What's it all about

Sweetie sent me this today from Steven Burke,

who has been known to do a few T shirt designs

for Ambiguous.

This truly could be our life story.. I hope we

stop working soon!

So perfect!

Although, these days there is not even

time for dreaming!! Happy weekend!

Buy Ambiguous tees here.

In the home stretch..

Let's finish this mother up! Well, almost.

Get out your scrap for a few practice stitches.

just in case you can't identify the stitch we are getting started

with due to my overcrowded scrapadoodle,

it is the dark green one in the middle with my needle right next to it.

Yes, for the next two stitches we are going back to

the two colors from our beloved beanie.. in my case,

those are dark green and light green.

Let's start with the 'Stem' stitch.

Start by making a nice stitch of decent length.

The next stitch will start in the middle - on the right(or left) side

of what you are doing. It depends on which direction

you are stitching in, and I will explain later.

For this stitch practice, though, lets bring our needle up

on the right side of the stitch.

Which side?

The right side. Definitely.

Here's where shiz gets crazy.

from the right side, reach under the previous stitch and

yank it over to where your needle came up.

*Notice that now your stitch in on the LEFT side.

yep.

From there, make another decent sized stitch.

Notice how they are kind of hugging together. Aww.

The next stitch will come up right above the first stitch on the

right side..

So, keep up the switcheroo and you will end up with

a nice twisty donut looking stitch. Yum.

The Stem stitch is king of a fun, more stylized version

of a basic split stitch. We use it when we want to be

'Fancy'.

And, if you are like me, you want to be fancy often, almost always.

Our next stitch is the 'Leaf' stitch. I know, these names are

very original. Perhaps the most creative names ever.

For this guy, we have to draw a practice leaf on our scrap.

Make sure your leaf is nice and round. I ran into the problem

of making some ugly leaf tracings on my Poppy and, well,

my leaves are just not as fantastic as they could be.

Oh well.

So, you have your leaf. Brava to me and this fab drawing.

Ok. Start on one side of the bottom.. left or right, whatever

suits you best. So many choices.

For me, I chose left, so this explanation will follow that.

The next stitch will go up and to the right.. slightly angled.

The next stitch will start on the other side.. making a little

inverse V with the stitch( and a big V, really ).

This stitch will follow the first, in the opposite direction.

Next, we are going to get crazy again. Crazy embroiderers.

Your stitch will come up in the middle and do our

favorite bob and weave with the left side thread.

Note how the thread starts in the middle..

then gets crazy with the swoosh and grab of the left thread.

This stitch will be sewn in above your first stitch on the

right side, with

a small space between the two.

Next, your needle will come up on the right side between the

two threads. Keep the needle very close to the middle. We want

the little backbone of our leaf skeleton here to be nice and tightly

braided.

The next stitch will go to the left. Notice how that stitch seems a

bit saggy and definitely not the strong straight stitch we need

for our leaf skeleton perfection. Don't despair. This is where the

'Bend and Snap' comes in. Ok, that doesn't really apply.

But, I love saying it.

This is where our little duck under stitch grab comes in again.

repeat.

Look at this gorgeous leaf.

Notice the tiny braid back bone.

Time to apply what we've learned.

The 'Stem' stitch is for well, the stem.

And, the leaf stitch? Uh huh.

The only snag that I can come up with here is

when you stitch the stem stitch on a curve, make sure

your needle is popping out at the top of the stitch and you

are digging under the stitch and pulling it upwards.

Gravity is already against you, so you want to

pull the stitch upwards.

Finished stem and leaves.

You can play with the colors any way you want.

I put a little doodle at the end of my middle stem and

I don't know why. I guess I was in the moment.

Notice the far right leaf.. there are some pencil

marks lefts over as I tried to correct that

beastly leaf drawing.

Luckily, Pencil marks will wash out.

We can discuss this later.

Let's bring it home tomorrow with the final stitch

and stop this insanity.. for now.

pretty princess crown.

Where were we?

Ok, so now you have these lonely petals.

Let's finish off the top of the flower,

aka the crown.

Here is what we have so far.

For the rest of the flower, you will need two more sets of

monochromatic colors. It was suggested in class that

I really enjoyed saying the word monochromatic. Well,

I do. And lucky for me, I will use it again and again.

So, like I said, you need two sets of monochromatic colors

that fade from dark to light. For the actual crown, you will need

two colors. I used green : light and dark olive, to be exact.

The area below the crown will require 3 monochromatic

colors. Yes, that is FOUR times I have said it.

In my case, I used purple, light, medium, and dark.

You are welcome to pick your own color combo..

this is your craft, afterall.

The first stitch we are using here is 'padded satin'.

You will recall we used the satin last time on the ends

of the petals. You create a satin stitch by stitching from

one side to the next, with the stitches falling right next to

each other.

We are going to take this stitch to the next level, though..

the 'Padded' level. It will be padded. And, puffy.

Start with your darker of the two colors you have selected.

Split the Skein into 3 and 3 again and thread your needle,

knotting the bottom.

We are starting at the top of our little flower beanie, here.

Start on whichever side you are most comfortable with and make

a stitch across the top of the beanie.

Follow that with another stitch across, directly below

the first.

And then, another below that.

And so on, and so forth..

Once you have completed this process, you will have satin

stitched the entire crown, horizontally.

Congrats, you satin stitched. You did it.

Here is where we go crazy. Here is where we get 'Padded'.

Booyah.

We are now going to satin stitch vertically starting at the

bottom middle of the crown.

Pick on side and satin stitch over your originally

horizontal stitch.. only one side,

as this beanie is going to be two colors, split down the middle.

Start with one vertical stitch..

The second stitch will follow, directly next to the first.

The next stitches will follow suit

until you have this half puffy satin masterpiece.

The other half of the puffy satin will be your other color.

That is, the other half of the monochromatic

color wheel of greens. I said it.

So, get your needle back to the middle and make

light green puffy satin(or whatever color you

choose, no pressure)!

Voila! Beautiful crown of two toned

'puffy satin'.

Remember to tie off and clip the ends of each

color you finish..

To finish off the top of the flower,

you need one more monochromatic gradient of color.

You will need three colors in this case and in my case,

I chose purple.

Behold the insanity that is my threads.

File this image into the 'what not to do' folder.

So, for the first part of our new color wheel of

stitching, you will need to split your yarn skein

into 4 and 2.

If I was less lazy, I would tell you that the first part(the split

stitch) would be better with a three yarn and the

second part(french knot) would be better with a four yarn.

However, I am lazy. So, I did everything here with a four yarn

your level of precision here is entirely up to you.

We are going to start by giving the beanie a little outline

using split stitch. If split stitch slips your mind,

refresh here.

So, We split stitch around

and up the middle..

When we are done with this.. we are going to poke our needle

out at the top middle of our beanie and go ahead and give our

beanie a little poof on top with a french knot.

Simply make a knot at the base of the thread ( I say simple

but somehow it was not simple during class. My best advice here

would be to hold the knot down with one finger like you were

tying a bow on a package, and pull slowly. See the next step

for a picture of me doing just that.)

Once you have your knot, pull the needle back through the fabric

right next to where your knot is.

In this case, you are trying to pull your knot as close to the

beanie as possible, so, insert your needle below the knot.

I give you beanie with poof.

And we still have that whole middle portion to fill.

If you like making knots, you just struck it so rich.

Start on whichever side makes you comfortable and knot

from one side to the other. We are still using our darkest color

with 4 threads here.

Here is a slo mo pic of me tying a knot and using my finger.

Please, for both our sakes, use that finger.

Perhaps you should practice a few knots on your

embroidery shag before committing yourself to serious

knot making. Knots are one of those tricky things;

either you have it or you don't.

You tricky knot!

Fast forward 10 minutes (if you've got 'it')

and you have your first row of knots..

made with the darkest color of your new color grouping.

Now onto the next lightest color and the next row of knots..

And the third row of knots in the lightest color..

Hot!

We are done with our flower.. only three more stitches to go!

And for you who are scared of the embroidery,

I give you some bday photos of me and the girls. Loves it.

Did I ever tell you that I got this?

Well I did and it is amazing.

And, it is criminal to try to steal it's thunder with

a giant patent leather red belt. Bad!

And the new sexy heirloom treasure in my office;

lights up my Tony Gwynn pennant real nice.

See you tomorrow! Do your homework!