To
give tone and texture to the background, sprinkle a little Supermend
powder onto the painted background and bond small
snippets of fabric onto
the ‘flower’ area. I used bits of net and dyed gauze bandage plus
some glitzy fabric. (Cover with non-stick baking parchment before ironing). The
design should look roughly like photo C
Machine
embroidery
To commence the machine embroidery
place the painted background fabric into the 20cm embroidery hoop.
For machine embroidery the frame is turned over and the stitching
is worked into the ‘well’. This is shown in photo C.
Set your machine for free machine embroidery, removing the presser foot
and lowering the feed dog. Fit
a size 90 needle. If you are
not a confident free machine embroiderer read through ‘tips for free
machine embroidery’ at the end of this article, before you begin to
stitch.
Machine over the area of grasses at
the bottom of your design using the dark green thread 501DMC in free
running stitch. Aim to
make clumps of of grasses and bend the stems to give movement. I machine
up a grass, make the head, lift
the presser foot move across to another grass, make the ‘head’ and
then machine down the second grass.
If you do not wish to use machine
embroidery you can make the design using just hand stitching.
In that case I would use one strand of stranded cotton and sew
the grasses in stem stitch.
