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An appreciable part of our designs are in the photo stitch
technique, and our customers often ask us about it. We prepared several
lessons and invite you to browse through them.
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Photo stitch uses very densely placed stitches, often overlapping each
other, to give an almost Impressionist effect, which is why this technique
is often used when digitizing works of art. The colors are put down in
layers, layer after layer, and go from the lightest to the darkest. That
is why it's very important to follow the order of colors as they are on
the color card.
There are also one-color photo stitch designs. They are not difficult
to work with but are very interesting. See our Lesson
I to find out about one- to three-color designs. |
| Step One: Download the design of the Iris. The embroidery file,
together with the color card are compressed into a ZIP file. Unzip the
file to a folder on your computer using WinZip
or a similar program. Copy the embroidery file to your machine card or
floppy. Print out the color card. |
Size: 60 x 96 mm (2.36" x 3.78")
Stitches: 14957
Colors: 13
Click to download a zip file containing the corresponding format:
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| Step Two: Select the threads in accordance with the color card. |
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| We used regular #75/11 needles. For heavier fabric you can use # 80/12-#90/14
needles. |
| The bobbin thread should be #60-70. Our machine works at 600SPM, but
beginners should work at a lower speed. Choose the lowest speed of your
machine. The tension of the upper and the bobbin thread is also very important,
but we cannot help you there, because it's very individual for every machine.
The general rule is that if the bobbin thread appears on the face of your
work, reduce the tension of the upper thread. If your upper thread starts
breaking, reduce its tension. |
| Step Three: Photo stitch is very dense. That is why it's very
important to choose the fabric and stabilizer correctly. For our lesson
we've chosen linen-like synthetic, medium-weight, evenly-woven fabric,
and medium-weight, iron-on, tear-away stabilizer. Iron the stabilizer onto
the fabric. |
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| Step Four: Hoop the fabric with the stabilizer, stretching them
in the hoop tightly. There should not be any folds or areas where the fabric
has puckered. |
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| Step Five: We can now start embroidering. The photos below show
the result after every color. |
| This is the first color |
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| The second color: |
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| The third color |
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| The fourth color |
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| Color five is a light golden brown, which can seem out of place. However,
photo-stitch designs are formed by the interaction of different colors
that together form one whole image, so it is still too early to judge what
the result will look like. Follow the color chart, for now. |
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| The embroidery after color six, below |
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| Correspondingly, this is color seven. |
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| This is what the embroidery looks like after the eighth color has been
used. There is one jump stitch here, trim it now. It is extremely important
to trim jump stitches after every color! If you do not do this, the design
will be ruined completely by the end. |
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| This is the embroidery after color nine. There is one more jump stitch.
Trim it. |
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| After nine colors, the design is practically ready. You can stop here,
if you like. There are only three colors left, which will be used to add
some artistic touches to the picture, like a painter who adds color strokes
here and there to make his painting more lively.
Next is color ten. |
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| The photo below shows the embroidery after its eleventh color. |
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| The twelfth color is also the final one. This is what everything should
look like: |
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| The iris is ready. If you did everything correctly, you should get
a similar result. Notice that the embroidery is very dense. Though it can
be done on practically any fabric, we do not recommend to decorate light
clothes with it. However it's great for decorating different household
things like place mats, kitchen towels, glasscases, tote-bags, denim-clothes,
etc. Browse our Projects
section
for more ideas and instructions. |
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| On this photo the same design is embroidered on Organza with 2 layers
of a heavy water soluble stabilizer. We used it to make a greeting card. |
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| We used a pink pre-cut card. The pink background shows through the
organza and gives the iris additional mild coloring. |
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| The same design was used on a terry-cloth towel. We used a heavy water
soluble stabilizer for backing and a regular water soluble stabilizer for
topping. In this case we embroidered only the first 9 colors. |
| The Iris design has 12 colors. But it's not very difficult due to a
comparatively simple picture. |
Here are some other designs of the same level of difficulty:
Pagoda
Set, Kitty
with Rose, dogs
and cats,
Pancies,
Poppies,
Porcelain
Teapot I and II, Birds,
Parrots,
I
Will Give You the Moon, and many others. |
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| For you homework we offer a design of a minuature schnauzer. Please
don't forget to trim all the jump stitches and in time. |
Size: 99 x 145mm
Stitches: 51638
Colors: 11
Click to download a zip file in the corresponding format:
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| After finishing you should get a result similar to this: |
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| We used the design to make this funny apron. You can read more on the
project page Funny
Aprons for Every Occasion. |
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| To help us to improve this tutorial please don't hesitate to ask questions. |
| Our next lesson will involve more complicated designs, particularly
those including human faces and figures, where color and stitch accuracy
are even more important. |
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Other Lessons: Lesson I,
Lesson
III, Lesson IV
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