Mixed Media Session 4: Forming Attachments

So now that our quilting is done, we're ready to put all of our bits and pieces back on, glue them to the surface, let them dry for a while, and then we're gonna hand stitch. First, however, I wanna kind of deal with this little area here, because I really like this fray. And so I'm gonna get it to fray the rest of the way all the way around and then clean it up if necessary so that it's all taken care of. And I'm just going to fray it as far as it will fray. And so down here it will fray a bit more. And I'm just using an awl to kind of pull those fibers out. Can use a straight pin or a needle to do the same thing if you haven't got an awl handy. But this awl is gonna come in handy later when it comes to stitching too. So then I can decide whether or not I want to trim any these long bits, and I probably will, but it's something that I can decide on as I go. I really like how this wrinkled. If you don't like the wrinkles, make sure you pin baste better than I did. I didn't pin baste at all because I thought the wrinkles would add some good interests. So we're ready to glue back down. And I'm gonna go ahead and position this header, even though I'm probably not going to glue it down because I happen to have had enough experience with these heavy pieces of iron to know that they don't really glue well with the fabric glue that I'm going to be using. And not that it won't stick to the fabric, but because it's so heavy, the minute I lift this up it wants to fall off, even though it's been glued down. So I'm just gonna put it in position so that I know where it's going to be, and that will help me put the rest of my things in position. I'm gonna go ahead and bring up that picture that I took on my phone, and have it right next to me so I can use it as a reference. I might change my mind a little bit here and there, but I'm gonna start with that picture. And I'm gonna position my circles first and sort of get them where I think they go. And I remember this one was hanging off that edge a bit. And then these are kind of, they make me think of wishbones, flying wishbones, moving away from that surface. And these were down here interacting with one of my calipers, so I'll just stick 'em here for a minute. And I think these really sharp calipers were the ones that were up here. This one is the one that was down here. And I'm just gonna play with the positioning again until I get it the way I want it. This one I liked having this portion here show, so I wanna make sure that happens. I also wanna see if I like it better in a different position. So I'm gonna go ahead and play with that positioning, get these back where I want them. This was not quite so far over there before, or maybe it was, okay. So I wanna make sure they stay on the surface. If you want them hanging over, make sure that they have a lot of support as they hang over. Okay, that's very similar to what I had before, I like it just as well. And now I'm ready to glue down. Now, when it comes to gluing, you want a glue that is made for fabric, a glue that's made for fabric. It has a polymer in it that will attach to the fibers of the fabric. It will attach to almost anything else too, but if you have a glue that's not necessarily made for fabric, it might have too high of an acid content and it could rot the fabric, and we don't want that to happen. The rust on the rusty bits could rot the fabric, and that's why I put that coating on it. So I wanna do everything I can to make sure that it's archival, and my hard work isn't going to just fall apart. So this is called Fabric Fuse, and it's just a great all-purpose fabric glue. I use it constantly. I wish I could buy it by the gallon. It's by the company Therm O Web, and you can get it at most quilting stores and almost all chain fabric stores too. So it's not hard to find. I also like that it's got a very fine applicator. And if you store it in a plastic container, it won't dry, like a plastic baggy, it won't dry up in between uses. So I'm gonna start with my circles here, and I'm gonna look at my circles and see what is flat. There's no sense in putting glue in here because it's concave, and so it's not gonna hit the fabric. So really, I only need to have glue around the outside edge. And I'm gonna put some dots of glue around this outside edge here. And I'll then kind of rub that out, 'cause I don't want big globs. And I keep a wet paper towel next to me. And then I'll lay that in place. And I'm just gonna glue down anything that I think is gonna stick well and not be too heavy when I move things around. And the main reason I kind of blot this is because if you leave big, heavy areas, it squishes out from underneath and makes a ring of glue around your piece, which you don't really want, 'cause it ends up being just the slightest bit shiny, even though it dries clear, it's shiny. Okay, so these guys are gonna be a little problematic because they're completely hollow. They just have a slight little rim around them that is going to come into contact with the fabric. So I'm just gonna put as much as I can along that edge without it going into the inside little cavity, 'cause there's no sense in that. And it's probably not gonna adhere really, really well but just enough to hold it in place until I get to the stitching. I'm basically, just tacking it down. Hoping it adheres here and there and doesn't move around too much when I'm stitching. I am gonna go ahead and glue these down even though they're pretty heavy. We'll see if they stick on for us or not. And I'm gonna run glue right down the center of this wider part, and the narrower part a little less. And I will definitely get off the excess so it doesn't seep out the sides. It doesn't take a whole lot of this glue for it to adhere. Go back to our picture. Kind of remember how we had this laid, about like so. And then kinda push that down, get that in position. And I'm not gonna glue this corner down right here. I just don't think that's gonna work at all. I'll just leave it hanging there. So there we go with that. And now we're gonna do the bottom part of this, this portion here. And the gluing is an important part of this whole process because it just makes the stitching process so much easier to do if things are glued in place first. And if this is gonna come down on an angle when I go to stitch it on, then I need to make sure that I let this other piece dry at an angle. Push this side of it in, kind of into the quilting, and let the upper part be a little bit raised so that this is gonna be able to lay flat. So I have to kinda pay attention to how I want things to work in the long run. Now, this one here, I'm thinking I might have it be completely flat. And mainly because these are so pointed down here I don't really want them coming off the surface and poking anybody or anything. Okay, so far so good. Now, we'll put this guy in place. These little wishbones are gonna be very, very fun to stitch around, 'cause they have such a great shape. Stay, and then I think we just have these other three wishbones to glue down and we're gonna be ready to do some stitching. Oops, so this is a time when I start thinking about what color embroidery floss am I going to use, and do I want the embroidery floss to be an accent, or do I want it to be something that doesn't take any attention away from other things? Very rarely with this type of a technique Would I not want it to get some attention, because it's going to be doing some interesting ways of holding things down. This glue is a temporary fix. Yes, for almost any other application, it would be permanent. And a lot of these things, if I could get enough glue on the surface, they would be permanent too, to a certain degree. What happens is that if a piece gets bent, so if it gets bent or warped right where a piece of metal is, that piece of metal will just pop right off. And so it's really important that everything gets some stitching on it, and something isn't loose and just relying on nothing but the glue. Okay, so this guy is now ready for some stitching, and I'm gonna let it finish drying a little bit and we'll stitch on this other piece to get an idea of how some of that stitching can be done. And I won't be gluing this on until probably the very end, when I stop manipulating this piece with other stitching. So now we're gonna go ahead and start stitching on another piece, and I'll show you some great ways of tacking down some of these wonderful pieces of metal. Well, while the new piece finishes drying, the glue is still doing its drying bit, I wanna kind of walk through what I've done so far on this piece, and sew a few other pieces down. This portion is not stitched down yet, so I'll go ahead and remove it. And I didn't glue it in place because it didn't wanna stick for whatever reason, I think it's dirty. And these are stuck down and ready to be stitched. This has already been stitched, and what I did to it because it's a totally three-dimensional piece, is I very carefully hammered it just a little bit so it was flat a bit on that backside and I was able to glue it down. So it's been glued down right here on the ridge and then on the back. And then I simply took my embroidery floss, and taking the needle so that the thread came up at the same spot all the time on the back, and basically making a loop, and doing that several times to make sure it's really well put down in here too, and then added that wonderful colorful stripe on there. So it just looks wonderful. Every time I put down a new piece or a new item, when I'm selecting it, my first thought is, "Well, how is that gonna be stuck down? How am I gonna make that permanent?" So when I found these wonderful fluted flowers I knew instantly that I could run my thread up and put it in those little concave areas between the petals. So I knew that was gonna be really simple. And I used chain for the stems. And that chain is just dribbling down into that wonderful container there, and so when it's hanging, it'll hang down in there. But the chain itself was just tacked down with little tack stitches. So they're not being seen, they're not important. Same with this wonderful flower. That was a big challenge. And so what I've done is I've sewn it down here, you can see that I've got some stitches that are going around some of these petals, and there's this petal here, it's going around too, and these pedals back here. Up here it's not really stitched down, but as long as it's really sturdy here, that's fine. So there were no holes on this that I could stitch through, so I had to wrap that thread around those petals and then stitch through. Now this is a heavy piece. And so I knew, even though I glued it down, I needed to make sure it was stitched down too. And that's why I have this awl in my hand. What I did first is I simply went around the outside edge of this piece and poked holes just through that heavy cardboard, and then I did the same thing where I knew I was gonna be stitching here, there's a hole there, and a hole there, and these three holes here, so that I could hold that down really well. So an awl is gonna come in handy. If you don't have an awl, you can actually just use a little, if you have a clean little nail and a little hammer, and you can, little hammer and little nail, you can do the same thing, but an awl really comes in handy. Some seam rippers can do the job for you too. So you probably have a tool hanging around that you can pop holes with. The reason why I want the holes in here is that I need something to stitch through, and if I try to just push the needle through and I don't have it positioned where I want to, I might end up with a hole in my cardboard where I don't want a hole in my cardboard, and then I've got, you know, a hole on my cardboard. So I wanted to make sure those holes were down there somewhat equally distributed and ready to go. Now, this looks like what I did was a blanket stitch or something like that. It's not, however, it's simply been stitched twice. When I sewed it on, I simply brought the needle up from behind and came through the hole from behind and came through the hole like so, all the way around, doing these stitches that were coming up onto the cardboard. Then when I was done, I simply went through here again. I went all the way around and did that second stitch. And I really like the way that frames these two corners. I didn't stitch this way over here because I'd already positioned my flower, and there's no reason to do it since my flower was being stitched also through the cardboard and down through the substrate. What you need to understand is that this stitching shows from the back. I want to make it as neat as possible, but I'm not that concerned about it. There is a chance I might mount this on something else, you never know. Or, if I'm very concerned about the back, I can put a false back on here. I can just use an iron-on adhesive and put a false back on. But this is not necessarily a quilted piece that is a quilt first and foremost, it happens to be an art piece that has a quilt as its base and therefore it doesn't really have to follow those quilt rules. That being said, I try to be as neat and tidy on the back as I possibly can. So here's the chain that I said was, you know, floating about in this little urn. And so when I pick this up I can put that chain right back in there, and that's where it will stay when it's hanging. So this piece here, I put it in the position I wanted it to be in, and then I popped those holes through there so that I'll be able to sew that on, and we'll do that in a minute. These also need to be sewn on. And we're lucky, because they happen to have holes that nails were supposed to be used on, so I've got lots of places to stitch these down. But there's also other interesting places. So let's pretend these didn't have holes, or maybe I don't wanna use those holes, 'cause maybe I don't. I could just stitch right across here and then add that color in of my thread and stitch right across here, and stitch right across here. I could stitch across here and here, and have a design that happens there with the stitching. This is just a really easy thing to stitch down. Some aren't quite that easy. And then I have this wonderful, wonderful hinge here. And the hinge has really beautiful, what I believe are probably art deco designs which really ages this, and this was a pretty expensive piece. When I went to go grab it, the price tag was still on the back and I paid $28 for it. So I'm pretty sure it's art deco. I don't think I would've paid that kind of money for just something that wasn't all that fancy. The reason I'm saying that is I don't wanna cover up much of its design. So when I stitch it down, I'm gonna have to consider that. So when I think about it, I know I'm gonna definitely use these holes as the major way of putting it down. They're the center of that flower. And so I'll probably take my thread and go from here to this nook, and from here to the same nook up here, and then from here over here. And also that'll have three, like a star coming out of there with stitch. Here on this side too. Then I know I wanna stitch this down because I know that when this gets pushed over like this, so if anybody ever purchased it from me and it got moved around or whatever, I would want this to be stitched down pretty well. But I don't wanna cover up this flower design. So I think I'm just gonna come in right here and stitch across here about two or three times. I'm also probably gonna come in here and stitch across here, just to add that final little bit of security to the piece. And I think because there's not a whole lot going on there, I should be able to do that and not interfere with my design. I want this to be, you know, a prominent portion. Now, when this hangs on the wall, it's gonna be really nice because two nails will do it, and they'll just hook right here in this wonderful area. But because of that, I need to know that this is really well attached to this, because it's what's gonna be holding up everything else. Now, when I do this, I tend to want something that is either contrasting, so highly contrasting, or melding. And because all of my metal bits contrast so well with my background, I decided to use a color of embroidery floss that melds with my background so that it's not getting too much attention. And I can make all sorts of decisions along the way. I can decide if I wanna use all six strands so that I have a really heavy thread showing, or if I wanna use three strands or two strands. And I've been using three strands pretty much all the way through this, so I'm gonna continue with that. So I'm just gonna strand this out into two equal three-strand pieces. And I'm gonna go ahead and stitch down one of these wonderful little hooks. And I just can't imagine what these hooks were for, mainly because they're kinda flimsy. I don't think they were hooks for the wall. So I'm thinking maybe they were hooks to hang pictures from for the wall. You'd hook this onto the wall and then hang a picture from it or something. 'Cause a lot of the picture frames back in the day were hung from a wire, and that wire could just go around that little flimsy, this little guy right here. Let's get this done here. Okay, now I want a good size knot here. And the knot I'm gonna hide underneath the piece of metal. So that's nice that it's not so tightly glued down that I can't get my knot underneath there. And what I am gonna do with this, because I like those holes, but I really don't like the idea of having to take the thread across this design. So instead, I'm gonna take the thread across here, and I'm gonna take the thread across here, and across here, 'cause I don't think any of those is really gonna hurt the design much. And then I think I'm gonna put either French knots or French knots in a bead inside each of those holes. So I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna hide that knot underneath the piece of metal and go through the back, coming out close to where I want my needle to come through the front. I try to work from the front only. So I'll bring that through, cross over, and I'll probably do this two or three times. And I just feel with the tip of the needle. Yeah, I like the way that looks instead of going across the filigree. Now, I'm going to go ahead and turn this over and I'm gonna tie a knot and travel. So I'll go through here, tie a knot, and where I'm traveling to is down here to this space so I can cross over there again. So I wanna get a feel for it from the other side, and I'm gonna put my needle through just in between the fabric, and the batting, and Peltex. So now there I am about where I need to come out, and I'm gonna turn it over and find that sweet spot right there, and stitch across twice. Now, the reason I tied a knot before I traveled just now was because I was traveling such a long distance, about an inch, 'cause it's a long distance. But this next time I'm only gonna be traveling a tiny little bit, so I'm not gonna worry about tying a knot, I'm just gonna travel down there. Let's get that off. So now I'm gonna be moving down here where this hook is. So I'm just gonna travel on the backside. I'm not gonna bury it, 'cause it's not gonna be a long stitch. Find that little sweet spot there, come again to the other side. So now what I've done is I've repeated my stripe motif that I have here on this vessel on these little hanging pieces. So I've got a stripe that shows here, and a stripe that shows here that are very much like those stripes there. Now, I'm gonna go ahead and do a French knot. So I'm gonna come up through my first hole here, and it's gonna take a while to find it, there we go. And I wanna make sure it's a pretty good size French knot so that I can see it in that hole. So a French knot, basically I'm gonna put the tip of my needle down by where the thread is coming out of the back of the quilt. And I'm going to wrap that thread around the tip of the needle, oh, probably five, or six, or seven times, like so. Then I'm gonna take the tip of that needle back through that hole, and pull, like so, and it will make a nice knot. Well, it tells me right away, there it is, okay, very good. And so now I've got a green little circle or knot sitting on top of that hole and I'm gonna do that on all of these holes. So I'll come over to the one that's closest on this other side. Now, these are not keeping anything attached. These are purely decorative. There we go. And this one barely showed in there. So I'm gonna wrap it a couple more times than I did last time. And go through. Make sure that you push those wraps close to where that needle is coming out of the quilt, otherwise your knot will not be close to the thing, there, much better. So that knot is quite a bit bigger and it's sitting on the surface better, so I'll make sure that I do seven or eight wraps instead of the five or six I did on that when I move up to these. At this point, I'm gonna go ahead and knot off. And after I've tied a knot, I'm gonna travel a bit just so I have a tail stuck down inside, and then there's less of a chance of, if that knot comes loose, the thread coming loose too. Now, so this is pretty much the way it's gonna be done, only I'm gonna add these French knots here also. But I wanted to show you what I'm gonna be doing with these. I'm gonna go ahead and use my embroidery floss. And I'm probably going to double it, if not triple it, I think I'll triple it, like so, and I'm gonna be draping it just like so, and then hanging things off of it. And the things that I plan on hanging are keys. So a key and a locket off of each one. I happen to have a bunch of keys and a bunch of lockets, so it works. So I'll put this through. And I wanna tie a knot and leave some of those strings hanging to add some texture. And then I'll see. So I'll probably do each of these with different lengths of string. This middle one will probably be the longest string. And if you can't get all of your strands through your locket, then you can just put one through and then tie it in a different type of knot. But I'm gonna try to see what I can do here. And then I'm gonna tie a few knots in this tripled, just to keep the fibers from migrating or doing anything silly, anything other than behaving well. Okay, so now this is gonna be a little hanging thing, and I'll hang it so it's unequal, uneven, and each one will have one of these lockets and one of these keys hanging down from it. I might end up putting some other things hanging down too, but that's the intent was to have something nice hanging off the end of that. And I think that's gonna add some length to it, some linear aspect to it that's gonna be really nice. Okay, so now, I'm gonna talk a little bit about sewing this on and do a few stitches. And I want you to understand that why I'm always concerned about what my stitching is going to cover up, and making sure that things are gonna be very, very sturdy. I always make sure that my knot is nice and tight and it's big enough that it's never gonna get pulled through. And then I wanna make sure I can bury that, so I'm gonna kinda put it underneath here and push it through. And that knot is gonna be underneath my metal. Now, why wouldn't I just put the nut on the back? Well, I can cause I do have threads showing on the back, so it's not that that's not what I want it to do, it's that this way it's sturdier, it can't be rubbed or abraded, it's underneath this metal. Then I'm gonna bring my needle up in this hole, and I want it to be close to where I'm going to be bringing it out, so close to this edge here, rather than in the middle of the hole or way over here. I want it to be here hugging that edge, and pull it through here, and again, hug this edge on this side. And I'll probably do that twice just to have some heavy thread. Now I could've just used the full six strands of the embroidery floss, but then I'd have more than one needle going at the same time, and I'd get confused as to which is which. It's just easier to do it this way. And now I'm gonna come back over here and hug where I want the needle to come this way. So I feel like even though this is obscuring the the design a little bit, it's not obscuring it that much. It's not, you know, cutting a flower in half or anything like that. And when I'm done here, I'll knot off. So just remember as you're finding all those bits and pieces, and you look at them and say, you know, "How is that going to be attached to the surface? Is there a portion of it that's flat that can lay flush with the surface so that it has contact with it?" So just one more thing to show you what the attachment of this hanging apparatus, this wonderful hinge, is I'm gonna go ahead and do this portion here again. Again, I said I wanted to do that because I just wanna make sure this is nice and secure. So I'm just gonna find my sweet spot from behind. And I'll probably go across this maybe three times. My needle has come undone. And this is not gonna be right on top of each other, but right next to each other instead. So I'm gonna end up with another one of those stripes that I talked about that I have on the vessel and then down below on the little hanging pieces. And there we go. Very nice, I like the way that looks. And then from the back, we're gonna tie a nice knot. And again, bury that thread. Okay, so this is gonna be held on by this happening over here again, and this happening over here again. And I don't think I'm gonna go ahead and do this. I think this is gonna be enough and this is gonna be enough with the glue. I don't think it's gonna go anywhere at all. So one final thing on this piece and then we'll move on to our new piece, and that is this sort of difficult thing that happens when we want to go through to sort of tough add-ons. So this is metal. And so I popped holes in this. Now, I happen to have a little tool that I can pop holes in metal with, most people don't. And so you're gonna do the same thing. You're gonna use either an awl with a hammer, and do light tapping. So you'd put a piece of wood down, just junk wood, set this down, put your awl down, hold it in place and tap it with a hammer until you pop that hole through there. Then you're just gonna pull the awl out of the wood that's underneath. You can also use a nail and a hammer if you don't have an awl, and just pop holes in there like that. Once the holes were popped in here, then I simply set it down and used that same pointy apparatus to poke the holes through the cardboard here so that I know that I could align those holes and sew this on. So I'm gonna show you that this is probably one of the most difficult things you'll do with this technique, but it's simply that you have to go fishing. You're fishing for that hole all the time. But once you have one stitch on there in the back, it will help you find that hole. So I switched to this greener thread because this is gonna be going down next to this more blue thread, and I want it to have just a little bit of contrast to it. So when I put this piece together, I thought it was interesting because I'm pretty sure this is this woman's wedding picture. It looks like a fancy muslin that she's wearing, which was during that era was what they usually wore when they got married was a fancy muslin. And so it looks like a wedding picture, and these right here make me think of the roiling waves on the ocean. And so often the wealthy young women and their new husbands would go on a trip on a boat when they got married, and so I kind of liked that idea. And then I liked the urn with the flowers coming out, 'cause that's a wedding thing, and so are the roses. And I just kind of, you know, felt like I was telling the story of the beginning of this young woman's married life, and that was kinda cool. So for this one, I'm gonna start down in here and I'm simply gonna put the knot where I know it's going to be hidden. So I'm gonna put it underneath this picture frame heading towards this first hole. And pull that under. There we go. And so I know this hole right here coordinates with this first hole here. So it goes there, and it goes there, and then the rest of the holes line up right there. So from the back, I already have put thread through this hole. So I should be able to find that hole by finding the thread on the back, which I can do. It's gonna be somewhere right in here, one of those. So I'm gonna find that visually and bring my needle through that hole, is my hope, always my hope. I'll see if we get lucky. Well, it came out right there, which is gonna work just fine too. This came out on the edge, and I'm gonna go ahead and go down through this hole and go up to the next hole. And that's where I'm gonna find, I'm gonna look to see where I think it's probably going to be, and find that hole. And I found that hole almost instantly, which is nice. So I'm gonna come through, find its corresponding hole, which is this second one here, and then I'm gonna take it back through this first hole and this hole here. And then I will get that in position, which will be nice to have it kind of stable in position. Okay, so now I'm gonna go through the next hole. So the next hole I'm gonna look to see about where it's at. It's pretty darn close. And from the back, I'm going to try to find it back here. I know that I'm moving up in this direction, and I'm gonna try to find that hole and see if I can get lucky. And this is, like I said, this is the hardest stitching that you're gonna do on these projects. There we go. I got the hole prior, which is even better, 'cause I can go through it a second time and do a complete stitch. Let's see. There we go. All right, and now I'm gonna go through here and its hole, and now I'm cookin', because now I can start to find the rhythm behind here. So what I'm looking for is I'm starting this arc, and I know this arc is coming up here, and I know that next hole is gonna be somewhere in this vicinity. So I can start poking in this vicinity to try to find that hole. It might take me, you know, a good few minutes, but that's what I'm gonna be doing, is I'm poking through that area to try to find this next hole. And I wanna make sure that my hole in my metal is lined up with my hole right there in my cardboard, so that when I'm hunting and fishing back there, I'm actually going through what I need to go through. And, da da da dah da. I was right there where I needed to be. There we go. So we come through and make our next stitch. Go down, very good. And so we're just stitching this guy down, constantly making sure that we're going through the holes we're supposed to be going through and not making new ones. There we are. There we go. So yes, this is tough, but it's not impossible, and it's worth it, 'cause your piece is gonna be stitched on nice and tight, Which is what we're hoping for. There we go. So last stitch on this side, and then we'll tie a knot. Again, we're always gonna run that into that thread, into the batting to hide it in there. And so that first portion is now sewn on. You can see, I still have some play in there, which is good, because I want this to line up over here, but I don't have to think about that yet until I go to sew it down. So that will be sewn down, and these two little guys added in here. And this one is separated from everything else. The whole thing fell apart basically, and so these will get sewn on, this'll get sewn on here, and we'll hold this piece in place. And then I'll probably go in and just do a few little decorative wraps just to add some color to that portion. And then I'll finish up the things I've already shown you, and this baby will be done and ready to hang. Which takes us to the piece over here that is nice and dry. And I know it's dry. Things are held onto there pretty darn tightly. I can't really pick things off, so that's nice, things are where I want them to go. And we'll talk a little bit about how we're gonna stitch these things down now. Again, color is important. What you want to see, how much contrast do you want? I originally had thought that I was gonna use this high contrast red violet, and then now I think I don't like that at all. And I like this kind of pale green color here, but I also like the blue and the blue-green. And so I think what I'll probably do is use a combination of these two. And as I look at each piece, I wanna determine kind of what I think would hold that piece down well, what would look fun on that piece. And I'm gonna start with these little Vs, because I think they're gonna be a lot of fun. They have no holes or anything, and what I need to make sure is that they're held down at their convex area and they're held down on each end. And so I can use that to my advantage and do something slightly different with each one, but repeat the same idea. So I'm gonna come here and do this guy right here first, and I'm going to hide my knot underneath one of the wide areas here. So I'm gonna kinda pull this in here and go down. And so the knot is gonna be underneath that piece. And now I'm gonna come up, and I'm basically gonna wrap this end with a couple of stitches. And then I'm gonna travel down and I'm gonna travel down inside here, 'cause I'm gonna go pretty far, like so, and then I'll come out again somewhere near that V, not necessarily directly on it, but near it. And here I'm gonna take several stitches, but here I'm gonna make them farther apart so that they have a different type of design, if you will. And this is always a problem when you've got pokey bits of pieces. So I've got one stitch there, and I'm gonna move away just a bit and do another stitch, so that there's the gold metal in between those stitches. And I'm gonna do three, three, five, seven, those are good. Two, four, six, not so good, they just aren't as pleasing. Like so, so I've got my double stitch here and three little stitches there. And now I need to stitch down this side. So I'm gonna travel again. And I can feel from the front with my fingers since that will guide me to where I want this, about where I want this needle to come out. And it needs to come out about, let's see, about right here. So I've traveled in there, and now I'm gonna come over to this side and a little bit lower, this is pretty close to the edge, so this one I'm gonna do a little bit lower so it's not exactly the same. So right there. And it I'm gonna make really wide, so I'm gonna probably do, oh, four or five stitches. And try not to get caught on that each time. So there's one. Two, and I'm gonna thicken this up so that they're right on top of each other and not having any space in between. So that's about as long as I want the whole thing to be. So now I'll put some stitches in between. And one more, I think, should do it. There we go. So now we've got a wide bar here, a little narrow bar covering of the green there, and then three really narrow bars there. And you can see how that adds just a little bit of interest to this. What's gonna happen is as I add stitch to each of these pieces, and you start to see that stitch, that green, that blue-green, it's gonna make a visual link with each of those, and that's kinda fun. I could also put stitches in between here on the surface as I went to the next piece, and that would add another sense of making things flow. But for right now, I'm simply gonna knot off and move to another product to sew down. And what I'm going to concentrate on now is one of these circles. And I'm gonna do this strange little stitch, and I need to make sure I have plenty of thread. I'm going to be stitching all the way around it with kind of a big, just basic straight stitch. And then I'm going to kind of build a gathered little stitch that comes around its edge, by using that straight stitch to stitch through, and you'll see what I mean in just a minute. Some people call it a cabochon stitch. Some people call it a modified peyote stitch. I call it the only way I know how to stitch on something that's circular. So again, I'm gonna hide my knot underneath a piece of metal, preferably the piece of metal that I'm sewing on, and we can see that we have some looseness there, so I know I can get it underneath there. And I'm gonna come up along this edge and I'm just gonna stitch a straight stitch all the way along the edge here. Now, I can't do a continuous stitch like I would if I didn't have Peltex or Timtex under there. I'm gonna have to stab stitch all the way around. What I don't wanna do is pull too tautly, nor do I wanna leave the thread too loose. If I pull too tightly at this point, I'm not gonna be able to go through that thread later. And apparently I've got a bit of a mess back here. There we go. Hmm, what is going on? We have a little knot, and we're gonna try and get that out. And if we can't get it out, we'll start over. Okay, so when that happens, when you get a knot on the back, and you can't do any sewing anymore, I'm going to go ahead and clip this right here. And there we are. There's my needle. I won't be able to get past this knot. So I'm gonna go to this knot here and tie this down on here, and then I can do a little bit of stitching with what's left of that thread. And that kind of stuff just happens whenever you're doing any type of hand sewing, you risk getting a knot. So this is the thread that's attached to my needle right there. And this is the threads I can clip off. Okay, there we are, okay. So back to the drawing board here. What we're doing is we're stitching around with trying to keep our stitch length about the same, which for me right now is about 1/8 of an inch. We're gonna be stab stitching from the back to find the edge of this circle, and we're gonna just stitch all the way around. And you can see right there that circle's wanting to pop right off because that's what happens when I move the fabric around a lot. It simply just works itself loose off of that surface. And you know, if you have wanna glue it back down you can, which I probably would do. But right now I just wanna get this stitching done. The Timtex and Peltex, that's that substrate that's in there making it stiff, is not hard to sew through by hand at all, so that's nice. Make sure if you decide to use a different type of heavy duty substrate in there that you can stitch through it without it hurting your hands, or bending your needles. Okay, so now we've gone through and gone all the way around and now I'm going to be going through each of these stitches that I went through before, but just through the thread. And I'm gonna be leaving a little bit of a loop here, and then I'm gonna grab that loop and go through the next one and pull it all the way through. And it's gonna start my first little bit of, so I'm gonna go through this one, and then go through that loop. And what I'm doing is I'm just making a little raised area around here now, through this, and through that loop. Make sure that you leave things kind of loose, if you will. Again through there, and through that loop. And I'm just building up that thread along that outside edge because when I go back this third time, I'm gonna pull those and they're gonna curl up around the edge, like so. All right, almost done. And I think we have just enough thread to do our last little bit that we wanna do with this. Okay, we've gone all the way around. Okay, now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna keep that kind of full and I'm gonna go skip one and go through one that's a little ways away, and it's gonna pull that up, and then I'm gonna go through one that's a little ways away, and it's gonna pull that up, and I'm just gonna keep pulling that up all the way around. And it's gonna just form this wonderful little kind of web around the edge of this coin, or whatever you wanna call this, through that loop. And you're gonna come up, yep, okay. And you don't want it to be necessarily rhythmic. You don't want it to be every other one, or every third one. You just wanna grab whichever one you can grab next and let it do whatever kind of little web around there that you can make it do. And there we go, very cool. Quite pleased with that. So now I'm going to try to tie the tightest knot I can right here by pulling that really tight, pushing my needle through, and it's gonna come through here too, and really holding that tight. Ah, there we go. Okay, nice, very nice. So I'm gonna go ahead and take this back down here, and I'll tie another knot in the back. And that is our first way of holding down anything that's round. It could be a stone, it could be a seashell, anything like that, and it's this wonderful kind of funky edge that you get with that. So the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna talk about the design that's present on the surface of the piece. So we've got like a reticulating, circular design there, and almost like petals that are coming out, and there's five of them, and then there's that center circle. I could have if I had wanted to, I could have popped some holes in here with the same method that I talked about earlier, using some nails or an awl, or if I have a metal punch, using a metal punch. But I thought these were really kinda fun just the way they are, and that they would respond well to stitch. So now I'm going to stitch across them, trying to keep in mind their little petals, or their design that's printed on them or pressed into them, because that's what those are, those are pressed metal. So again, I'm gonna hide that knot underneath my metal, and then I'm gonna come out on the edge and stitch as close to directly across as possible. So I wanna make sure that I'm going directly across. And what I wanna do is I wanna do this a total of three times. So now I wanna divide one of these sides into thirds visually, and come out at that third along the edge. I think that's about a third, and I'm gonna go across again, right to that right there. And then now I just have to find the middle of what's left in between there and do a little trick here. So when I get to this here, I'm going to go ahead and put a knot here that is gonna link those all together. See how I wrap that around there so that it's linked together? Then I'm gonna go through these two in this direction and do it again, and link those together so that it's gonna have a nice kinda finished center and nothing is loose, because I want it to be pretty tight there in that center to hold that circle down, okay? And then going down one more time here. And so there's a second way of putting down that circle. Now I'm gonna knot off, and bury, and then I'm gonna show you another way on this third circle. So these are just nothing fancy, no specialty stitches per se. It's just figuring out ways of holding things down. Now, I instantly know that I like this way better than this, because this is obscuring so much of that really cool pressed aluminum. So chances are, I'm gonna take that out and do the same technique, or maybe the technique I'm gonna do right now. So what I'm gonna do right now is I'm gonna be using the edge of this, I'm gonna bury my knot first, but I'm gonna be using the edge of this round piece, the design is in here, and it's got like almost a 1/4 of an inch of edge here. And I'm gonna see if I can use that edge to capture a flat bit of stitching along that edge, so it's gonna look similar to that but a little bit different. So they're gonna be pretty long stitches to cross over that flat area, like so. There we go, and so it's holding that down. Then I'm gonna backstitch to about the middle of that area, like so, and then I'm gonna go across, have that big long stitch, and that's gonna hold that portion down. Okay, so now I know I'm gonna go right where this stitch came out, and I'm just gonna go all the way around in that way, and this is gonna be a great way to hold down that edge and not get in the way of that wonderful design in the middle. So I think this is a, it's easier than this, but I don't think it's as secure as it. So if this was something that I knew I needed to have great security on, this probably wouldn't be as sturdy as the very first stitch that I did, but I like the way it looks equally, and I know I could go around it again and make it more sturdy, which might be the answer. So that one was definitely not long enough, you see that it didn't hug that edge. So I'm just gonna pull that off and make that stitch longer. Taught me a little something there. Need that length. So I'm gonna go all the way up here. Okay, and one more. All right. And I'm gonna knot it off and show you what we did here. So very cool. So three very different ways of holding down this in a cabochon sort of way. I think this one is nice 'cause it's easy, and I would probably double over again and do it in between the stitches that are already there, and so I'd end up with more lines like this. But I think this one's my favorite. I feel like it's giving it a very secure hold and it also looks interesting and repeats kind of this square windmilly design that's in there. So I think this will be the way that I go ahead and do everything else. So we've done our little Vs, we've talked about our circle. So now comes the time for this wonderful little bit here. And I have no idea how this was going, except I know that was going across those Vs, and I believe this was coming down in this direction. So that is what's happening here. And that's important, because I need to know where I'm sewing stuff down, and what gets tacked down and what does not. And so I know that if I get this in position here, that I can stitch this down, I can stitch this down, and I can do all sorts of stitching here if I want to. I can make this very decorative. I could make this very just hold on, and if I wanted to, I could even stitch here and stitch this down, and do something interesting in there. And I might do that, who knows? But first I'm just gonna start by getting this in place. Again, I'm going to use three strands. I like the three strands because it makes my thread go longer, like I get double the amount of embroidery floss, but it's pretty sturdy and it's still easy to thread. I'd have to have a really big embroidery needle to use all the strands, and it uses a lot of thread, and it's kind of not necessary. Now, to add unity, so if I feel like my piece is not very unified, I would probably stitch down each of these circles exactly the same as the other circle. And I would probably stitch down each of my Vs as close to similar as that one is, and I'd stitch each of these down very similarly. But I don't know that I really need to worry about unity. I think what I really need is a little bit more variety. So my answer would be to stitch things down similarly but different so that I can add a little bit more variety, which was my decision in the first place to add slightly different stitching to each of those Vs, which I'm gonna continue with. And I'm gonna do slightly different stitching on each of these calipers too. I'm gonna start by putting these two things in place and then I'll do the decorative work on that. This one, I want to run right through the center of those two Vs, but I don't want it to distort the piece. So I need to know that however it's doing its thing, it doesn't distort the piece. So I'm gonna start by putting my knot underneath. Putting that exactly where it needs to go. So here it's flat, and then picking it up and trying not to move that. And I'm gonna wrap with this. And this is how I got that knot last time, I don't want that to happen again. 'Cause you can see when I pick that up, it distorts. So make sure that when you pick it up, you pick it up together, or pull it off that edge. There we go. Okay, so back to wrapping this. And that wrap is gonna secure it really nicely to the base. And I'll probably do it three or four times. And I think that's enough. Now, if I were just sitting along here stitching, at this point I would go ahead and stitch these two Vs while I was here, but I wanna go ahead and get on to stitching the rest of that into place. So I'm gonna go ahead and knot off, and bury, and move on to another portion. And we'll get this other side. Now, we're gonna get this portion stitched down. Now, watch what happens when I push this down, make sure that it doesn't pull this side up too much. We don't want that to distort it. So if I push this, you know, and push that down, see how it's lifted up, I don't want that to happen. So we're gonna kind of just let this go down, there we are, and pick that up, hide that knot, and then wrap around this wonderful screw. Oh, that knot is not hidden, go underneath there you, okay. And because there's only a small portion of this that's really hitting that surface, I'm gonna wanna keep my stitches pretty much right in that space. I don't wanna spread them out or anything, because again, I don't wanna distort it. And I'll probably do three, and then I'm going to knot off. All right, so I've got this end on, and this end on, and I'll be doing the same thing with these. So on this one, I would get this one stuck down. This one is not going to get stuck down because it doesn't touch the base, so it's just going to be this whole bottom portion that gets stitched, and then this portion right here. This I can do all of. But I wanna show you that I'm gonna do some decorative stitching here. Nothing really fancy, nothing but a straight stitch that anybody can do. But just adding a little bit of interest in a couple of places. Well, actually, just one place, as I stitch this down. So I'm gonna start at this end here, and I'll bury my knot underneath the end of the metal, right there, and I'm just gonna stitch down this tip. And I wanna get those tips down because they're where if they're loose, people can hook things underneath them. You can, if it's hanging on the wall and somebody brushes the wall, they could hook it with their coat or something, so we don't want that end to be loose. But I'm gonna go ahead and put three stitches on this end that are somewhat separated from each other, about 1/4 of an inch apart. And that'll get that end down securely. And then I'm gonna move over, oh, about, oh, I think about an inch, maybe an inch and a half from the back. There we go. Make sure that needle can come through. Come here you. There we go. And that's why I always keep a pair of pliers or something nearby to pull if I can't get that needle. Okay, so now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna stitch little Xs across here. So I'm gonna stitch an X across here, like four or five Xs here. So the first thing I'll do is do a diagonal stitch. So I'll find about where I'm at in the back, which is about right here. I'm gonna make it a pretty long diagonal so that it's not questioned as to whether or not that's what I wanted it to be. So that goes across the diagonal there. And then I'll come over here and make the X come back at about here. Come on, about right there. And then come over on this side. And there's my first X. Make sure you're able to pull your thread nice and tautly. And now I'm gonna make another X. So I'll come back over here, make that long diagonal, make that diagonal longer than you think it needs to be, 'cause it's not gonna show as much on the surface because it has to wrap around the width or the depth of the piece first, and you lose part of the length of that diagonal. There's another X. And what's fun is because of the gradating size here, each X gets slightly larger. And I think I'm gonna stop with those three, I really like what that's doing there. So this is stitched down, those three are stitched down, and I'm gonna kinda tie a knot from the behind, and then I'm gonna move over to this side. I'm gonna bring that knot in underneath. And I think what I'm gonna do is just put one big X over here, and then I'll go put something at the end, and probably an X too, because of that little circular thing here. I think an X will work well there instead of going just across. Okay, so there's one X and I'm gonna knot off, but I'm gonna travel down to the end instead of cutting off. So again, if I've only got about an inch to go, I can tie a knot to secure what I've just finished sewing and then travel. Or I can, if I only have about 1/2 inch to go, I don't even have to tie a knot, I just travel. But anything more than about an inch, and then I'm gonna tie the knot, cut the thread, and reknot it, and go where I need to go. Okay, so let's talk about this a bit. I could put a thread that goes from here to here, and then a thread that goes from here to here, and make an X, or I could do a thread that goes from here to here, and do nothing else, or I could do from here to here, and then from here to here, and have a V. So I'm gonna go ahead and stitch an X here because it's gonna make a fifth X, and I like the number five rather than those four that are present here. And I just think it's gonna look best there at the end. So I'll just come up back here, and I'm gonna use that little nook there and go down in that nook. And then I'm gonna come across here in the nook with the circle where it meets the caliper, and then go across. And there's my final X, and I can knot off, and I can know that that piece is down there very securely. And I really like the way that looks. Five Xs, a couple stitches here at the end, a little stitch there, a little stitch there, and it's on there nice and securely and it's never gonna go anywhere. So hopefully you've gotten a feel for how simple the stitching can be, but also how it can be used to decorate a bit more, and how it can be used to not just hold things in place but to do them in a adventurous way, if you will, rather than just do the same little straight stitch or using the holes that are already there. You can use your imagination and do all sorts of different things with your embroidery floss. You could also use a pearl cotton or any kind of, you know, anything that's stitchable that you can load onto a needle and stitch with. Make sure that whatever you use though, it doesn't overwhelm the piece. Okay, so if you've been stitching along with me, it's time to finish stitching your piece. Go ahead and get all of your bits and pieces on there, and then we'll talk about hanging that, the hanging apparatus, and finishing our edges in just a moment.