Felting and Lutradur - 4

Well, this project is finally finished with this post.  Sorry it has taken so long.
Today I am just going to show you how I put it together for display.

Here I have squared up the finished piece at least 1/2 an inch from the beads on all sides.
You will need:

Four 1 inch wide strips of fabric for the peeper border.  I have cut these large enough for the long side (width) plus an inch. The strips are pressed wrong sides together along the length.

Fabric strips for the border.  I have cut my strips less than half the width of the main piece.

A glue Stick.

Begin by placing the peeper strips with the fold towards the artwork.  Use the glue stick to temporarily keep them in place.  The cut edges should line up with the squared up edges of the piece.

When you have all four peeper borders secured down, Place the first border fabric, face down, lined up along the squared edge as previously.  Secure both the peeper and the outer border with a 1/4 inch seam.

The top piece is secured with a 1/4 inch seam as detailed previously.  When both top and bottom outer borders are secured, press them open as shown above on the bottom piece.

Here, all four borders are attached and the peeper is visible.  Press.

For the next step you need:
Your top
Backing fabric
Double sided volume vilene (batting that is fusible on both sides.  If you can't get this, you can create your own with some light fusible and batting)

Simply press the backing and top to either side of the batting and everything is stable.
To finish, you can add binding in the usual way, however I did a simple zig zag over the edge in monofilament and followed that with two lines of couched thread, using the same thread and zig zag.

The yarn I used was a fluffy wool which had many of the beach colours in it.

 And voila! A finshed piece in under half an hour.

Felting and Lutradur 3

Continuing on from yesterday,
Here are my colour samples for the rocks

On the left are three browns, a dark and medium shade and a red brown.  These will form most of the rocks.  On the right are two shades of a warm grey (pinkish rather than blueish) which will form the rock highlights and the foam over the rocks.

 I used a wide zig zag, both open and closed (satin stitch) over the rocks, using the darker colours first, then adding highlights on the left of the rocks with the lighter colours.

Finally, I added beading to the foreground sand.

You can see here the selection of beads I used, mostly clear seed beads, but with some coloured and some larger beads.
Before beading,  I  loaded monofilament in both upper and lower feeds and put in a size 60 needle (A size 70 will work for most seed beads, but not all). The machine is still set for free motion, and if you are using a darning foot, you need to remove it.
Beading is done in a hoop with the foot lever down, but no foot attached.
I add beads to the hoop one at a time.  If you add more, they will jiggle all over the place as you stitch.  In the above picture I have picked up a bead on a very fine stilletto.

 Before picking up the bead, I hand turn the sewing machine so the needle is about  a half a centimetre or and eigth of an inch above the surface (enough room for the needle to clear the bead) and on it's way down.
Above, you can see I have placed the bead close to where I am going to put it.

 

Now, I hand turn the needle, slightly moving the hoop if needed, so that the needle goes into the bead, but not yet through it, or touching the work surface.
At this point, I can move the hoop and position the bead wherever I want using the needle.
When it is in the correct position,  I use the foot pedal and make three to five stitches, the first one or two inside the bead and the rest outside.
The bead is attached and this is repeated for each bead.

This seems, complicated, but after a bit of practice, you will be doing it quite quickly.  In reality is is only slightly faster than doing it by hand, but I find it more efficient, and there are less threads on the back of the work.
HINT:  Always hand turn the needle into the bead.  You will find that you can manouever the bead to standing if it is on it's side and move it where you want it easily, more importantly, hand turning also helps to weed out the misformed beads, because if the bead is too small, you will feel that the needle is not fitting, and be able to remove the bead before the bead cracks, the needle breaks, or the thread breaks, all of which will happen if you use the motor to sew into a too small bead.

 Above, I have added a few clear beads to the top of the wave crests.

And here are the beads in the sand area at the bottom.  I have mixed these beads to give an impression of a pebbly shore.

And here is the landscape at the end of the embroidery and beading.  You could just frame your work like this, but next week I will show you a quick way to layer and quilt it.

Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The biggest regrets in life all start with could have, might have, or should have.

Felting and Lutradur 2

Finally back to your tutorials, hopefully the routine will be correct next week.
As a refresher, we were working on a felted and embellished beach scene using lutradur

We have laid down the main elements and added felting.  In this tutorial we will add embroidery and beading.

I usually start at the top or the furthest away part of my scene.

Prior to embroidering, I test out the threads I have selected for suitability.

These were the first three threads I chose.  The first was a pale blue solid thread, the second was a tonal variegated with a short change, and the third was an ombre variegated.  I chose to use the ombre because the sky shades from dark to very light at the horizon and since the colour change was a long one, I could move from area to area depending on the shade.
I used a wide zig zag and moved side to side in a diagonal fashion.  This is very like stem stitch, which was covered in my machine embroidery stitch lessons.

You can see above how I moved around depending on the shade.
Next, I moved on to the sea.  I know the distant headland is next down, but it will be dealt with when I do the rocks, later.
Here is my colour sample for this section.

The first thread was a pale blue green, the second was an ombre variegated in blue green and the third was a white thread specked with  dots of other colours, which I tested to use in the wave tops.
Again, my choice was the ombre for the water, not because of any colour change in the water, but because it will give the water depth.

 I have used a straight stich in a wavy overlapping, back and forth manner, across the water.  This gives it both depth and texture.  Now for the frothy bits.

Still using a straight stitch and using the flecked white thread, I filled with  a variable granite stitch, and a bit of scribbly stippling thrown in.  I did not work over the grey and brown areas.  These will be done next in the next post, tomorrow and I will spend the evening  picking out the beads for the sandy area.

Good to be back!.