Tips and Tricks Tuesday

Working With Mistakes in Bead Embroidery is my choice to start off with!

If you're anything like me, there is a LOT of ripping out that goes on while embroidering a piece. It includes times when I have put my lines of beads too close together and they're pushing against one another; taking out stop-stitched work; wanting to take out only part of what I've stitched while leaving some of the work untouched and edging/measuring mistakes made when finishing a piece.

I reinforce everything over and over, and this makes it harder. I tend to tell folks that it is SO much better to reinforce, because then your work is much more likely to last for a long time, and use or wear on the piece won't be so likely to shift your beads. This is wonderful EXCEPT when you're trying to fix a mistake in the work. Taking out bits of beadwork that don't work for you in the overall design without disturbing the bits you like is hard.

Linda made this point in an earlier tutorial post, but it bears repeating: make frequent knots while working!!! Seriously, this is one of the most important tips Linda and I can give you. Once you've bezeled your focal or cabochon the way you like it, STOP and make a knot or six, before you move on to the next line of beading. I've had to completely re-do bezels because I didn't knot off, and ripping out the beadwork near the bezel resulted in such loose work on the bezel that it had to go. Once you've sewn a few lines of beads that look lovely to you, STOP and knot!!! This way, when you decide you would like to remove one part, and keep some of the rest, you have parts that will still be secure after your rip out. I've done as much as three inches or so of work, thinking how great it looked, and then decided that I needed to remove one or two lines and replace them with another color or size of bead, and had to rip out more than I wanted to because I didn't knot - lots of lost time and repeated effort.

Reworking lines of beadwork that have been stitched with backstitch is usually quite easy, as all you have to do is pick the threads from the back side of the work and pull gently to get them out. To keep from having to do this, however, I recommend that while you work you keep a few things in mind; don't make your stitch through the fabric too close to the edge of the beads you are laying down (this results in lines that are puckered up because the beads are too close together in the line of work itself), you can always push them back to the other beads if they are too loose; leave just a tiny smidge more room between your lines of backstitching than you think necessary (I promise they will lay better for you without pushing up against each other); work with an even tension and don't pull your work too tightly.

Stop-stitch work is the worst for me. I tend to reinforce these beads several times so that they won't wiggle even a little when the piece is done. This means TEENY tiny stitches on the back of the work, that are almost like knots themselves. When I go to rip out, I normally have to actually cut the thread between the larger bead and the seed bead holding it in place to get them off. This results in terribly tiny thread ends, way too short to knot off, especially if I really like what I've already beaded before the stop stitches. When you have a thread that isn't long enough to knot off by itself, there are two things that I have learned work pretty well; the first is to hold that thread down on the backing, and to add your new thread to the work and knot OVER that left over thread. Knot over it several times to keep it as secure as possible, and then continue beading normally. The second, which I have used also, is to tape the end. I have!! I use a tiny piece of tape on the backing to keep the thread stable, and then go ahead and complete my work. Once I am ready to glue the piece up, I take off the tape, pull the thread to make sure it's nice and tight, and glue over it. If you've sewn through the tape while working the piece, you can leave it there, and just glue over it if you have to.

I can't emphasize this next bit enough: measure measure measure!! if you're working with a metal cuff or necklace blank. Secondarily, DO NOT cut your piece of fabric to exactly fit the cuff blank before working, not ever ever ever!!! Always give yourself at least an inch on all sides that won't be stitched on. (I leave an inch and a quarter or more.) Your work will almost always cause fabric shrinkage, and the resulting cuff will be either too short to reach the ends of the blank, or not wide enough to accommodate the blank. If, however, you've already cut the work, you've finished embroidering and you find it's too late, and your edges don't come slightly over the edges of the blank, there is hope. Don't glue it up or add backing at all, just go ahead and stitch the edge with brick stitch as though you were already finishing the edges. Now that's done, you can add more rows of brickstitch as needed to get to the width/length you need. Then you can go ahead and glue it to the blank, and glue the backing on. Now you edge it, just as you would have normally, but use the thread between stitches to secure it rather than using the edge of the fabric. Ta-da! And the best part - it will look as if you planned it that way, and that it has a double or triple edging, which looks cool.

Hope some of these help you out, and if you have questions on particular things that I haven't touched on, please let me know, and I'll help if I can!

~ Have a great week! ~ Nancy