Thursday, October 27, 2011

Embroidery Help Needed !


I am a novice when it comes to hand embroidery- learning those skills from the past, without a tutor. I see so many beautiful embroidered pieces on the blogs and I know the embellishment was not part of the pattern. Here is where I get stuck. The sheeps' curls were printed, so I could follow that. There really are no curls on the corner of the smaller sheep. The basket handle and rim I tried to fill in myself.

I'm horribly disappointed withe the stars. I will be pulling out the yellow filling that I made way too messy. But what do I do to keep the stars separate and yet not make it too busy with the branches that filter through? I would color it in with the crayon technique but I can't iron them or I lose the transfer pattern. I suppose I could go over it with a pen.


Any suggestions would be welcome. I have the Aunt Martha's iron on transfers plus some Crabapple Hill patterns in my stash.

How do you know what to fill with if it's not a leaf or flower?
When you are not using counted cross stitch material how do you know the best layout? I"m using muslin and then I will soak it in coffee or tea.
Are there any sites that have great examples that I can work from?

Thanks!!!!

5 comments:

Pat said...

I like to use cotton too - either plain or with a very subtle design. Are you using a lightweight fusible interfacing on the back? It helps to hide stitches and thresds. Normally with Crabapple Hill, only a basic backstitch for the outline is called for...sometimes they have you do a little padding when doing lazy daisy stitches for a flower. Do your instructions call for filling in the star? I use 2 strands of DMC and 1 strand when doing finer details. You might try www.embroidery.rocksea.org - there are some nice stitching tutorials.

Your sheep and their curls look very nice!

Country Whispers said...

I was blog hopping and ran across your post. I love to stitch but I have yet to fill in any thing so I can't really help you with the stars. I can tell you that I use a washable pen to transfer my images onto the fabric and it is wonderful. I can trace my pattern, color with crayon(if I choose), iron and then stitch. Once finished I just run water over and the pen mark erases. So easy!
After that I dye with coffee.

Kathy Felsted Usher said...

I have a transfer pen, I'll have to try that.

My transfer doesn't come with instructions so I don't know what they had in mind. I tried to look on the web to see if anyone had posted a completed one but so far no luck.

Thank you for the comments!

Candy C. said...

I really like the sheep and the basket, you did a great job! Not sure what to do with the stars though. You are right, it will look pretty "busy" if you fill them in but if you don't, they won't show up very well. Hope someone else has some ideas!

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