Wool Appliqué Basics | Blanket Stitch Featuring Summer Romance | Lisa Bongean | Primitive Gatherings

Hey everyone, it is time to do some stitching on our Summer Romance Stitch Along. So unfortunately, well fortunate for me, I have all my leaves stitched already. So I have done a little practice one here. So I want to start off with the blanket stitch. And I know I did a little bit of blanket stitching on the last video just to get you going, but this will be a thorough tutorial on the blanket stitch. So I'm going to blanket stitch a leaf, and then I'm going to blanket stitch a flower. Probably not the whole thing on camera, but you'll get the idea on how to do that. So these leaves are on a wool that's very, what I would call loosely woven. So the, like the solid flowers here, this is a really tightly dense wool where this, this pattern here, it's a herringbone, it's a little bit looser weave. So what I like to do is I like to put a little fray check around the edge of this, and that will keep this from, it'll put a nice like crisp edge on it, and it makes it much easier to stitch. And then it also keeps it from fraying. So a real light bead of fray check just on the edges of that wool. And then you're going to let it dry, and then you're going to stitch it. So while that dries, I'll move on to the flower, and then we'll come back to the leaf. All right, I'm going to grab my needle. Okay, so I'm going to set that there. All right, so now I am going to grab my 22 chenille needle. So this is the needle that I am using. I am using all eight weight threads. You can use 12 weight or eight weight, but I really like the look of eight weight thread. So I'm using a little bit bigger needle, which is the 22 needle. And okay, so I'm going to pick a green here because I'm going to stitch this green flower. So the first thing I'm going to do is cut a length off of my pearl cotton ball, and then I'm going to thread it. All right, so I'm going to put the center of the needle directly on the thread. I'm going to press down, and I'm just going to roll my finger away while I press down. So then the thread has nowhere to go but in the eye. So then you can pull it through, and then we want to do a knot on the end. So I'm going to where I want my knot on the tail there. I'm going to cross it over, and I'm going to wrap it around maybe two, three times and pull it through. So wherever where I crossed it, that's where the knot ends up. Now luckily, none of my stuff is going to show through, so I don't really have to worry about tails or knots or burying anything on this one. All right, so if you look at one of my completed blocks here, I'm going to stitch short, short, short, long in the indents. So this is still a blanket stitch, but it's just going to have one long one on the outside edge there. So I'm going to start on the top edge in the background on the indent. I'm going to pull it back. I'm going to take my needle, and I'm going to pull straight down and straight up, keeping the thread behind the needle. So there's my first stitch. I'm going to swing it around counterclockwise and then take my little stitches on the rounded part of the flower. So just kind of watch my hands here for a minute, and then I'll take a second and explain what exactly is going on. It's a little awkward doing this on camera, but we'll make it work for you, and hopefully you'll get some good ideas on how I do this. Let's put one more in there, and then now I'm in the indent, so I'm going to go down big. So one of the first things I want to point out is that I'm pulling the thread in the direction I want it to lie. I'm not pulling it up and then going back. Just pull it directly to the edge that you want it to lie on. So see how I'm pulling it that way and then putting the tension back on. So your hand stitching has tension just like your machine stitching. So it's tight. I let go. I pull it tight again, put the tension back on, and swing it around. You do not want this thread to come up and roll back up onto the shape. So if yours has done that previously, make sure you're pulling it that direction, putting the tension on, swinging it around, and all of that will keep it on the edge where it needs to be. So I'll just do a few more stitches here so you get the hang of that, and then I'll show you how to start and stop when you run out of thread. Now your stitches can be as big or as little as you like. I kind of try to scale them according to the shape. So now this is a pretty big shape, so I'm kind of doing some nice size stitches here. When I do stitches in the leaf, I'll probably do them a little smaller. So see how now I'm pulling it this way? All right, one more, and then I'm going to go in the indent here. All right, so let's pretend I ran out of thread. So I would probably end about this much thread. Not this much, but this much thread. So I'm going to go down, go to the back side, and then on my shape here, not where there's wool. There's no wool over here. This is where my shape is. I'm going to take a little bite in the inside here, and then I'm going to make a loop, and then I'm going to go through the loop once, and then I go through it twice, that same direction. This is a surgical knot. I couldn't remember the name there for a minute. And then I can just clip it here, but if this was on a light background, I'd want to bury that tail in this shape and then cut it nice and close. So therefore, I won't have any tails going out on a white background that you would see underneath. So that's basically how the blanket stitch is made. And then when we want to thread it up again, and then when we start, I end it on this side, but I'm going to come back on the opposite side that I ended on, underneath the top, but on the right-hand side of that stitch. And then I lay it down, and I just continue to stitch over that end. So just try to have your stitches consistent size and spacing. There's no right or wrong spacing, as long as it's even. So try to get that even. And the more you do it, the easier it will get. So now, this is where I need to end. So this is about the right size thread. So I'm going to do it again. So you see it twice, pop back in, take my little bite, make that loop, go through once, go through twice, pull it down. Now, like I said, if I was on a lighter background, I'd bury this tail like that, and then clip it nice and close. But nobody's going to see any thread through this charcoal background. All right. So that is the blanket stitch on the flower. And then you'll continue to do that all the way around. In the middle here, you're going to go to the middle, all the way into the middle. So I want to show you a close-up of that. So see how you're going right to the middle there on the indents, and then later on, we'll be adding these drizzle knots. All right. Let's jump back to this leaf. It's pretty much dry now. Again, I'm going to re-thread. Watch that again. Through the middle. Sometimes it doesn't like to slide in there. You got to press really hard. Goes in, pull it through. All right. Put the knot in. All right. So I'm going to stitch this whole thing, but I'm going to do the pointier point first. The round one is not so...it's all done the same way no matter what, whether you got a sharp point or a rounded point. I'm going to start on the edge, and I'm going to stitch to the point. All right. So watch what happens when I get to the point. So this one is going to go to the side. Now the next one, I'm going to go in that same hole, but I'm going to go out to the point, and I'm aiming it for the center of that point. Put the tension on, swing it around, go in that hole again, and come out the other side. So I went one this way, one in the middle, and one to the left. So that's how you do a point. You just pivot around one hole that's in the center of that leaf point, and then you just continue on. So tight, tight again, bring it back. And then if you...some of these leaves start looking a little hairy and fuzzy before you stitch them, you can kind of go in there and see if they need a little haircut too after you have fray checked them. All right. So that is how simply the blanket stitch is done, and you will love doing this stitch. And I really like to match my threads with my shapes, but then it's also fun too to have some sort of contrast, like when you're doing...so here's like so that variegated thread. So you'll see the variegation of the thread. So this is what that will look like. Okay. So that's all I have for you on the blanket stitch. I do have one little tip here that I want to show you what's going to happen before I sign off on this video, but at some point you're going to lose the disc out of...off of your ball. So what I want you to do then is I want you to take your needle. All right. What did I do with the needle right here? Okay. I'm going to unthread this, and I want you to put a hole on each side of Colorfast. So just put your needle in there and kind of put a nice size hole in there, and you're going to thread. I'm going to undo this for you so you see it close up. So you're going to thread your needle, and you're going to take your disc, and you're going to come up one hole, and you're going to go down the other hole, and then one more time. So one and a half times. Then you can take your needle off, and now when I want thread, I just pull it and cut, and then push it down and cut more. So this disc will always stay with your thread ball so you know what size of thread and what color number that you will have. So then at the end of the day when you're all done sewing this, you park it on your ball, and you just wrap it around a little bit, and that will always stay with your ball until you run out and have to buy a new one. You'll know exactly what color and weight you need for that. All right, that's all I have for you today on Blanket Stitch.