Raggedy Ruff Designs Raggedy Ruff Designs Goldcrest and Daffodils Finished size 10 by 8 (or 15 by 12 ) 1
You will need: Mount: 8 by 10 with a 7 by 5 aperture Wadding: 8 by 6 cotton wadding Background fabric: You can use any colour you like but make sure it is a good contrast to your fabric and thread colours or it will get a bit muddled. I used a warm lilac and an off white to match the mount colour. Main piece Lilac: 9 by 7 (large 16 by 13 ) Daffodil background: Lilac 9 by 3 and off white: 9 by 2 and 5 by 3 Goldcrest background: Lilac 5 by 3 and off white 5 by 3 Felt: 9 by 10. This is to cover the back of the daffodil and Goldcrest and provide a neater edge. If you are using the embroidery as part of another piece of work, then you probably won t need this. I used a cream colour. Stabiliser: 9 by 7 (large 16 by 13 ) and 9 by 4 and 5 by 5 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 threads by Wonderfil: Saddle brown polyester thread Designer DS893 Dark brown polyester thread Designer DS896 Variegated green for the daffodil leaves and bluebell stems TU32 Black confetti 50wt cotton KT200 for eye Variegated citrus yellow for feather details and daffodils Tutti cotton 50wt TU03 Yellowy beige for the tufty feathers Tutti cotton 50wt TU14 Variegated off white for feather details Tutti cotton 50wt TU41 Variegated orange for daffodil trumpets Tutti cotton 50wt TU07 Variegated brown for brown stems Tutti cotton 50wt TU36 Dark brown variegated cotton Tutti 50wt TU34 for bird legs Light blue variegated cotton Tutti 50wt TU25 for bluebells 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 types of thread 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! 2
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: Mid beige for the bird body. Light yellow for upright daffodil and bird wing Cream for the leaning over daffodil Orange for the daffodil trumpet Light orange for the daffodil trumpet Mid blue for the bluebells Black for wings Darker grass green for daffodil stems Light grass green for daffodil stems. Green/purple for foliage leaves Purple for berries. 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/grey/cream thread on my bottom bobbin. At the moment, I am using 100wt invisafil. It takes a bit of tweaking on the tension as it tends to wind tighter than normal threads but it hardly shows at all and a full bobbin lasts ages because it is such a fine thread. 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 https://www.youtube.com/channel/ucp1rjc_f3wizizwhyxzczxw 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 are two sets of outline drawings. One is smaller than the other. Throughout the instructions, I will be working on the smaller of the two sets. I included the larger one as I thought it might be helpful for beginners not to have to work with quite so fiddly pieces. The larger template is not intended to work with a mount and you will need to adjust the instructions accordingly. Also, the larger set would be ideal for needle turn applique. I am not going to give the instructions for needle turn applique but if you follow the same order as for the raw edge applique and remember to add on your seam allowance you should be fine, and you could embroider the extra details by hand. 3
If you have purchase the kit, then I have included enough fabric to either make either size embroidery. Trace out the design of the daffodils, bluebells and Goldcrest with freezer paper. Mark all the design lines on your tracing. From your background piece cut a 9 by 7 piece as well as a 5 by 4 and 10 by 3 piece. From the white piece cut a 10 by 2 piece, a 5 by 3 piece and a 4 by 3 piece. Goldcrest Stitch the 5 by 4 lilac background piece and 5 by 3 off white piece together with a quarter inch seam to create a mini background as shown. Cut the beak and legs off your template. Using the freezer paper, press the whole shape onto the right-hand side of your light-yellow fabric with a warm iron and cut out. Peel the freezer paper off. Carefully cut any yellow areas off your freezer paper template (A little patch on the top of the head and the back wing.) Cut out this shape out of the beige fabric. Carefully cut any of the beige areas off your freezer paper template so you are just left with the black wing. We aren t going to cut the black stripe at the end out of the black but embroider it instead. Cut this wing out of the black fabric. Cut the two leaves as one piece out of the green/purple fabric. Cut the berries as one piece out of the purple fabric. Position the pieces on top of your background with a piece of stabilizer underneath. The exact positioning of the bird will depend a little on the frame and mount you are going to use. You want to make sure that he is positioned far enough into the picture to not get his tail cut off by the frame. I used a slightly wider mount than in the kits so my bird may be further to the right than you might need to position yours. Do check before you sew! Standing daffodil With a quarter inch seam, stitch the 10 by 3 piece of lilac and the 10 by 2 piece of off white together down the long edge and press. Stitch the 5 by 3 by the long side to the top of the lilac and off white strip so you create a left hand top white corner border. Cut the whole daffodil flower (including the trumpet) out of light yellow using the methods given above. 4
Peel off the freezer paper and trim the paper down to just the trumpet and cut out the trumpet of the darker orange. On your leave tracing, extend the bottom edge of the daffodil leave down an extra inch or two so you have a bit of positioning room for later. Cut the main leaves out of the darker green fabric all as one piece. We can separate the leaves with embroidery later. Cut the little stem to the flower head out of the light green. Cut it a little longer than you need than you can tuck the raw edge under the other pieces. Arrange the flower pieces on the pieced background and put a suitable sized piece of stabilizer underneath. Check with your mount that your positioning is good. Bluebells You will need the 9 by 7 background piece. We will be embroidering the bluebell stems so you just need to cut the bluebell flowers themselves out of blue. If they are touching, then cut them out as one piece. Cut the whole of the daffodil flower out of the cream and then the trumpet out of the lighter orange. For the stem, it is best to cut out the bit of the leaves that would go under the daffodil flower so that you don t have to worry too much about positioning. Arrange your pieces, checking with your template for the best position. I did this embroidery last so I could check with the other completed embroideries for the best position. I know that all this layering can seem a little wasteful of fabric as we are making multiple layers but it is a lot easier than trying to jigsaw the pieces of fabric back together again. And if a piece shifts a bit when you are sewing, it won t matter. Starting with the Goldcrest, thread your machine with dark saddle brown (DS893 polyester). 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 bird s head 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 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 bird securing all the edges of all the fabric pieces except the back edge of the head. We will stitch that edge with a lighter colour thread later. I found it easiest to go around the outside shape first, catching down one side of the shapes and then once the basic shape was secure, I went back and went around each piece individually. 5
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! Once you have gone around all the shapes, go around them again, making sure you catch down any edges that you missed the first time. When you reach the leaves and berries, add in the individual shapes with the brown thread. Don t worry about the beak and legs at this stage as we will add those in later. Change to a beige/grey (TU14) and add in some tufty feathers to the rear. Switch to a cream thread (TU25) and add some more feathers and then stitch up and around the face area. You can use this thread to catch down the raw edge of the remaining beige fabric. Change to a variegated green (TU32) and add in the leave veins. Change to a yellow variegated thread (TU03) and add in some thread work to the crown of the head, and then draw in the feather details on the black. I found this quite fan as they really stand out! You can also add a little shading on the back yellow feathers as well. Change to a white thread and add in the white marking along the top of the wings. For the next stage, I first worked in a dark grey (TU40) and then sewed over the same area in a black (KT200) to dark the stitches. I added the dark strip above the eye, the beak and the eye with the dark grey first. This is a little more forgiving than sewing this straight away with black. 6
Feeling a bit braver, I then did the same stiches but in black. These are very little birds so the eye is quite large compared to the head and beak. Finally, for the eye, I changed back to the white thread (TU41) and stitched around the eye and a little highlight in the bottom left hand corner. With a warm brown, stitch in the stem for him to stand on and the berry stems. Change over to a dark brown (TU34) and stitch in his feet. Next we want to take the embroidery and put a piece of felt underneath (5 by 6 ). We are going to stitch around the embroidery using matching thread. So stitch around the white side with off white thread. When you reach the join for the lilac fabric, turn around and come back, stitching a second line. Change over to a lilac thread and do the same for the other side. Cut this shape out neatly. 7
We are now going to do a similar idea for the daffodils. With the dark brown (DS893) stitch around the pieces. You can separate the leaves and petals and add in the trumpet detail. Change over to a variegated yellow (TU03) and add in some details to the petals. With orange thread, add in some detail to the trumpet (TU07). Finally add in some shading to the daffodil steams with a variegated green. (TU32) Position the embroidery against your mount and determine where you want the daffodil stems to finish for the neatest finish. With a piece of felt underneath we want to do the same as for the Goldcrest and finish the edges and cut out. In a similar manner, sew up the bluebells and the lower daffodil. I used TU03 yellow, TU07 orange for the daffodil. TU32 for the stems, and TU26 for the bluebell details. 8
Cut a piece of wadding, 8 by 6 and we are going to use this to cushion the embroidery behind the mount. Give all your work a good press at this point so we don t have any creases and trim any loose ends. Position your main background with the mount, trimming the fabric if necessary. Put it into your frame with the mount and fasten it in place. If you don t have a frame to help keep everything in place, you might need to use some masking tape to hold the wadding and fabric in place. With fabric glue, glue the daffodil, Goldcrest and the little sticks in position. Stand back and admire! 9
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