Tutorials

19 February, 2025

Preventing and Untying Knots in your Embroidery

beckarahn2025-02-19T11:37:22-06:00Embroidery, Tutorials|Comments Off on Preventing and Untying Knots in your Embroidery

One of the most frustrating things about hand embroidery is when your thread ties itself in knots while you are stitching. I thought I would write a couple of tips to help prevent knots and how to untie them when they happen.

Preventing Knots

After you have threaded your needle, take a few seconds to “condition the thread”. That means pinching the eye of the needle so that it doesn’t come unthreaded and then running the length of the thread through your fingers a few times while you pull on it gently. What does conditioning do? It helps to push some extra twist out of your thread. Less twist means fewer knots.

As you stitch, some stitch movements can build up extra twist in your thread, especially with stitches that wrap around themselves, like french knots or twisted chain. Keep an eye on the extra thread as you stitch. If you see it start to twist back on itself, that is a knot waiting to happen. You can let go of extra twist by picking up your work and dropping the needle, allowing the extra twist to spin the needle around and fall out of the thread. Then you can go back to stitching.

Untying Knots

The most common kind of knot to get while you are stitching is a slip knot. They happen when the thread starts to twist up and a loop slips through another one. When you see a knot starting, the best thing to do is stop stitching and don’t pull it tighter.

A slip knot looks like a loop with a knot at the base of it and you will see two “legs” coming out of the bottom. If you pull on one side, the knot will tighten up, but if you pull on the other side, the knot will unravel easily. It’s hard to tell which side is which by just looking at it because it’s all based on how your thread twisted, but a gentle tug on each leg will usually show you how to loosen it. If you accidentally pull it too tight and nothing is slipping loose, you can sometimes unravel it by slipping your needle into the knot part and wiggling it around a little to loosen it up and allow the threads to slip.

13 February, 2025

Picot Beaded Edge: A Micro Tutorial

beckarahn2025-02-13T14:41:28-06:00Tutorials|3 Comments

I learned how to stitch this picot beaded edge from a friend a bunch of years ago and one of my students in class reminded me about it today, so I thought I’d make a very quick micro tutorial and show you how it works.

First you need some beads, needle, thread, and something to stitch the edging on. For this example, I made a heart shape from two layers of felt. You can stitch around anything, but a circle is the easiest shape to start with if you’ve never tried this before. I am stitching with #8 perle cotton embroidery thread, a chenille needle (which is my favorite for embroidery) and some size 8 seed beads. This works with almost any kind of beads, but you just have to make sure that they fit over your needle and thread at least twice.

Thread your needle and tie a knot. I start by making a stitch between the two layers of felt so that I can hide the knot inside.

For your very first stitch, you will pick up 3 beads on the needle. Then move over about two-beads-width and make a stitch through the layers of felt from back to front. You want to stitch in about 1/16th of an inch from the cut edge of the felt.
Pass your needle through the last bead again from bottom to top.
For the rest of the picot stitches, you will add 2 beads to the needle. Then stitch through the layers of felt once again about 2 beads width away from your previous stitch.
Continue in the same pattern by bringing your needle up again through the last bead.

Once you’ve worked around the outside of your shape, continue adding picots until you meet up at your starting stitch.

To join the last stitch, add just one bead and then go back through the very first bead of the first stitch from top to bottom.

Make a tiny stitch and tie a knot right at the base of that bead and then you can bring the thread through the felt layers to bury the end and trim it off.

23 October, 2024

Tutorial: Leaf printing with Bleach

beckarahn2024-10-23T13:51:06-05:00Tutorials|1 Comment

I had kind of a quiet weekend and decided that was a great excuse to play with something fun. My sister sent me a TikTok video of someone printing leaves on a sweatshirt with bleach. It was more a “performance” than really a tutorial, so I used what I know about discharge or bleach dyeing and made myself a shirt. I walked over the nearby craft store and got a couple of cotton t-shirts in nice autumn colors. On the way back, I collected a big handful of maple leaves. I pressed these under a heavy book while I ate lunch so that they would be as flat as possible for printing.

Instead of using liquid bleach, I used Soft Scrub with bleach, which is like a thick paste, and a 1 inch flat brush. (You could also use the gel version.) I tucked a piece of cardboard inside the shirt to keep the bleach from soaking through. I laid each leaf on a piece of aluminum foil and painted the back side with a generous layer of soft scrub. Then I flipped it over and pressed it onto the shirt. I put gloves on for this step because I know my hands would itch all afternoon if I covered them in cleanser. I was careful to press all around the edges of the leaf to make sure I got that maple leaf outline. I let the leaves sit on the shirt for about half an hour for the bleach to do its thing.

You never know what color bleach will come out on colored fabrics. My olive green shirt bleached to a great apricot orange color! The orange shirt didn’t work quite as well and I have a couple of theories about that. First the orange was a lighter, heathered color with more polyester and so there might have not been as much color there to react to the bleach. Second I noticed that my soft scrub was drying out quickly on a warm windy day and so it wasn’t nearly as wet when I got to painting on to the leaves for the second shirt. That may have made the bleach less effective. This photo was the shirts after I had peeled off the leaves and the softscrub was basically dry. When I was done, I put the shirts into the washer and dryer to rinse out any extra soft scrub. It was a quick, fun project and I got a great t-shirt that I wore this week. If you try it out, send me a photo!

19 February, 2024

A Mini Tutorial: Spoonflower’s New Proofing Tool

beckarahn2024-02-19T15:33:07-06:00Spoonflower & Fabric Design, Tutorials|Comments Off on A Mini Tutorial: Spoonflower’s New Proofing Tool

Spoonflower recently introduced a new proofing tool that works right in your Design Library. I think it’s great! I made a mini tutorial video to show you how it works.

27 July, 2023

Wonder what to do with Spoonflower Wallpaper Swatches? Make a book!

beckarahn2023-07-27T17:22:49-05:00Spoonflower & Fabric Design, Tutorials|1 Comment

I made a handful of these for holiday and graduation gifts this year and I wanted to share this fun idea! I ordered a swatch of Spoonflower’s peel-and-stick wallpaper a few weeks ago because I am thinking of updating a backsplash behind the stove in my kitchen. It’s currently wallpapered in peel-and-stick, which I did about 4 years ago and it looks awesome, but I wanted to change it up for something different. So, I ordered a swatch of this design by red_tansy but as soon as I got the swatch I realized the scale was too large for my tiny space. So I ordered another in a smaller scale.

But what to do with this leftover swatch? The answer for me is to make a book! I learned to make coptic sketchbooks a little more than a year ago at a class at the MN Center for Book Arts. I fell in love. These are fast to make and I love the exposed stitching on the binding. In our class, we tore the paper down from larger sheets which gives the pages a torn organic edge, which I also think is so pretty. I love all of the “imperfections” that make these really look handmade. I’m going to start teaching these as a class soon, but if you are interested in making a sketchbook like this, check out StoneBurnerBooks on YouTube. Her tutorials are fantastic.

The paper I have for the inside pages tears down beautifully to make pages for a book that is 4×5 inches, which is a nice pocket size. That also means that you need just a piece of wallpaper 5×12 inches to make the covers, which you can get easily from a 12×24 wallpaper swatch. The peel-and-stick wallpaper is durable and water resistant, which is ideal for a book cover. I know this is going to hold up to use.

If you’ve used Spoonflower’s peel-and-stick wallpaper in the past, they’ve got a new substrate in the last year and it’s very different than the previous one. I love it. Get a swatch! The new wallpaper takes a crease better and it is stickier than the previous version. It’s still removable if you use it on the wall, but that makes it even more usable for craft projects like this. Which is the way I use it most often.

I made the covers from a lighter weight book board and wrapped the outside in peel-and-stick wallpaper. For the inside endpapers, I used a scrap of gelli plate printed paper that I just made in another class. The colors were so perfect when I saw it on the table that I had to choose it. The PVA glue I used for the endpapers sticks nicely to the wallpaper, so you don’t have to worry about it peeling up from that slightly glossy wallpaper surface. I let the glue dry overnight under weight to make sure the boards did not warp, but the whole book went together in just a couple of hours.

When I made these for holiday & graduation gifts, I scaled down several of my own designs on Spoonflower so they would be the right scale for a small book cover like this. That’s easy to do. And with one swatch I can make half a dozen covers easily.

3 August, 2022

Trying out fantastic new materials: Making a Kraftex Paper Ledger Book

beckarahn2022-11-01T11:38:49-05:00An Artist's Life, Tutorials|2 Comments

Want to listen instead of reading?

A few months ago I ran across an article talking about Kraftex paper. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s like a heavy flexible paper, which feels a little like a cross between paper and leather. It comes in an unwashed version, which is stiffer like watercolor paper, and a washed version which has some flexibility and almost a drape, like fabric. I mentioned in my newsletter that I was super curious about it and a staff member from C&T Publishing reached out and offered to send me some samples to play with. I jumped at the chance!

Because I believe in transparency, I want to say that C&T didn’t ask me to review, post or promote anything in exchange for the samples. This is not a sponsored or paid post.

I’m dedicating some time this summer to both trying new things in my studio and practicing some new-to-me skills, so this morning I pulled out some of the washed Kraftex paper and decided to make a small notebook. I’ve been expanding my art practice to include more paper arts because I have found that it helps make my work more accessible when I am trying to do community projects. Fabric, and the tools needed to work with it, can be cost prohibitive and feel challenging for beginners, but paper is everywhere.

I started by tearing down some sheets of paper to make the pages for my book. This is some lightweight drawing paper and I made strips that were 3×11 inches. Tearing down pages was something I learned in a coptic sketchbook class I took recently from the MN Center for Book Arts. And although that seems like kind of a silly thing to want to practice, getting a consistent edge really does take some practice. I really love the look of a torn edge, so it’s something I want to get better at. It took just one large sheet of paper to tear down into smaller sheets for my notebook.

I cut the cover out of a piece of Kraftex paper with my rotary cutter and a ruler. This is the washed version in a color they call “Natural”. I loved how this one really looks like leather. It is about 1mm thick and very flexible. I really chose the size of my book to maximize the use of a piece of this Kraftex paper. It comes in 8.5 x 11 sheets or rolls, so I cut a strip 3×11 inches for the cover too. I folded each page and the cover in half to make a finished book that’s about 3×5.5 inches. The kraftex took a fold nicely and didn’t crack or warp like thick papers sometimes do. I think the Kraftex is going to make the perfect cover. It’s heavy enough to feel like a cover but not stiff or bulky.

I decided to use a decorative paper punch to create the holes so I could bind the book together. It was relatively easy to punch, but I should have made myself a jig so it was easier to line up the holes in the pages and cover. Something to remember for next time. This kind of a “ledger” binding just needs two holes near the folded edge and then you stitch and tie a sturdy thread through them.

I used a variegated cotton sashiko thread to bind the book together mostly because it was the first thing that caught my eye. Sashiko thread is like a very thin cotton cord and it worked just fine for this.

I thought it would be fun to add a little bit of something to the cover, so I used the same thread to stitch a couple of embroidery stitches. I punched the holes with an awl before I stitched because I didn’t want to crease the paper trying to punch the needle through it.

I have so many ideas for this! For my next project I want to try something with a little origami folding. There’s a technique to fold thicker papers where you get the paper wet before you fold it and I am really curious to see how that works with this and if I can make something interesting and three dimensional. Kraftex is also dyeable, so I am absolutely going to try shibori dyeing a couple of sheets. If you want to play with some, I think the best source for Kraftex is through C&T’s website. They have some great variety packs so you can get a bunch of sheets in different colors and they have dozens of free tutorials if you want to do a specific project.