Hello !
I’m pleased to introduce this new bead embroidery tutorial to you. You have now painstakingly created a beautiful embroidery design on ultrasuede: hold on a bit longer, you’re not done yet. Let’s do the finishes ! In this tutorial, we’ll have a look at how to (carefully) cut the piece and make a brick-stitched border.
For this step, you’re going to need: your embroidered piece of course, but also Lacy’s Stiff Stuff, ultra-suede or thin leather, 11/0 seed beads, glue for textile, Nymo type of thread, scissors with a thin pointed end (thread scissors for instance), and a robust needle. You might also need a thimble.
1. Let’s get started by cutting the piece off the ultra-suede sheet. Do you still remember being in primary school and having to carefully cut along the outlines of a drawing ? Well, that’s what you’re going to do now (and I hope for the sake of your piece you improved in the meantime). With your scissors, cut along the edges of your embroidered piece (see first picture), while being careful not too cut TOO close: you need to leave, say, 2 tenths of millimeters between the outermost beads and where you cut. This small space will be used to sew the brick-stitched border; it should also allow you to avoid mistakenly cutting the thread that you used in your embroidery.
2. Glue this piece on the Lacy’s. The reason you want to do that, is to create some stiffness and strength for the finished piece. This will prevent the outer parts of the embroidery from being deformed, especially if the piece is rather large. It will also allow you to further “hide” the pointed back of Rivolis into the thickness of the different layers of fabric. If you have done your embroidery directly on Lacy’s, as some people do, then you can skip this step.
Spread the glue on the back of the ultrasuede. Don’t get too close to the outer edges: first because you don’t want glue to spread to the sides when you press the ultra-suede and Lacy’s together; second, because pushing a needle through several layers of thick material stiffened by glue is a nightmare. So, as the brick-stitch border will consolidate the edges anyway, try to avoid putting too much (if any) glue on the edges. I’d advice you to leave 1 to 2 millimeters without glue on the border.
Then, press your piece on the Lacy’s, and cut the Lacy’s flush with the ultrasuede. If you have a stone or Rivoli with a back that requires to cut a few holes in the Lacy’s (see picture 2 above), refer to the relevant tutorial here.
3. Glue the backing. The final layer of your “sandwich” is the backing, which can be either ultrasuede or thin leather. Just repeat the step 2 above (if you have a rivoli however, do NOT cut holes in the final layer). The use of this final layer is to create a smoot, nice-to-wear backing for your piece, and also to make it thick enough that you can comfortably stitch your border in 11/0 seed beads (your 3 layers combined add up to approximately the size of an 11/o seed bead from Miyuki for instance).
4. Now is the time to do the brick stitch border. To do so, first knot a double knot at the end of a comfortable length of thread. Slightly pushing the backing away from the Lacy’s (that’s one of the benefits of not having glue on the borders), thread through the Lacy’s to exit the upper layer of ultrasuede right next to the outermost row of embroidered bead (picture 1). You can now hide the knot within the sandwich, and push the end of the thread between the layers along the edge, so as to make the starting point absolutely invisible.
Thread through 2 11/0 seed beads, then push your needle down through the 3 layers of fabric, at a distance of a bead from where your thread just exited (see picture 2). Then, just come back up through the bead (picture 3). Now you should have the second bead laying flat on the edge of your piece. Don’t worry about the first bead.
5. Keep going with brick stitch. Your thread is now exiting the last border bead. Add one bead, push the needle down through the layers at a distance of one bead, come back up through this bead. Keep repeating this step until you’ve gone all the way around the embroidered piece.
When you’ve gone the full round, you need to take care of your first bead. so, with your thread exiting the last bead, go down through the first bead, and push your needle up through the layers of fabric. You just have to end your thread by discreetly stitching a few stitches on the top layer of ultrasuede, taking care of hiding the stitches between rows of embroidery. That way, you won’t have a single knot or ugly stitch on the back of your piece.
One piece of advice:
When you’re doign the brick stitch border, push the needle through at a slight angle, edging away from the border of the fabric, so that you exit the ultrasuede in the back at a greater distance from the border of the fabric than when you entered it on the top layer. That way, the border will be solidly anchored into the fabric, and that will help when you want to add a fringe or a spiral or ribbon. The risk of tearing it off will be lowered.
Also, be careful not to sew each seed bead too close to the previous one, and to always leave a big enough spacing between your stitches. Otherwise, the seed beads won’t have enough space to lie flat against the edge, and might overlap each other in an unsightly way.
Alright, you’re almost done ! You can check out how to add a fringe there.
Enjoy your beading !