Raggedy Ruff Designs

Transcription

1 Raggedy Ruff Designs Raggedy Ruff Designs Winter Hare Wreath Finished size 8 by 8 1

2 You will need: Metal ring wreath.: 8 diameter Background fabric: 9 by 9 snowy white cotton. Wadding: 9 by 9 cotton wadding. This is to provide some body to the embroidery. Backing fabric: 9 by 9 in a light colour cotton. Stabiliser: 9 by 9 square. There are lots of types of stabilisers. For this project, I used a medium weight cut away stabiliser and just left it in when I had finished. When I am hand quilting, I use a papery tear away one. It isn t as nice as the cut away one but you can get it out easily and then quilting is much better. I don t like the soluble ones as I find they stick a bit on the machine and don t move as easily but that is a personal choice. Thread: I used the following: Mid/dark brown for outlining leaves, berries, the hare and the fence posts. Taupe for outlining the house and trees in the distance White for adding snow detail on the houses and trees Light grey for whiskers and house windows. Beige for fence wires. Dark brown for eye Variegated green for the iris Variegated cream for shading around the eye Variegated tan for close around the eye lid and the inside of the ear. You don t need to use these colours, just have a look through your thread box and see what you have. If you switch between brands of cotton like I do, then you may need to keep adjusting your tension as you sew. Some of the quilting threads I use are quite thick and I must turn my tension wheel to half of what I normally do so that I don t get the bottom thread coming up. Tension problems show up a lot more when you free motion than normal sewing, so if you get loops on the bottom either your upper tension is probably too loose or it isn t threaded correctly. If you can see the bottom thread or your upper thread snaps, then your upper tension is too tight. I find I can tell when my lower bobbin thread is nearly empty as I find that I must keep upping my upper tension to match the bottom one. So be aware! Fabric: You can use any fabric you like but I would heartily recommend batiks for raw edge applique. The thread count is higher so they stay together while you are sewing and don t fray nearly as quickly. I like to use hand dyed batiks with no printed pattern. They give a lovely water colour effect. I use the Kota batiks by Moda and Sew Simple Batiks. For this embroidery, I used: Beige for hare Cream for the house Plain grey for the sky Dark brown for the fence post Light brown for the house roof Autumnal brown for leaves 2

3 Purple for the berries Purple/green for the trees. (Nothing too bright) Freezer paper: Freezer paper is ideal to trace the pattern pieces and then you can iron them (warm iron) onto your fabric and then cut them out and carefully peel away the paper. Bottom bobbin threads: Just a note here to say that I am lazy so I only ever use either a dark brown or cream thread on my bottom bobbin. I adjust my tension to make sure you don t get any noticeable thread colour coming up from underneath. Free motion foot and ability to either drop or cover up your feed dogs: Everyone s machine is different and I m not going to try and explain all the different types of free motion sewing foot. But you are going to need one. And to know how to use it! This one is mine. I have a Pfaff Creative 2056 (which is getting on a bit.) I used to have the proper free motion foot for it but I broke it so I am back to the darning foot the machine came with, but to be honest it works just as well so I haven t bothered changing it. Instructions (In addition to the written instructions I also have videos on my YouTube channel. Please go to or search for Raggedy Ruff Designs on YouTube. There isn t a specific one for this pattern but the other tutorials might be helpful.) At the back of the instructions there is a set of outline drawings. Cut your background fabric to at least 9 by 9 and trace all the shapes with freezer paper. For the sky and hare extend the lines so they are at least a cm larger so you have some margin for positioning. For the sky, trace all the area above the snow (ignore the tree and house and ears) and press the shape onto the grey and cut out. Peel the freezer paper off and place your fabric in position. Repeat for all the other shapes. Arrange all the pieces on your background fabric using the ring to help with positioning. Thread your machine with the taupe. Normally I outline with a mid-brown for the houses and hill we want to give a softer look. Take a deep breath and with all the free motion settings engaged correctly on your machine, position your needle about a millimetre from the edge of the sky on the right-hand side and start sewing. A few stitches on top of each other fastens your end for you. Each time you get to the end and want to cut off your thread remember to do a few stitches to lock the thread so it doesn t undo. With free motion sewing there is no need to stop and turn 3

4 around, you can sew in all directions. After a few stitches, I find it helpful to cut off the upper thread end so I don t keep sewing over it. Go all the way around the sky line, securing the houses and trees and catching down the top of the hare s ears. If you miss a bit don t go back over what you have done, just get back into position as quickly as you can and keep going. If you feel a bit panicky then you can always just sew up and down on the same spot a bit or stop for a second! Don t worry about any of the details at this stage. We just want to get all the pieces sewn down so they don t go astray! Go back the way you ve come and catch any places you missed the first time. Switch over to the mid brown and we are going to stitch down all the other pieces. Keep checking that the position looks ok with the metal ring, we don t want any pieces wandering! On the hare concentrate on getting the outline sewn but when you get to the nose put in a little dip and likewise when you get to the chin, just extend into the fabric a little bit. Now normally while I suggest you can always draw/chalk in details to sew, I never bother with in myself, but there is no way I could sew in 3 non-parallel straight lines without ending up in a mess without a line to follow. So, you want to draw in the fence wires. Take a long ruler and with a soft pencil draw a light line from the very corner where the sky meets the snow and draw down to about 6mm from the top of the fence post. Start the next line about 1cm from the line on the left and level your ruler to the mid-point of your fence post. For the third line, you want to go about 1cm from below the middle line and take it to about 6mm from the bottom of the fence post. You don t need to go all the way across the hare s brow as we will be cutting that out anyway. 4

5 You can add in the other two fence posts with the pencil as well. Extend them a little bit past the 3 lines you ve drawn. While you still have the dark brown thread on your machine, embroider these two posts so they end up about 2-3mm thick, the one close being slighter thicker. Next change your thread to a beige colour, nothing too dark. And you can test your skill at free motion embroidering a straight line! Take it nice and slow and remember this is supposed to be barbed wire so do the odd little dip or rise (no problem you say!) Time to change your thread again. Sorry this pattern needs a lot of thread changing! You want to add in the tufty bits of grass around the fence line. I found a nice beige hand quilting thread which had the odd bit of green in it. You want to be thinking of old dry grasses rather than anything bright green, and add tufty bits, sparingly, along the edge of the field. 5

6 Change back to the mid brown and add in the ear detail with a couple of hair bits at the bottom. Next the dreaded eye. Hare eyes are much higher and further back than you would think they should be. Stitch in an eye using the minimum number of stitches as you can. We want to concentrate on positioning here. This is my first attempt. I can see that the position is ok but that the eye is a little deep. I will make sure I change that shape as I go along but I m not going to worry too much about getting it perfect with this thread. Change to a cream variegated coloured thread and add some hairy bits inside the ear and then follow around the back of the head and drawing in the neckline. Don t do too much as we will be adding a second colour in the second. Use the same thread to shape that eye a bit better, feathering out above the eye, going down towards the nose and shaping the snout a little, and then back up to around the ears. Try not to cross your stitch lines if you can. I tend to 6

7 do one close line, then go out and do the biggest shape first and then work my way back in again. As you get close to the eye, make the stitch lines closer together and you can hide any of the brown thread if you went wrong. (Like I did.) Switch over to a tancoloured thread and deepen the colour immediately around the eye area. Do the same for the ears and then have a quick whizz around the jaw and back of the head again. I thought I had taken more photos as I was going when I was doing the eye but I must have forgotten so I have made it a big photo to show you clearly. Change over to a green thread and sparingly colourin the iris, don t worry if you can see some of the brown behind, that will just add to to it. Lastly change over to a dark brown thread and draw in the eye where you decided it should be and re-colour the pupil. The whiskers are stitched with a light grey stitch. Don t forget to put in some around the eye brows and the cheeks. They should curve gently, most so as they get further from the face. While you have the grey threaded add a couple of small windows in the house. Change over to the mid tan again and stitch in the branches and stems for the leaves and berries. These stems should be a little angular with occasional odd changes of direction. Nature is rarely too neat. Change to white and add a little snow to your trees and roof tops. 7

8 Give it all a good press, removing any loose threads from the back so they don t show through the white fabric. Find your metal ring again and find the best position for it. The top right christmas tree should stick out a little bit as will a couple of the leaves. With the soft pencil draw around the 8 ring, missing out the leaves and tree that stick out. I then used a large tea cup to draw the inner ring, making sure it was central, and making sure I DIDN T draw across the hare! It doesn t matter too much the exact diameter but it wants to be around 4. Not so big so you don t get any snow below the houses or you see the internal wires and not so small you get any of the stems going into the central circle. Next layer up you sandwich, so backing fabric on the back, then wadding, then your embroidery. Pin or baste as required. Now you are going to have to be brave again and free motion embroider along the outside circle. If you get really stuck you could carefully do this with the normal foot on and the feed dogs back up but it is excellent practice as sewing where you mean to! Do likewise with the inside circle making sure not to sew over your hares nose! You want to go 8

9 around the leaves and hare s nose. For this stitching I used a light grey thread. Go twice around both circles and you want to cut the shape out. Turn it over to the back and mark the dead centre at the top with pencil. If you have drawn it all correctly it should be just bigger than your metal wreath. I then whipstitched the outside metal ring in place. And you are finished! 9

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