Good morning !
Sorry for the delay in translating the article… Weekend has been pretty busy for me, with a new embroidery project…
So, here is a new embroidery lesson, probably the most important one: how to make your embroidery stitches, and havec them look nice and neat ! Let’s say, you have followed my class on how to embroider a cab here (or a Rivoli or some other Swarovski stone there). You also have the layout of your piece in mind thanks to this article. Now the question arises: how am I going to do the embroidery around it ?
What we’re going to look at is the following: how to make nicely aligned rows of beads; how to correct bead misalignment; how to correctly space cabs and stones, and how to make picots. We’ll especially get a close look at which are the common mistakes you might want to avoid, in order to have a professional-looking finished piece.
Other bead artists have their signature techniques, like Heidi Kummli and the netting, for which I can only recommend you to check their books if you want to learn about them.
1. Making a row of beads (e.g. around a cab). Push your needle up through the ultrasuede, at a distance of approximately half a bead (whatever bead you’re using for the row, use half of its size), so that the beads will position themselves naturally on the fabric, following the thread. If you get your needle too close to the cab (or previous row of beads), the new beads are going to push against it, causing them to position incorrectly, or even putting the former row in disarray. Too far, and you’ll have an inelegant space between your rows of beads.
To embroider, do the following (to embroider the beads 4 by 4): add 4 beads, go through the fabric, then get up between bead 2 and 3, making sure to be in exact alignment with the thread. Go through beads 3 and 4 again, add 4 beads, and so on. See the graph for a better understanding.
If your cab is big enough, or the curve you are following rather smooth, you can do the beads 6 by 6 (in which case, you need to get your needle back up in the middle of the row, between bead 3 and 4). The interest of doing so (appart from it being faster of course 
) is that, what causes your bead to misalign is usually when you push your needle up through the beads at a slightly wrong place. So, more beads per stitch = less need to thread through the fabric = better alignment. However, be careful with the curve you want to follow. For instance, when embroidering a row around an 8mm Swarovski strass, use the 4 bead stitch, as the 6 bead stitch won’t allow you to tightly follow the curve around it.
Overall, here is what you’ll want to pay attention to:
- Don’t embroider your beads too tightly. If you’re embroidering 4 beads, make room for 4.5 beds, which will allow them to position naturally, and will also make sure you have comfortable room to push your needle back up between the beads.
- Keep a constant distance of 1/2 a bead between the former row (or cab) and the place where you push your thread, to prevent your beads from heading in all sorts of different directions, which you’d have to correct afterwards.
2. Correcting a bead misalignment. Once a row is done, even if you carefully followed my advice, chances are your beads will still be slightly misaligned (see first picture on the right). Let’s make it right ! To make it better, you simply have to go through all the beads at once a couple of times. As the beads fill up with thread, they shall fall back in line (like in the second picture on the far right).
3. Get the right spacing between a new stone and the already embroidered rows. You can always glue a new cab directly next to the previous rows; however, notably if you want to embroider a circle of beads around it, you’ll probably want to leave the right space between the spot where you’ll glue your cab and then rest of your work. On the pictures, you can see how I lay needles with beads on the fabric to get the right spacing, before I glue the new cab on.
4. Make picots: it’s the perfect stitch to fill in a small space, and works nicely with larger-size beads (8/0 or 6/0 seed beads, bicones, rondelles, etc.). On the next picture, you can see how I make a picot with a 4mm Swarovski bicone. To make one, exit the fabric at the place where the center of the bead should be (with picots, beads don’t lay sideways on the fabric but are standing up, the hole thus resting at a right angle with the fabric). Take into account the size of the bead, so that it doesn’t push away the other beads around it. Thread through your bead, and add a smaller size bead (in this case, a 15/0 gold-plated charlotte). Then, go back through the bigger bead but not through the smaller one, which will position on top of the hole and block the big bead. Push your needle through the fabric at approximately the same spot where you exited it. And that’s it ! This technique is easy, and if you make several picots side by side, you can fill in a bigger space with these.
So, you should now be familiar with the main embroidery stitches. Don’t forget to check out the other embroidery lessons !