Something I really enjoy is embellishing and embroidery on my finished knitted projects. In the past I read up on how to do different techniques such as duplicate stitch and lazy daisy stitch and over time have settled into my own technique that I feel comfortable with. I would hazard a guess that it’s somewhere between backstitch and lazy daisy stitch. Duplicate stitch just isn’t for me. I’d rather do intarsia before duplicate stitch.
Some of my latest projects are:
A beanie with very simple lazy daisy stitching
Lazy daisy “paint splatters”
Snowflake in back-stitch
“Cherry Blossom Birdy” Longies and Beanie set – mostly lazy daisy stitch with some backstitching.
Lambies on a pair of unfinished longies – lazy daisy stitch
I’ve had lots of encouraging comments and compliments on the embroidery and embellishments that I do. Just recently I had someone on Ravelry ask me how I do the embroidery and how I deal with the ends of the yarn as far as weaving them in goes. I thought a pictorial explanation would be more helpful than me trying to put what I do into words only, so I took some “how to” photos as I was doing my latest project.
Here goes!
First of all, I like to have some form of a scaffold to help me visualise what I want to do. Even if I know I want to embroider, say, a monkey, I’ll look for a very simple clip art drawing of a monkey that will help me lay down an outline. In this instance I was going to be doing a cherry blossom branch so set out to find a very simple picture. You can see what I found in the picture below.
Secondly, I always do a rough outline, in running stitch (of sorts!), to lay down a guideline for me to then embroider over. I don’t always do this but it really does help.
In the next four photos you can see me doing the lazy daisy stitch over the running stitch. The running stitch is acting as a guide for me and lets me know where to put the lazy daisy stitch. In the first photo I’ve already done one LD stitch and am trying to show how I pass the darning needle diagonally underneath the running stitch. So in the photo you can see I’m running the needle from left to right. When I do the next stitch I would run the needle from right to left under to the running stitch (you can see that in the 4th photo). In the 3rd photo you can see how each little looped LD stitch sits slightly off to the side of the one before and after it. I don’t know where or when I picked this up but it’s just something I like to do. I feel confident that the running stitch underneath is being held firmly in place and there won’t be any risk of it peeking out.
Now it’s time to weave in the ends!
In the first photo you can see that I have 4 ends to weave in. At the bottom of the hat, near the brim, I have knotted the two threads together. One thread is from when I knitted the brim and the other thread is where I started the embroidery.
To begin with (the second photo) I thread the darning needle with an end that needs weaving and thread it under the already embroidered lines. This is all happening on the wrong side of the project, of course. I could cut it off at the this point but I like to weave in a little more. In the third photo you can see that I run the needle through SOME of the wool’s ply and pull the black yarn through. This way you won’t see the black on the right side of the piece since it’s being pulled through only SOME of the ply.
The fourth photo shows the wrong side once I’ve finished the weaving in of the ends and the fifth and sixth photos show the right side.
I never just knot the ends because I’m too worried about the knot coming unravelled during wear.
