The Secrets to Create this Ribbon Embroidery & What to AVOID | Pokemon Eeveelution Collaboration

The Secrets to Ribbon Embroidery

Pokemon | Espeon

Ribbon Embroidery and What to Avoid!

This was a planned collaboration piece along with 9 other artists, without their invitation I don't think I could have ever created this artwork. I'd like to take the time to say thank you! during the process I've had a hard time creating this framed embroidery and had immense support during this journey, which gave me the strength to create this lovely piece. The support clearly shows in this piece since I wanted to make those who invited me proud to have worked with me and I hope to have proven others I am capable of teamwork.

Happy Stitching! 

Reference and Thread Color Palette

As soon as laid my eyes on the photo I knew I wanted to work with ribbon for this embroidery, I've had the ribbon idea concept for so long and it was a prefect opportunity to execute that as my first time. 

Now for the tips and tricks you can use, with some you can avoid!

How to START!

As all beginner embroiderers we all know we need to sketch or print out our image before we start embroidering, my printer is out of commission so in this case I traced directly from my tablet onto tracing paper. After, I taped my sketch onto carbon paper and began tracing my image on the fabric, be careful not to add too much pressure onto your carbon paper, you could leave fingerprints and smudges. I use a paper weight to ensure my image doesn't move too much when I'm tracing.

 

Make sure to measure your image twice before actually tracing onto your fabric. Also measuring your frame or hoop is a good way to ensure you're working on the entire area.

When embroidering I personally like to work with the entire hoop, filling in the entire area making sure everything is filled with thread and color. I typically work with full color images and I enjoy it very much. Since this is only a frame, it saved me half the time from working with the back. 
If you're new here, I always work with embroidery hoop backings, making my embroidery hoops with artistic fronts and backs!  

Outline done!

Isn't she looking lovely already? I can already see her coming to life! Always trust the process, you see how some of my lines are uneven and my tracing isn't famous work either, that's okay! Continue working and trust your needle work! 

Things I check before painting!

• Drum Check! Tap your fabric in it's hoop, when it sounds like a drum you can begin!
• Making sure I mark the most obvious roses
• Outlining the shade work with a different color pencil 
• Marking a little over 1.5 cm of the frame I am using to ensure my embroidery fits, corner to corner.

 Small tip: Water coloring my background helps me fill the entire hoop without a lot of my white fabric from poking through, of course this doesn't substitute the fact you should try to cover your background with full thread, it does cut down time to embroider and get the results you're aiming for. 

Also notice how I kept my background painting as soft as possible, even giving it an ombre like effect, that's for my needle painting! If you paint your background one solid color, it could possibly show when you're trying to involve a softer thread color than the tone of your watercolor painting background. I made sure to have this effect so when I needle paint the background using my colors the color fabric won't show.  

Ribbon Embroidering

This was possibly the most difficult part when it came to working and incorporating the flowers, my biggest down fall was I purchased the wrong ribbon. When looking at Youtube videos I didn't take into consideration the types of ribbons everyone was using when embroidering directly onto the fabric, this is what made it hard for me. The ribbon I bought was Satin 1/4", the problem wasn't the width it was the type of ribbon I was using. 

When trying to embroider directly using satin ribbon the ribbon itself wasn't passing through the fabric, satin ribbon is pretty stiff and only one side is soft, shiny and passable while the other side is dull, rough and stiff. 

Because of that factor it made it difficult to embroider onto my fabric without needing to pull with so much force. 

This is when I gave up trying to embroider the ribbon onto the fabric to create my flowers and had to make the flowers by hand with the satin ribbon I purchased to still utilize the tools I had around me. I loosely sewed one side of the ribbon by hand with sort of a basting stitch and pulled to make small ruffles looking like the flowers in the reference image. After I began sewing them onto my fabric. 

When sewing the flowers onto the fabric be sure to use the same color thread as the ribbon you are using to ensure your stitches don't show. 

Water Coloring the Ribbons

 I chose to purchase a lighter color of the ribbon than my reference image provided, I felt that I could then watercolor the ribbon to give the flowers a more gradient effect giving more life to them as opposed to them being one solid color. 

For the purple flowers, I only added a darker shade of purple directly into the middle and let the water spread along the creases of the ribbon, also making sure I don't soak my flowers into the paint since one; they are already embroidered into frame, so I am being steady with keeping my paint onto the flowers and two; I don't want the purple to over power and make my flowers one solid color. 

My trick to making my flowers gradient with an extra boldness, wait an hour or work on something else until your painted ribbon dries and go back again with a slightly darker tone of color into the middle and let the bleeding take care of the ombre effect for you!  

 Moving onto painting the roses!     

 When painting the roses it came fairly easy! Making sure my paint wasn't too red and diluting it to a very pinkish color to achieve this gradient effect into the roses, I did go a little darker when I painted the edges of the ribbon to give it a look of petals a bit more realistic.

 Once they finished drying, I was ready to embroider them onto my frame before actually filling it with color. Another thing I wish I had done differently was embroider my piece before placing anything ribbon, only because my thread tends to snag onto the ribbon causing it to be tangled and made many delays. 

The only reason why I added a few roses before fully coloring my piece was to visualize my embroidery piece and make sure nothing was clashing, I try to make my embroidery piece flashy, yes, but not too over dramatic where too much is going on, not my style. 

 

Adding minimal roses helped not over crowd Espeon, I did want this frame to stand out with the ribbons but, I really needed Espeon to be the main focus as to why the roses are where they are. Complimenting not only my usage of roses but the fact Espeon is in the middle of them. In every one of my pieces I have a main focal point also using the entire hoop, makes it looks best, in my personal opinion. 

The ribbon I had for the roses ended up being the same material as the purple ribbon, satin, I knew I also needed to create the roses by hand. Once looking at multiple videos I started to make several roses and sewed them by hand onto my embroidery, with my needle coming in and out of the middle to avoid flattening the ribbon, keeping the dimension of the rose but securely sewing in place. 

Using the left over ribbon, I cut a few circles and burn the edges of the satin ribbon to give it the perception of "petals", keep scrolling if you'd like to see a close up of the petals and the tulips next!

Tulips and Petals

I forgot to record the Tulips process, oops! 

The tulips are the only flowers I decided to actually embroider onto my fabric with satin ribbon and let me tell you, it was not pretty! I used the shortest amount of ribbon to avoid needing to pull so much into my fabric, I also used my biggest sized needle, Tapestry needle to be exact and it still was difficult to pass through my satin ribbon into my cotton thread. 

So much pulling which led me to tug with so much force, but I had no other way of completing the tulips without doing them by hand since I had seen no videos of my preference for them. I cut around the needle and enter hole when inserting my needle, just enough for it to pass through. 

I definitely don't recommend this when you already have your area filled with stitches since things move and you'd have to fill the empty areas of the tulips again, which can lead your other stitches to bulk and look loose around the area you cleanly embroidered. 

But luckily! I saved my background with thread for last, in some areas I knew I needed to pause on, after making the tulips and embroidering the leaves onto my fabric it was smooth sailing from then!

The RIGHT Ribbon!

 

I was lucky enough to have picked the right ribbon when craft shopping! You have no idea how relieved I was since this ribbon was specifically purchased for the use of the leaves on the last part of my embroidery, the ribbon is 100% polyester and was soft on both sides making it silky smooth to pass through my fabric. 

One thing about using this ribbon was the fact it is soft and shiny, pulling too hard could possibly look like a bulky line than a leaf, pass it gently when creating your leaf. To ensure my leaves wouldn't lose their look, I kept a green color threaded needle to stitch my leaves in its place without needing to worry about how much force to use when working quickly.  

Color Palette

When picking my colors I use the app called Picsart to choose my colors, I know a lot of others use Sketchbook which is also another good way to pick your colors accurately to make your embroidery as color close to the image. This reference was pretty easy, since I like to needle paint my embroideries, the colors seemed to have an easy gradient scheme. 

Once you have your colors picked and ready to go, you can begin your embroidering. I personally don't have a consistent way to begin. I usually pick the smallest areas to work in, this helps me put the colors I use away. I recently kept a journal of all the colors written down as I work to remember which ones were used in which areas, if you normally don't do that process its best not to put your colors away without finishing your embroidery entirely. Overall, all you need to do is start where you feel comfortable. 

 When filling in Espeon, I used the one strand method, starting with the ears first and worked my way onto embroidering the body, I left her eyes last to be filled with thread to make sure no movement was happening around her - movement meaning that my fabric and stitches sometimes shift when I am working because of the tightness in most of my stitching to ensure it to not move. 

Filling in my embroidery I normally use one single strand of DMC thread, in this case I wanted to add more texture to my background and work it's way into Espeon, leaving her more shiny, similar to her velvet characteristic/visual description.

Continue filling your thread into your embroidery with whatever stitches you feel comfortable with using, if you'd like to see how I fill my stitches check out my Instagram! I put a video on how to thread fill on a Bratz Collaboration I did back in March.

& that's all she wrote!

Because of the high requests of a more detailed tutorial on how to make the satin roses by hand, I decided to have a separate blog for such. 
Be sure to stay tuned and follow me for updates when i publish a blog for both Satin Roses and Satin Tulips! 
Thank you so much for reading! 

Don't forget to ask questions, help me to help you!