What We’re Stitching 2

I love working with felt! It is so easy to stitch into and never frays. I’m hoping my students in Mi Casa es Su Casa class at the Asociación Española de Patchwork festival enjoy it too. Follow along and you’ll see one of the methods I’m showing them for creating their own designs.

The cloud is stitched to the background fabric and now I’ve added a grassy knoll. The green felt is stitched with a variegated size 8 thread called Lime Frappe. Blanket stitches are placed across the base of the knoll and I’m peppering the rest of the fabric with the scattered seed stitch.

I’m also adding a few French knots to the knoll to cheer it up.

I can’t wait to see what my students create with their kits of felt fabrics!

What We’re Stitching

Would you like to follow along with the class I’m teaching for the Asociación Española de Patchwork called Mi Casa es Su Casa? In this class, students free-cut shapes from felt fabrics and add intense hand embroidery. I’ve made up kits using Commonwealth Felt. They are suppliers of beautiful bright colors. I recommend felt with at least 20% wool content.

The process for creating their little felt casa begins with a background fabric. I picked this wine colored felt as a challenge to myself. It’s so dark and moody!

But I cheered myself up by placing a large billowing cloud on it. The cloud shape is free-cut to shape and held in place with large running stitches. Around the edge, I’m adding blanket stitches using a size 8 Ocean thread.

Although you’ve seen the finished product above, trust me. This design is completely improvised. Which is what I’ll be asking of my students. Improvisation makes the design unique to each person.

Stitching for Spain: Travel Plans?

Let’s say you’re just too busy to travel to Spain to take my Improvisational Hand Embroidery on Wool class. What do you do? You could check out one of my free tutorials or add my book Free-Form Hand Embroidery on Wool book to your library.

Free-Form Hand Embroidery has these 5 embroidery designs for you to play with. Chapters include the types of fabric, thread, and needles to use; how to transfer the patterns for each project to the wool; and, step-by-step directions to guide you through the stitch process for each design. Helpful embroidery stitch diagrams are included too.

And don’t forget this bonus project in the book: how to make an etui or small sewing kit.

Illustrated with colorful details, this book is ideal for those who want to explore the world of free-form embroidery and stitching just for the pleasure of it.

So join me in Spain (sort of) and create a free-form project on wool today!