Original text by: Olga Ionova
This master-class will tell you how to do cutwork embroidery. Cutwork embroidery has its own aspects, and if the design is beyond the hoop so that you have to join its parts together, the amount of the aspects doubles. This master-class will tell you how to do cutwork with alignment and border designs without the special hoop, but with the help of alignment stitches instead.
Cutwork embroidery. Materials:
• Fabric or an item to be embroidered
• Tearaway stabilizer
• Water soluble stabilizer (film)
• Upper thread (white)
• Underthread (white)
Cutwork embroidery. The making process
Prepare your fabric. Iron it and press the tearaway adhesive to the wrong side.
In keeping with the design do the marking. Mark the fabric in accordance with the plastic pattern of your hoop.
Tightly hoop the fabric and the stabilizer. You can add pins, too. Cutwork embroidery design must include several colors, which will mark the places for your machine to stop.
The first color will be a Ran stitch, also zigzag may be added. Having embroidered the first color, stop the machine and take the hoop off.
Marked are the areas that will be cut out. These are always enclosed areas.
Don't unhoop the fabric! It must stay in the hoop.
With the help of scissors cut away the areas inside the objects from the stitching, trying not to damage it. Use the stork embroidery scissors or the ones that were specially designed for cutwork.
Put a layer of thin water soluble stabilizer on top of the fabric and secure it with pins. Set you hoops in your machine run the embroidery with the second color.
The embroidery consists of finishing the open areas with zigzag stitches and later with satin columns, while water soluble stabilizer is used as a substitute for the fabric. It holds the fabric and the cut-away details together.
The order of cutting and finishing depends upon the programmed sequence. The details here should be cut away and embroidered one after the other.
Embroider all the details as was described above.
Embroider all the elements of the design.
Cutwork embroidery. The alignment of the elements
When embroidering borders or repetitive design patterns you have to do the alignment. Therefore, draw the central line while doing the preparations. To get the exact match between the different parts the design must contain the alignment stitches and crosses (dots and lines). In the first part of the embroidery they are embroidered the last. The alignment spots marked violet on the photo.
If you add the alignment crosses by yourself (it can be done in any embroidery software editor), mark them with different color from that of the last part of the design.
You can mark the places where the needle will hit the alignment crosses by moving down the balance wheel, but not perforating the fabric. This works extremely good for leather.
The last part of the embroidery before next may include tacking down the first object of the part that will be hooped next. You can use this stitch as an additional alignment mark.
Cutwork embroidery. Rehooping
Take the embroidered detail out and press it flat, moving the iron carefully up and down. Never use steam!
Hoop the next part of the fabric to be embroidered in accordance with the marking and the hoop pattern.
Set you hoops in your machine and make sure that the first is the color of the alignment crosses. All alignment spots must match! You don't have to embroider them, just move the balance wheel down and see if the needle hits the marks.
After that the embroidery will go as was described above.
Having completed the embroidery, unhoop the fabric. Cut away the excessive water soluble stabilizer on both right and wrong side.
Tear away the tearaway adhesive stabilizer.
Wash the water soluble stabilizer in the warm water until it will go off completely.
Dry the embroidery until it becomes only a bit wet.
Press your embroidery on something soft like a folded terry towel covered with a thin cloth. Press the embroidery flat in up and down motions only! Never move an iron side to side or back and force.