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.

Stem stitch

The next in our series of free motion embroidery stiches, is stem stitch.  I talked about this last week when we were looking at weave using the zig zag.  We will also look at a stem stitch derivative, the stem stitch extension leaf.

Stem stitch
When you are doing stem stitch by hand, the stitches look like the picture below.

To accomplish this in free motion, we use zig zag.

Satin stitch is a closed zig zag stitch.  This means that it has a short stitch length.  In free motion, this is controlled by how fast or slowly you move the fabric under the needle.  If your movement is not even, the satin stitch will be uneven too,  but you can go back over it as I have done in the video to even it up.
Above, you see a normal satin stitch.  In order to create a stem stitch, with overlapping stitches like in the hand stitch we rotate the hoop 45 to 90 degrees or one eighth to one quarter of a turn.  A quarter turn is easier to accomplish.
When we rotate the hoop, we do not change the direction we are moving in.  In the top example, I am moving the hoop to the left and  I am facing the machine at the left.  This is much easier to see in the video.
So, really stem stitch is quite and easy stitch, however, it does require a little practice to master curves using it.
Stem stitch is used for, obviously stems, but also for any definite lines in a piece of work.

Leaves

I use this technique usually for grasses and long leaves.  I use another technique for small leaves.

Basically, we start with a satin stitch and end up with a stem stitch as in the diagram below. 

This looks easy, but you will find that it requires a fair bit of practice.  If you have a digital or sliding stitch length dial, you might find it easier to just do a satin stitch that gets narrower by moving to a narrower stitch as you stitch (or pausing often to shorten), You may also be able to program in a narrowing stitch that you can select when you get to the end of your leaf.
As my machine has neither of these things and to boot I am left handed and the dials are on the right, i have developed this method.

If we look at the leaf from the right, I have started with satin stitch, then as we go left, the stitches angle so that at the tip they become stem stitch.  This is much clearer in the video.
  You might find it easier to stabilise the fabric near the leaf and allow the rotation by using a bamboo skewer (cut short to make it easier to manage.)  I use use my finger, but I DO NOT RECCOMMEND THIS TO ANYONE.
This stitch takes lots of practice as you can see below.

But remember, little irregularities can usually be remedied by more stitching (to a point).  None of us is perfect.

Video

This short video shows both stitches being made on the machine.

Hope you are enjoying this series.
I have designed a sampler (it is actually a little landscape) to go with the stitch course and will have the pattern ready for the next lesson.  I will also go back over the previous lessons so we can do some homework with it and get our stitches in the right places.

It has been an extremely long day and I am finally off to bed.  Happy Stitching

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

Anna Quindlen