Wheat Fields - Embroidery Tutorial

Hey there, this is the tutorial video for Wheat Fields, my embroidery pattern. If you're watching this you may have purchased the PDF through my Etsy shop or you can just follow along if you haven't and enjoy the project. Start off by laying your garment down on a flat surface and smooth it out. If you printed the pattern onto the sulky paper, cut it out like so and then peel off the top sticker portion. Do this slowly as you don't want the sticker to fold down onto itself. Carefully select where you'd like to stick down the pattern. Try to make sure your fabric is smooth underneath and then press down the sticker. Use your fingers to carefully go over all of the edges, making sure they are sticking down to the fabric as best as possible. Throughout the project you'll have to go back and stick down the sticker a few times as it tends to pop up. For this project I'll be using a four inch embroidery hoop. This will help me section off spots that I'm embroidering and keep the fabric as nice and tight as possible while I'm stitching. You may choose not to use a hoop if you're working with say denim or a thicker material than this linen that I'm using. That's entirely up to you, but the hoop I do find to be a good tool just to keep those sections of garment that you're stitching nice and taut. As you can see I'm struggling a bit here to get the hoop on. I just had to make sure that the outer ring was loose enough to fit over top of that inner ring and once it's secured I'm going to tighten it like so and then I will go around the outside pulling the fabric tight and as you can see the sticker has buffed up a little bit so smoothing it out is definitely something you'll need to do every time you adjust the hoop. So now we can start our stitching. I'm using a DMC size 5 needle. The first floss color we're using is DMC 3011. I'm using two strands of that floss which I've doubled over and now I'll tie a double knot. I'm going to be stitching my pattern upside down because it's easier to access the pattern through the top of the shirt. We always start from the underside of the garment. You want to start at the bottom of the first stem like so. Bring your needle up through the fabric and pull it all the way through. Then you're going to do a stitch about one centimeter long and pull that through all the way. Next you're going to come back up through the underside about one centimeter ahead, pull the floss all the way through and then come back down to the tail end of your previous stitch. This is called backstitch. You're going to continue to use backstitch to fill in the entire stem of this first plant. You should now have something like this. On the back side when you start to run out of floss you should trim it about this length so that you have enough room to tie a secured double knot on the back side. Once you've tied your double knot you'll trim away any excess floss and this way your stitches are secured. Moving on to the leaves you're going to be using the exact same amount of floss and color. Go through the bottom or the underside of the garment and go to the top of one of the leaves at the bottom. You're going to pull all the way through and then you're going to do a stitch that's about half of the length of the leaf and pull the floss through. Next you're going to pop up through the fabric on one side of that stitch, it doesn't matter which side. You're going to pull your needle all the way through and repeat a very similar stitch that just ever so slightly crosses over the end of your previous stitch. You're going to repeat that exact same thing on the other side now. So coming up through the fabric and just ever so slightly crossing over at the bottom. This is called fishbone stitch and you're just going to continue to do that, switching from side to side until you've filled up the entire shape of the leaf. Because these leaves are pretty small you probably are only going to do it once more. So once you have all the leaves done we're going to switch to the next flower which is lavender. We're going to use DMC 3364, two strands of floss doubled over. Again you're starting from the underside of the fabric at the bottom of the stem and you're pulling your floss all the way through. We're going to use backstitch again to complete the stems and we'll use satin stitch for the leaves. So once you finish with the stems you're going to be moving on to the leaves. You're using the exact same amount of floss. You're going to start at the top of one of the leaves. You're going to come up through the underside of the fabric and you'll use satin stitch to just do nice long stitches to fill in the shape of the leaf. So that means you're filling the entire space and in this case these leaves are so thin that you'll probably just use two to three stitches to fill them in. Once you're finished with the stems and leaves we're going to move on to the flower part. For this we're using DMC 153. You'll use three strands of floss doubled over for this one. We're starting on the underside of the fabric at one of the bottom flowers. You're going to come up and you'll use satin stitch to just fill in these little v-shapes and work your way up the whole flower. When you're finished yours should look something like this. I'm now ready to move on to my next flower but I need to reposition my hoop so that the whole flower is inside the stitching area. So for my daisies I'm going to be using DMC 3013, two strands of floss doubled over. I'm going to climb up that stem just using that back stitch again. Once I'm finished the stem I'm going to fill in the leaves using fishbone stitch which is that same process that we used for our very first plant. Moving on to the daisy petals I'm going to be using DMC 712 and in this case I'm using all six strands of floss doubled over and tied in a double knot. I'm coming up through the fabric and I'm doing satin stitches that fill in the shape of the petal and length. Now you're going to be using a lot of floss here so it could get a little bit bunchy. If it does just pull the floss back up through and bring it back down again and you can use your needle to like sort of guide and smooth out the floss if it does get bunchy. For the daisy centers you'll be using DMC 781, two strands of floss doubled over. You come up through the underside of the fabric and then using your non-dominant hand hold the floss so you can wrap the needle once and then put the needle back down through just beside where you came up, hold the floss with your non-dominant hand and then pull all the way through. This is called a French knot. Sometimes people do two wraps for a French knot but in this case we're just going to do one. So you're going to repeat the process coming up through the fabric using your non-dominant hand, wrap the needle and then poke it through just beside where you came up. This is a really tricky stitch so it may take a few attempts and you're just going to use these French knots to fill in the rest of the daisy centers till they look like this. Moving on to the wheat we are going to be using DMC 422. You're just using one strand of floss doubled over and you're going to be using that familiar back stitch to complete the stems. For the leaves you're going to be using the exact same amount of floss and color and you're going to be using fishbone stitch. It's sort of like an elongated one because these are such thin narrow leaves. So again you're just going halfway down the leaf and then popping up on one side or the other and crossing over and then completing that same stitch on the other side until you finish filling the shape. So for the tops of the wheat you're going to be using DMC 422 still but you'll use six strands of floss doubled over. You're going to be coming up through the fabric and you're just filling in these little sections using satin stitch. Great job! So once you finish that you'll be moving on to the next flower. You're going to start with DMC 3362, two strands of floss doubled over and just like before we're using our back stitch to work the stems and then you can use a satin stitch to fill in those little leaves. For the flower petals I'll use DMC 3064, three strands of floss doubled over. I'm going to come up through one of the petals and I'm just filling it in using satin stitch and I'm going around the whole flower just filling in those little petals. And to fill in the centers of those flowers I'll be using DMC 08, two strands of floss doubled over and I'll just do one french knot just wrap once. In the center of each one of those flowers. So for the next plant we're just going to repeat the exact same process as we used for the first one. So moving on to the snap dragon we are going to be using DMC 3364, two strands of floss doubled over and we'll be using that to fill in these tiny little leaves that poke out and we'll just use satin stitch. It'll only take about two to three stitches to fill them in. Once you've done that we're going to be using DMC 160, three strands doubled over and we're going to be using satin stitch and just making those little v shapes that follow the pattern and we're going to do these until we're about halfway up the actual snap dragon. So I went a little more than halfway up that's okay. Next you're going to use DMC 159, three strands of floss doubled over and just repeat that exact same process of filling in those little satin stitches and you're just going to fill in the rest of the snap dragon. Okay great job! So next we have another wheat so again repeating the same process as we did for the first one and after the wheat we're moving on to another lavender which is the exact same process as our first one. Okay so for this next plant we'll use DMC 500 which is a really dark green, two strands of floss doubled over and for this one it's back stitch to do the stems and filling in those little tiny baby leaves with our satin stitch. After you finish with that the final two plants are repeats of what we've done before so again just use the exact same process. Now that you're all finished with the stitching part it's time to wash off the sticky stabilizer. To do this submerge your garment in lukewarm water and start to rub away at the stabilizer. It will take a little bit of effort to get this off it dissolves in the water but I find you really have to rub it and even wash it a few times to get all of the sticky glue away.