Three dimensional embroidery is basically what it sounds like -- embroidery that goes beyond the standard 2 dimensional flat embroidery. I have done this twice. It is an interesting challenge. The first example here was the most difficult. The embroidery is small and called Berries. It has leaves, a strawberry, blueberries, and blackberries. In the picture above it is hard to see how 3D this embroidery is. Also hard to get a clean focus on it. So a sideways picture is below;
it is really high off the background.
The blueberries were easy, if time consuming. I began with a brown pony bead, wrapped with 3 strands of blue embroidery thread, going through the hole. It takes a lot of thread. When you have the whole bead covered, take the blue thread up and through a tiny darker blue bead big enough to cover the hole in the pony bead. Pull the thread back down. When you go to attach the blueberry, you'll pull the thread(s) through the background fabric and knot them off.
The blackberries are even easier. Draw a circle on a piece of fabric and fill it with French knots. Then run a gathering stitch around the circle and pull the circle together. Viola, a blackberry. Knot the gathering thread to hold the form. These threads will again be pulled through and knotted off on the back. Afterwards, I smashed them a bit to create more layers in the image.
The strawberry was the most difficult. We began with square of fabric, folded it over to form a triangle and stitched it closed. Next we covered the triangle in red thread, using a stitch called free standing close woven net stitch (I couldn’t find any example that didn’t have commercials). After that, I added gold stitches for pips and green ribbon for the leaves.
The one free standing leaf is done using standard methods for Stumpwork also Here. It's a bit complex, but common, unlike the other berries in this project.
Lest you think I came up with all these clever ideas, no. The teacher was Celeste Chalansi.
I have done one other Stumpwork piece, a wild rose bud. It has three Stumpwork petals. Again the teacher was Celeste.
So What Are You Working On?
