I was describing in the last video. This is actually my chart here. This is just a general placeholder chart. But if you are Aries and you happen to have been born in your son's sign is in the first house. Boom, there's your chart right there because this is the symbol for Mars, which is a planetary ruler of areas. So there you go, your charts done, You're welcome. Actually be really interesting if somebody did actually end up having little displacement. So if you did, let me know and we actually really cool. But anyway, so what I did is I, again, I use the jelly pen for this because the Gelly Roll pen, because it just shows up better for the camera and such. And it just makes things a little bit easier. So what I actually did, and you can see in the video or in the photo I'm showing right now, you can see what it looked like when I held the fabric up to the window with the pattern underneath it so I could trace the basic wreath section here. So obviously it depends on the thickness of your fabric, whether using darker fabric, later fabric as to which transferring method you want to use. If you're, if you've never done this before, I would definitely recommend checking out Lesson 3 in the hand embroidery fundamentals class about transferring your design. If you want more ideas about different ways to transfer your design, I'll actually link up a video tutorial that I did on my own website and on YouTube. And that's got more ways of transferring your design, just whatever works for you. And you can even free hand this as well, that you don't have to actually trace this unless it's makes you feel more comfortable, especially with some of the glyphs are a little bit funky if you've never drawn them before. But again, with the jelly roll, this is going to have to get covered by our stitches. So do be careful with your line work like try not to use like super thick lines are like go way off and things like that because you're just going to have to cover that or it will just be visible later. So what you might be noticing too, as I haven't drawn any of the star stitches on. And the reason for that is the placement of these star stitches. There's two different star stitches. We've got an Algerian eye here. And obviously I'm going to teach you how to do these later. And then we've got a star cross stitch. So we've got two different types of stars here. So depending on which glyphs you use and which planetary rulers. And if you have two planets, like if you're a Scorpio or queries or Pisces, you've got to planetary ruler. So what you're going to want to do is not draw this wreath. Maybe all the way down like you're going to want to stop it. Maybe around here ish, to leave more room for the two planetary symbols next to each other if you want to do that. So as you can see, I've left the looping off of the illustration. I've just drawn the basic central line. And the reason for that is this particular stitch. These loops are actually formed later and how many E-loops you end up with is determined by how wide your backstitch ends up being at all. Demonstrate that later, but you don't want to be drawing in all of these little loops because you may end up not needing them all. And particularly if you're using a permanent pen, you don't want to end up having to cover all that up. So just the basic shape of the wreath is fine. Again with the stars, depending on which symbols are using, the placement might get shifted a little bit to sort of whatever looks good to you. You can even just that a randomly scattered them later. You don't even have to draw them because they are quite simple stitches to which I will explain. So that's pretty much it for this. So once your fabric is ready, once you've drawn your design on, you've put it in your hoop. Again, when you're putting your fabric and your hoop, try not to stretch it out too much just because it is a relatively circular shapes. So when you're putting it in like it wants to be, you want it to be tight enough, but not like crazy tight to the point you're warping your design. Once that's ready, then I will start going into the first tutorial of how to do the back stitch. 5. Backstitch: Alright, so we're ready to start the backstitch. So if you look at your stitching map here, you can see that the backstitch is going to be used for the house number, for the astrological glyph and for your planetary glyph. It's actually also going to be used for the inner wreath, or sorry, for the outer ring, that straight line of the race. So you're going to be doing that as well. You can do that now, or you can do it later when we're going to do the double threaded backstitch, I would recommend doing it now. Try to keep your stitches as even as possible because that's going to affect the size of your loops. And I'll explain how to form the loops later. But try to keep it as even as possible. You don't have to do as many stitches as this, just as long as it curves relatively nicely, It's got a nice bit of a bend to it. So you don't want to have crazy long back stitches because that's just going to take up a lot of space and it's gonna look kinda clunky. So do have, you know, have them long enough that your whole line curves nicely. So as you can see here as well, I've said to use three strands of floss for all stitches. Right now, that's three strands. There are roughly that the density of that on the, on the dark fabric you can use as many or as few as you like. This is your project. You can use as many colors as you like. For this one, I'm just using white just because I think it's going to look really pretty on, on the dark blue. And if you want for the thinner lines I was mentioning earlier than the astrological lifts, you can use two strands of floss for those. You can use three again, you can use whatever you like. You don't have to stitch them at all. The main form of the astrological glyphs is the darker line. So you can just leave it at that if you like. All right, so we're going to start with the backstitch, which again is house, your astrological sign, your planet, and then that line of the wreath. So I'm actually going to start on the wreath just so you can see. So I've got my needle threaded already. It's going to tie my not. So this is called a quilter is not. I've shown this in a few videos, but it's super handy little Trixie. You get your thread sandwich between your needle tip and you wind it around your needle tip a few times, you kinda pinch it. Don't let it unspool. So you're pinching your fingers here and then pull your floss through. Just like that. That's a quilter is not I level growth and don't freak out about not some things, it's fine. A lot of people say, you should use knots bib site to your project. All right, So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to try and hold US bit closer so you can see if you do want more of a detailed instruction about backstitch, you can go to that and embroidery fundamentals class. I do cover it there as well. A quick review of it and backstitch is pretty simple. So you're gonna go down my stitches quarter-inch. And then the reasons called backstitch because after your first at you're going to come back up and go back down the same hole that you came up and the last one going down, I should say. So again, try to keep your stitches. Even fish-like, don't panic about it, don't freak out about it. It's fine. There's nothing to worry about it just for this particular stitch that we're gonna do later. It's going to, it's going to make it look a lot nicer if it's all relatively the same length. So you get a not as long as you haven't briefed on it, you can usually just undo it quite easily. It's when you've pulled really heard already that sometimes you get not. So if you have to cut your thread, start again. It's fine. Tunes the life of a stitcher. If you find you're getting nots a lot, that probably means your thread is too long. So try and make use shorter strands. Right? So that's literally all there is to the back stitches is going back, back, back, back, back. Also with these darker lines. Here, you can either use the three strands like I'm recommending. And you can do that. You can use six strands if you really want a nice thick line or you can do two rows of the backstage to make a nice dense line. So see how it looks on your fabric. And then, and then, and then make a decision as to how many rows of back stitch you want to make a nice thick line. Fourth in line. You know, it depends on what you like. And also if you're using up left orbits a flaw sometimes it's determined by how much floss you have left. All right, so I'm just gonna keep struggling with this. I'm going to turn the video off. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to keep going with the backstitch around here and around here. And I'm actually going to do all of the backstitch in these areas as well. I'm going to use two strands for the thinner lines in the astrological glyph, just so you can see the difference in density of the stitching. But I'm going to do all of the backstitch and then you can see what that looks like. And I'll be back in a moment. So as you can see, I've finished doing the backstitch, so it's a bit hard to tell, but I did do the the little lines in in like a two strand and then the rest of it's all in three strand. And as you'll see, like my lines are little bit wobbly, they might not be perfect. And that's okay. Like I don't want people to freak out and go, oh my God, it doesn't look like so on so on Instagram, that's fine. I mean, they are professionals. It's all good. The point of doing anything by hand is that it looks like it was done by hand. Like if you want it to look like a machine that it then you can go buy one of those fancy sewing machines. And it's all fine. But what we're going to do is in the next tutorial, I'm gonna be showing you how to do the double threaded backstitch, which is this part is kinda like funky looped thing. And it's actually really, really simple to do, but it looks super cool. So you can either use the same color the white I was using, or you can use a different color, whatever you like. And so we'll be going into the double threaded backstitch next. 6. Double Threaded Backstitch: All right, So next step now that we've finished all of our backstitch is we're going to do be doing the double threaded backstitch. So this is what creates those really pretty little loops around the outside edge. So you can do anything along here. Like if there's other stitches that you like, like this, it's a nice thing about embroidery is you can do anything. You could another backstitch for, for stem stitch or split stitch for this particular section, if you're wanting to do the double threaded one, I would recommend just sticking with the backstitch and you'll see why in a moment. But yeah, for any of these sections, there's nothing saying you can't use another stitches, his back stitches, easy for most people to kind of grasp, especially if you're a newer Stitcher. And it does give quite a nice clean line. So that's why I tend to use it in my designs a lot. So I'm going to start with the double threaded backstitch. So I've already got my needle and thread. My needle threaded and it's anchored the back with a not. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to start, I'm going to start with this one here. And what you're going to want to do is you're going to come up. I'm just going to get closer so you can see you're gonna come up sort of basically right in the middle of your first backstitch. Like you're not going to pierce your backstitch at all. It's going to come up to the side. Either side is fine, doesn't matter. But you're going to come up sort of issue in the middle of your stitch just off to the side. So that's where you're going to come up with your thread. Okay? Okay, so, so you've come up, Here's your thread right there. So sort of sticking out to the side. So now we're actually going not going to use the pointy end. We're going to use the tail end of your needle, the eye and yeol, reverse needle trick. So because you're going to use the reverse end of the needle, the reason is otherwise you're potentially going to catch your backstitch threads if you use a sharpened. So we're going to use the, the, the AI end of the needle. So what you're gonna do is you're going to next backstitch over. You're going to run your thread under, grab your needle, and you're not going to pull it tight. Obviously you want to leave a bit of a loop. This is what's creating this loop defect. So yeah, leave, you can leave these loops as long or as short as you like. It's all up to you. I'm going to leave them about their English. Secondly bit about that. And then you're going to do the same thing but the other direction. Oops. So you want to be quite gentle with this. You don't want a refund on it because then you're going to obviously pull all the alignment out of your little loops like that. Yeah. See you want to be doing your double threaded. Backstitch before you do the stars on the pattern, just because you are dragging your needle across your fabric. It is a lot easier to do this if there aren't other stitches in the way that you're potentially going to get the eye of your needle caught on. And again, like if you want to, you can go and alter these with the end of your needle as well. If you're realizing they're looking a little bit uneven, or if you want to make them uneven on purpose, Go for it. Spit scene. If you pull it too tight, you can always just go pull it out later. And that's basically it. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to keep, I'm just going to pause the recording. And I'm going to keep going down to the end and then I'll show you what to do at the end. You back in a moment. All right, so we're back. So as you can see, I finished almost the whole thing. If you want to adjust the size of these after you've got to the end or whatever. It really easy way to do this lightly in general, and easy way to do this is it's a lie, flat on a surface because then you don't have to worry about holding it in and manipulating it at the same time. And then it's easier to slide your needle flat. But what you can do is like say you decide this one here is a little bit too big. You can actually just hold down the anchor point of the one previous and then just slowly pull them through. And if you're holding down the one previous as you're pulling, then you're not going to warp anything behind that. You can see this one here got a little bit. So you're almost done. There's one more stitch to go through. And what you can do is you could anchor your thread here if you wanted to have just a threaded backstitch like a 11 thread through, kind of forgot to mention to him using three strands, but you can use as many strands as you like for this, you can make it thicker or thinner. Whatever, whatever floats your boat. Twist my needle. So quick trick. What I just did there is if my if your thread starting to get a little bit twisted, tangles up on you, is if you just drop your drop your needle and let, let the thread hanging from your hoop. That hard to see in the video. Then that will actually let the needle untwist. So as you're stitching, your hand will naturally actually twist your needle and that can kink up your floss. So if you find your floss getting kicked, just gently drop your needle and obviously make sure you don't lose any elephant falls off. But that's a good trick. So what we're gonna do is we're going to finish off this last one and I'll show you how to keep going with it. So like I said, you could if you wanted to anchor it off, what you would do is just go back down through the fabric here. Like you started, and then tie a knot at the back and that's your anchoring point. But what we're gonna do is we're going to keep going. So I'm going to go through, if you wanted to, you could still could put an anchoring stitch here. You can drop an anchoring stitch down there just to prevent this from getting too wobbly on you if you think it's not going to same place. And then we're just going to keep going. So again with the backwards needle, you're going to go back through trying not to disturb that leaps you've already made. So what you might do in this time is grab those previous loops and that way they're not gonna get disturbed as you pull your other side and you're going to try and make them the same on each side. But again, you don't have to. You can make these uneven or you can do a different color. You could drop down and then pop up with another color and have two different colors weaving through, which would be really, really pretty through. So you basically doing the exact same thing but in reverse. So you're creating this beautiful double loop effect. So I'm going to keep going with this. And then I'm going to anchor my thread here. And then keep going with this side and I'll show you what it looks like in the end. So as you can see, I finished doing both sides of the loops. You can see some number a little bit like those bigger ones and smaller ones. And honestly that's okay. Like the whole point of this is to prove that your piece doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to look like it should be on Instagram, although if you do want to share your stuff on Instagram, please I would love to see your work and you can tag me at Peacock and fake love to see everybody's work. The point is, is like this is about you creating. It's about you relaxing. It's about you enjoying, basically meditation with your hands, like your hands moving and a rhythmic motion is actually very meditative. So I want you to enjoy this and it's okay if things end up a little bit wobbly. I'm okay with this. So I think you should be too. As far as like your own projects, like be happy with what you create. Like don't worry about perfection. If you do want to make this a little bit easier on your leg and confining the bigger leaps are harder for you to sort of air quotes keep control of like you're just getting a little bit too wobbly on the length and things like that, then it's OK, totally okay. To make them shorter, as you can see here, these are actually quite short. So what basically what you're doing is you're just pulling tighter. So like you can even run it like right like pull it tight, tight but you can run it right next to the back stitch line. So it just ends up sort of creating a slightly fatter back stitch line. Okay, too. I just purposely did these quite exaggerated loops to see you could see the technique better and you can see it kind of creates this cool kind of sort of lacy effect which I quite like. So the next stitch we're going to be working on as a star cross stitch on one thing I forgot to mention too with this is when you're tying off your thread at the back, either when you've finished going all the way around both ends and then come back. Or if you've run out of thread partway through and you have to change your thread. Because obviously you're going to want to go back down underneath one of these intersections like underneath the backstitch where it's crossing, dropped down, tire thread off and then come up with a new threat on the other side. But what you're going to want to do, be careful of not pulling your thread too tight when you're looping it off at the back, whether you're trying and not, or whether you're just running your your thread underneath a couple of other nearby stitches and then cutting your floss. Be careful not to pull too tight because otherwise you're going to actually like collapse, collapse a loops, which would suck because anytime we're threatened and you're like, well that's ox any they'd like cut it and then start again. Not a big deal, but just a little tip for free or for that. So the next one we're going to start on is the star cross stitch, which are these sort of ironically crossed stars looking ones. And I'll see you in the next tutorial. 7. Star Cross Stitch: All right, the next stitch I'm going to be teaching you is the star cross stitch, which is this one on your stitching map, which is this little one here. I've actually drawn these reverse of what they air quotes traditionally are. Traditionally there a longer X shape and then a shorter plus shape. But I actually like the shape of this one better. So I'm going to teach it this way and you can do whatever you like. I decided for this particular project, it looked nicer having this one because then it counteracts as sort of the more even radiating lines of the Algerian I, which I will show you next. So this one is this. So if anybody kinda goes, that's not the right way to do it. Just tell them No, there is no right or wrong way to do anything. It's just a more traditional way is to do it reverse how I've drawn it. So that's fine. So what we're gonna do is you're gonna go anywhere. So I'm going to just roughly follow the placement of this on the pattern just so you can see what I'm doing. So I'm obviously not at my thread again using the three strands. So A-star across, which is super simple. All right, so first you're going to start with, you're going to look the longer. Basically a plus sign. Am I now super-complicated? And then the same length arm going the other way. And again, you don't have to get really nuts about this. Like if they end up a little wobbly or not perfectly perpendicular, It's we'll all be okay. Okay, So we've got our plus sign there. Lovely. And then we're just gonna do a little cross stitch over top. Complicated as that. So many of you know that I'm actually across this designer, but cross stitches actually just whine of a gajillion embroidery stitches like some people have this whole thing like cross stitch isn't part of embroidery. Blue bubbly. And it's like, Oh my God, do you not have anything better to worry about and be, yeah, it's actually an embroidery stitch. So it says happens at cross-sections sort of become its own thing and it has its own fabric which makes it easier to make your x's for more evenly and all that. So yes, there are different, but it is still just an embroidery stitch. Pretty. So there is your basic star stage. So because this fabric isn't too translucent, I'm actually just going to carry on and cross the back with my thread and start the next one. If you want to, you can not your thread at the back and then carry on. It depends on your fabric and like how translucent it is and whether you're going to see threads crossing back and forth. This one's going to be okay once it's framed up. So I'm not going to worry about it. So I'm going to start this one down here. Right. So again, I'm going to start with your big plus sign. Like I was saying earlier, you don't really have to worry too much about drawing out the placement of these. You can, if you really want to, there's nothing stopping you. But you can also just wing. It is totally fine. Especially these ones, they're quite simple to do. And again, just eyeball the length. You'll see also on the pattern that I varied the size of the star cross stitches so you can do them all the same size as each other. You can change up the size. You can even do some in different colors. You could change up the number of strands, threads so they end up with a different density. I'm gonna do a couple of more on this side. I'm going to do these ones, but I'll just pause the video and then I'll show it to you once that section is done. And we're done. So if you do these and you realize like something really off at a whack and you're happy with the placement, you can just obviously unpick it and do it again like it's not a big deal at all. But so I've got my little star cross stitches around here. And the next section of the tutorial, I'm gonna be teaching you how to do the Algerian I, which is a very, very pretty stitch. See you in the next one. 8. Algerian Eye Stitch: All right, so in this one I'm going to be teaching you how to do the Algerian I, which on your stitch map is here. So it's the ones with the little hollow centers and the sort of the more evenly shaped points. So this is actually an open work stitch. So it's traditionally done on her Dang or her dendrite. Not sure which way to pronounce it. Fabric which is a sort of like an even we've, It's usually about 20 to count. And basically when you're doing this stitch, such as actually pull the little arms, pull and creates an open center. So it's called an open work stitch. So the trick I would recommend for this one is once you've not had your thread, because you're actually going to want to start from the outside edge of your arm. You're not going to want to start in the center because otherwise you're gonna have to keep going in through where you're not is. And obviously if it's pulling it, you're going to create an open space next to a naught. And so you might see the tail of the not. So I would recommend starting on the outside edge here. So I'm going to start with this one here. So again, you can just, you can draw this out if you really, really want to. I'm just going to eyeball it. So I'm going to start with the 45 degree angle one here on the left. So again, I've started in the upper corner and I'm going to go into where the center will be. And then you're going to come up. So this is like 45 degrees round each time you can vary the length of these arms if you want to. Like, there's nothing saying that leads all have to be the same size, particularly if you're not doing it on, on the air quotes proper fabric. If you're doing it as embroidery. You can do this however you want. This is a basic search so you can see it's going to zoom in so you can see this. So you can see when you pull your thread, obviously this fabrics quite lightweight. So it is, it is making a slight gap easier anyway, but depending on your fabric, you may have to pull it slightly harder. You don't want to buckle your fabric, but you do want to get to the point where there's a little hole. Because what you're gonna do is you're actually going to drop your needle back down the exact same hole. You don't want to catch any of the threads of your previous stitch. You don't want to catch additional threads of your fabric. You want to go down the exact same hole. Because as you drop down your neck stitches, you're going to be pulling and it's going to exaggerate that hole. So again, we're gonna do 45-degree ish. And you can drop down that hole. And you're going to pull a little bit. So every time you're bringing up your next stitch, just keep that tension on it. You don't want to obviously, like I said, buckle your fabric or tear it like that. You'd have to pull really hard for that, but see going back down the same hole. You just sort of working around the arms, always going down that same hole. And you can see as you're working at your whole I don't quite see it in the view, but you can see the whole is becoming more pronounced. And that's the point of this stitch. So that's why it's called an Algerian. I think you're creating a little portal and the fabric. Last one here. Then this one I actually would not off at the back. For each one is going to make sure you can see that Zoom nym, this one I wouldn't off at the back and make sure you like your tail is pulled away from the hole like you don't want to nodded off in a way that your tail is crossing that hole because it's going to be visible as you can see. So you wanna make sure your tail is not it off. So I'm going to knot it off at the upper section. See you look at my back, It's not pretty and it's okay. This is what I'm saying. Like you don't have to worry about your stuff, like trying to get me perfect with your your threads. So the way you're crossing all the things, it's fine. So I'm running my stitch under few. And then I let catch it. I do have a tutorial as well, our class on Skillshare on how to do stitching onto transparent or translucent fabric. And obviously your back is going to have to be a lot neater for that kind of thing because the fabric is actually shear. But otherwise, don't worry about it. It's not worth it. It's not worth losing the brain cells. Here you go. Here's your pretty little Algerian eye. So on the powder and you can see I've got one here. I've got one down here, so I'll do that one. And obviously you can make as many of these you want on your pattern. You can add extra ones in here. You can even embellish this all with French knots. I do have another class as well on French knots. So if you've never done a French now you're scared or French knots, please go do that class because I teach you a really, really simple way to do French knots and colonial knots. In case 1, you jive with better. But yeah, friend shots are not something to be scared out, but they would make a lovely sort of texture in here as well. So I'm going to start again, I'm going to knot my thread again. My filters not show you that second Algeria not. So again, coming up on the outside edge of sizes looking to see where it places roughly. They're coming up on the outside edge of that arm. Dropped down a little bit. Marie practices such as to the faster you'll get at them. But speed isn't really the point of stitching. But you will notice that you can sort of do certain stitches more automatically once you practice them a little bit. This one would actually look really pretty with the arms different lengths. And again, you can switch up the thread color. This would be a nice use for metallic thread as well. Give a little sprinkle, and we're done. So as I said, you can embellish this with French knots and whatnot if you want to, if you do want to finish the backoff. So this is all kind of covered in a gift. It sort of like how I did for this one here, this is the hand embroidery fundamentals project. So what you can do is actually back it with felt. So then it creates a nice little standalone gift and then the back isn't gonna get touched or anything like that. You can hang a nice ribbon around this. So what you can do is go to lesson 8, the finishing your hoop lesson in the hand embroidery fundamentals class. And that will actually teach you how to do this. It's really simple. You just need a piece of felt big enough for the back of your hoop. So if it's a four-inch hoop, at least four inch square piece of felt. Just Kraft felt from a dollar store works well or whatever else you have lying around, felt or fleece, anything that you can cut and it doesn't fray, that will work just fine. And I hope you enjoyed your project and I've got a few more words for you at the end. And I'll see you in a moment. 9. Final Words: So thank you so much for joining me in this class. I really hope you enjoyed making your cute little astrological project. If you have any questions, please do feel free to use the Discussions tab below. And also I would love to see your projects, so please do add them to the class project gallery. You can get to that by the projects and resources tab below. And also, you can tag me on Instagram or Facebook at Peacock and fake. Hope you have a great day, happy stitching.