Tutorial - simple stumpwork face

Better late than never, and I hope you find it worth waiting for...

Today's tutorial is to create a simple, whimsical raised work face.  I don't often do this sort of 'cartoon' look, so it was an interesting challenge for me to learn too!

I hope you enjoy it and will have a go at making your own cute little face embroidery and will leave a comment with a link to a photo of it.=)

First of all, this piece was worked largely from one of the, sadly, deleted Coats 'Card It' kits.  Here are the contents of that kit and, in the second photo, the changes I made to the colouring of the girl's face.  This was to be a little congratulations card for my niece who got her good GSCE results last Thursday and she isn't a blue-eyed blonde, so I changed to brown thread and beads to match her more closely.  (GCSEs are the national exams all English, Welsh and Northern Irish youngsters sit at age 16.)

Of course, you can do that with the skin tone as well.  So, if you wanted to work an Oriental, Indian or black face, you'd simply select the correct shade of brown for the skin fabric and browns and black for the hair and eyes.

Mount your main background fabric into a small hoop.  I used one just 10cm/4 inches in diameter.

Cut a 5cm/2inch circle from the contrasting fabric you plan to put behind the face and a 4cm/1½5inch circle from your face fabric.  As you can see here, the kit used evenweave fabrics for all three pieces, but I don't see any reason why plainweaves won't work just as well.

Attach the contrasting fabric to the main fabric using random straight stitches and a co-ordinating thread.

Of course, this stage is optional as you don't have to have this contrast trim at all.

Now we move on to creating the head.  Above are the instructional diagrams from the kit (which I thought were pretty good).

Using a matching sewing cotton, stitch a line of running stitches all around the face fabric circle about ½cm/just over ¼ inch from the edge.  Make sure that you secure the thread well at the start with a knot.

Pull the thread up tight and, after having inserted a tiny bit of cotton wool or toy stuffing type material, secure the  back well.  Be careful not to put very much stuffing in, or else you could be dealing with an unnatural protruding face which will be hard to shape later on.

Using small stab stitches and a matching sewing thread, attach the stuffed face to the backing.  Where you position it in the circle will depend on whether or not you want to put some lettering underneath and/or something on the head - a hat or, in this case, a crown.

When you've been all around the edge of the face, this is what it should look like.  Don't worry if it's a little uneven.  You can probably shape anything too odd looking with your fingers and/or a few extra stitches.

Next are the eyes.  Take a beading needle and some matching sewing or embroidery thread and attach seed beads about a third of the way down the face.  Eyes are about half way down a real face, but you may not want all that room above this for this cartoon-style face, especially if you want to add some type of headgear.  If not, place them a tiny bit further down and bring the front hair down further too.

Try to make sure the beads sit well, (one of mine is a little skew...), and pull the thread quite tightly so that the beads pull the face in a little and give it more shape.

Using the same kind of well-pulled stitching, put in a mouth outline using small running and back stitches.

Take care not to pull too tight for either of these stages.  You want to aim to create a little realism in the shape, not to have steep dips - or break the thread!

Now is time to start on the hair section.  There's a lot of room for variety here, so experiment a little and use your imagination.  Afro hair could be created with thicker threads, perhaps pearl cottons which have a good bit of twist and/or French knots.  Here, long, straight stitches using three strands of regular floss were used.

Make sure you cover in the sides well by putting some stitches along the side of the head.

When you've more or less finished, have a good look at the face and see what needs to be adjusted.

I felt the the hairline at the left hand forehead part was a little too angular and my girl looked a bit pale.  So, I put in some more stitches for the hair and, in proper womanly style - painted in her cheeks with a tiny bit of blusher on a small eyeshadow brush!!  Apart from the bead that doesn't sit well (and makes her look cross-eyed - you could even do that on purpose, if you wanted to!), below is the finished face:

This kit was for a head with a crown on and a small piece of pink felt came with it to create that.  I drew out a crown shape on the small square provided using the template in the instructions as a rough guide.

If you want to create a hat, you can use much the same method and cut the shape out of any suitable material: felt, leather, some low- or non-fray fabric, or even a more delicate fabric that you've stabilised by putting some iron-on interfacing or Bondaweb on the back of.

Stitch down the headgear shape using whatever colour and type of thread seem to best meet your requirements and with a size and quantity of straight stitches that you think will fit in with the look you want to create.

Add in some beads and trims as you like.  On the crown, there were six beads to be spaced out along the bottom, which also removed the need to stitch down the bottom edge of the crown shape.  If you do want to stitch down the lower edge of your headgear, take care not to pull too tight or the hat will look like it's squashing the head rather!

Each point of the crown had a start sequin with a bead on top too.  Come up though both then go back down under the bead, but back through the sequin hole to secure the whole trim.

Above is the finished face with crown and below, complete with some lettering (which would have been better done in a darker shade!!) and mounted in a small, circular aperture greetings card blank.

What do you think?  Could you manage to have a go at that?  It only takes about 60-90 minutes to complete, so may be the perfect project for a 'me time' evening.=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Tutorial - Raised needlelace strawberry (stumpwork)

Would you like to stitch a lovely raised strawberry on one of your pieces?  Perhaps to decorate a section of crazy quilt?  Or as a special motif in a sampler?  Today's tutorial will guide you through the process step by step.

There are several ways of producing a stumpwork strawberry.  This needlelace version was the one I learned via a Royal School of Needlework kit a few years ago and is one of the simplest.  You probably already have all the things you need in stock.

These are the materials you need to hand: Your fabric mounted in your choice of work frame, (here, a 5" hoop), some red felt, red and green embroidery threads, some red sewing cotton, some gold or yellow contrast thread for the seeds, a crewel embroidery needle, a tapestry needle and a couple of pins.  You'll also need a little bit of paper or tracing paper.

Stage one is to draw out the shape of the strawberry on some tracing paper or, if you prefer, some bondable paper.  Here you can see two of different sizes so that the shape is raised up gradually.  The inclusion of my index finger gives a clue as to scale, but you can use whatever size you need for your piece.  Generally speaking, the larger the finished berry is to be be, the more layers of padding you'll need in order to get a good raised shape.

After you've cut out your strawberry shapes from the paper, just pin them onto the red felt and cut around them.  Stumpwork isn't a very exact science, so you won't need to be too precise, but if you prefer to be, then by all means use bondable paper and cut around the shape that way (in the Jane Nicholas style).

This tutorial concentrates mainly on the larger size of strawberry, so there will be two layers.  Using the crewel embroidery needle (I used a no. 7) stab stitch the felt shape into place using red sewing thread.  If at all possible, find a close match to your chosen thread as some tiny specks may otherwise show through and spoil the effect (unless that's the effect you want).

One layer in place (above).

Here (above) you can see both layers stitched into place - the larger covering the smaller, giving a nice, raised bump.  Below is the view from the back of the work.

Now that the padding is securely in place, it's time to think about which needlelace stitch is best to use.  My choice for this berry would be corded single brussels stitch, also known as corded detached buttonhole stitch.  The corded version produces a denser effect than the non-corded one that I've used in things like wired insect wings and so gives better coverage.  This is especially important if you weren't able to find a matching colour of padding.

This picture is from Kay Dennis' 'Beginners Guide to Stumpwork' published by Search Press.

In order to make needlelace, you first need to work a row of backstitch all the way around the outside of your berry shape in your choice of red thread.  In this example, I'm using Anchor #8 pearl cotton in colour 47, a slightly dark red. You could also use stranded cotton in plain or variegated shades, but I prefer pearl cotton for needlelace as there is only one strand to work with and that reduces risk of getting the needle caught in more than one strand.  #12 pearl cotton is another possibility.

When that is complete, bring the needle through at the top left and then change to the tapestry needle which is less likely to catch in the felt or stab your finger!  Begin to work a buttonhole/blanket stitch taking the needle through the top back stitch but NOT through the fabric.  Needlelace is all worked on the surface.  This part can be a little tricky as you will need to make double sure not to catch your needle in the felt and, as you are working slightly uphill, that can be quite hard.

When the first row is complete, pass the needle under the back stitch at the side of the berry.  (I apologise for the poor quality of this photo!)

This is the 'corded' part: Take a line straight back to the left hand side, again passing the needle under the stitch at the side.

Begin now to work your second row of buttonhole stitches taking the needle under both the stitch in the previous row and the cord.  Over the next couple of rows you will probably need to increase the number of stitches in each row in order to get good coverage.  Simply work more than one into a few of the stitches on the previous row, spacing the double stitches out nicely.  To reduce, just do the opposite - miss out a few stitches and just work, say, 5 stitches into 6 or 7 on the previous row.

Each time you take a new trip across the berry, you'll need to make sure that you have enough thread to complete the row.  However, you're almost certainly going to run out at some point.  just pass the needle through to the back of the work and fasten off.  Bring up a new thread in the same place and carry on as before.

Fill up the whole berry with needlelace and, when it's finished, just take the needle to the back again (you may well want to swap back to your crewel needle as it's sharper) and fasten off.

Here, I threaded my crewel needle with some of the Kreinik cord 104C and made some French knots on the surface of the berry to look like the seeds.  You can also use small straight stitches or any other technique that you think will produce the effect you want.

Moving on to the small leaves (sepals??) at the top of the berry and I'm going to create those using open based woven picots.  For this you need one of your pins again.  Insert it into the fabric above the berry and bring it out again as near to the berry as you can.  This is quite fiddly as, again, you're having to work uphill and you don't want the pin pulling at and spoiling your needlelace.

Fasten on your green thread at the back.  Again, I've used Anchor #8 pearl cotton, this time in shade 266.  Bring it out to the right of the pin as near to the berry as you can.  Pass the thread around the top of the pin, then take it back through the fabric to the left of the pin as near as possible to the berry.  This is the final size and approximate shape of your sepal.

Bring the thread back to the front of the work directly to the right of the pin and take it up around the head of the pin again, crossing over and going from left to right.  This is another good time to change to a tapestry needle.

Begin the needle weaving as shown, first going over the outer threads and under the central one.

From the other side, weave back the other way this time going under the outer threads and under the inner one.  Don't pull too tight or you'll lose the shape of your picot and it'll end up being over narrow.

Continue weaving and, every couple of rows, stop and push the rows towards the top of the pin so that you can fit as many rows as possible into the picot.

When the picot is finished, change back to the crewel needle and take the thread through to the back.

Bring the thread to the front again just where you want the picot to be anchored.  You may want to do as I did here and make it closer in to the berry so that the finished result will be slightly curved and give a more raised effect.

Repeat the picot twice.

Here's our finished berry!

This is a smaller version worked over just the smaller piece of felt padding and done with the Anchor #12 pearl cottons.  (NB I think Anchor no longer manufacture pearl cotton #12 in shade 47, although other darker reds seem available).  The seeds here were worked with small straight stitches in Kreinik cord, 102C.

NB: Can I remind everyone, please, that if you want to pin this tutorial (or any other) or post a link elsewhere, to only take one photo.  Recently, some have begun to pin every photo from some tutes and, as the whole thing is already in the public domain and it goes against my blog copyright statement, I've not been at all pleased about it.  Pin and link by all means, but please keep it to a reasonable level.  Many thanks for your kind interest!=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

Tutorial - Framing your work in a flexi-frame

Ever wanted to frame your own piece in a plastic flexi-frame, but lacked the know how and confidence to do it?  I hope this series of photos will help you to have a go.  By all means, try it out on a spare piece of fabric first if you're afraid to spoil your work, but it's quite straightforward, so I doubt you'll run into any real difficulties.

Flexi-frames can be the ideal solution to mounting a small piece without spending a fortune on professional framing.  They tend to come in a few sizes of oval and circle and even in a few colours, although the wood effect one seems to be the most commonly available, followed by the black ones.  On the back of the label I found the instructions on how to use it and, whilst following them, I took these photos to share with you, especially as several of the other frames in my basket have no instructions on them and you may also have one that you would love to use if you only knew how....

Take your finished embroidery out of its working frame and, if needed and desired, press it from the back onto a soft towel.  Next, after having checked the size using the inner part of the frame and leaving a good inch (up to 3cm) to work with, trim your fabric to shape.  As you may be able to make out on the photo here, I drew a light pencil line where I wanted the inner frame to finally be.

Thread a needle with strong sewing thread and work running stitches all the way around the shape about half an inch (just over 1cm) from the edge.  Don't finish or knot off the thread, leave it loose.

Place the inner part of the frame onto the back of your work, taking care to position it well (on your pencil outline, if you've drawn one), and begin to draw up the stitches, spreading and evening them out as best you can.

Secure the gathering thread well by tying several good knots and trim off the end of the thread.

Next comes lacing which really stretches your piece and leaves a completely smooth finish.  Using a strong thread (I often use a pearl cotton shade that I don't often use for actual embroidery, although I didn't this time) in the end of which you've tied a secure knot that won't slip through your fabric, begin to lace across the piece, pulling each stitch as tight as you reasonably can.

I usually start in the middle and then work towards each edge.  You'll probably need more than one length of thread and do cut long threads each time as it soon uses up.

Repeat the process lengthways.

And here's the view from the front after the lacing has been completed - nicely smooth and tight over the inner frame.  Don't worry about any tiny bulges at the edges, (such as you can see here at the right hand side/bottom of the piece), as they will be covered by the outer frame.

Two whole stages in one here, as I forgot to take a picture part way through - whoops!  Snap on the outer frame from the front, making sure you have the hanging hook part in the right place.  Finally, cut a piece of felt to match the size and sew that onto the back to hide and protect the back of the work.

And that's it!  Here's the finished thing modelled hanging in our hall way.  It's now in Oxford in the home of a sweet 82 year old Japanese friend.=)

A good hour's work, wouldn't you say?  Please feel free to share your successes and experiences with this type of frame in the comments section.  Links to your work are very welcome.=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013