Here we are having another look at several of the stitches we have encountered. And it is a partner to our Fern Stitch project Diver Dan(iel). Here is Danielle which uses Fern Stitch, Chain Stitch, Satin Stitch, Stem Stitch, Straight Stitch, and French Knot. We have replicated the undersea porthole to see the marine world. The project has a simple pattern which you can find in our Resources Section in this website. There is also plenty of scope for you to add your own touches with the image. The sea weed has been drawn free hand, so you can place your own sea weed and choose its colours. You can add more fish or dolphins and pick out the colours of the mermaid tail, skin and hair.
For this project I chose a girls long sleeved T shirt with sparkles on the fabric. The colour was not really a marine shade so I used a circle of sheer polyester organza to provide the green/blue of the water to be seen outside the porthole.
I did overlock the cut edge of this circle as this type of fabric may fray quite easily. A garment like this may be constantly machine washed and fraying is an issue to be addressed.
I love the translucent quality of the sheer fabric however you may also use an opaque fabric in a blue or green to provide the impression of the ocean.
I think any young person would love the sparkles, and the mermaid scene is an added bonus!
Find the centre line of the T shirt across the chest to determine where to place the circle of fabric. There is plenty of lee way in its placement in the vertical, but don't place it too far down the shirt. It may more easily rub lower down on the shirt front where the wearer will lean against objects.
I stitched the porthole in Chain Stitch as I did in the Daniel video. This time I used 2 strands of DMC floss and it was insufficient to provide a good coverage of the overlocking stitches. 3 strands of floss would have been much better and is recommended.
I stitched one row of Chain Stitch initially to hold the fabric in place and at the end of the embroidery of the interior of the circle, came back and finished off the remaining 2 rows of Chain Stitch at the end of the project.
I really looked forward to using DMC Light Effects Thread for the Mermaid tail in this project. I think the colours in this particular thread are very "marine" looking. It did take a bit of getting used to as it behaves a little differently to the cotton DMC thread.
You may see in the video that the fabric and sticky water soluble paper looks a little puckered, and I actually undid the whole tail and redid it after realising that the tension here was too tight.
Fortunately I did complete both tails with the one skein of Light Effects thread. It is a little more expensive than the cotton floss however the look of this thread is eye catching and opulent.
There is a knack to pulling the 3 strands so that they move together and close the stitch up at the same time. This thread does sometimes twist or pull unevenly however I did work through this problem with practice. My second attempt at the tail worked out very well and the tension issue was resolved with the extra practice.
This project uses some of our earlier stitches to great effect. the outline of the body and arms in Straight Stitch, using a single strand of black floss worked out better than expected.
And the French Knots depicting little pearls in the hair band was really effective.
A was also impressed with the Stem Stitch hair which turned out even better than expected. This was really easy to achieve, just don't over crowd the tresses of hair or you may lose definition of the strands of hair.
As you can see in the video, I drew the sea weed fronds onto the image freehand using a fabric marker pen. You could add more fronds into the fore ground to make the picture a bit more secretive, suggesting that the viewer is completely hidden from the mermaid, or to make the viewer look a bit harder to see " behind the curtain". I chose 2 simple greens for the sea weed however, you have a wide range of colours to choose from here. From green to reds and purples, yellow and grey and even black - you choose.
Would I do anything differently next time - you bet.
1) My biggest regret here is the porthole, for which I only used 2 strands of floss. This didn't provide good enough coverage of the overlocked edge of the fabric circle. 3 strands ( as used in Daniel), would have been much better.
2) The free hand drawing of the sea weed could have been improved. In the image above you can see a line of sea weed running down the mermaid's back. Every time I look at this, I see a spinal cord running down her back and think "Oh gosh!". It is very stark against her pale skin.
3) I also see in hindsight, that while her hair is flowing to the right, the sea weed is standing upright. I could explain this away by saying that her body is moving, however a general movement of the sea weed to the right, may actually make the image a bit more interesting. I purposely had the mermaid gently sloping to the right and not vertical. I think angles can make the image more interesting and evoke movement.
4) Lastly, though not really something within my control was the colour of the original shirt. I looked in my local stores for a blue or green T shirt for this project. Generally it seems quite hard to find a good choice of children's T shirts which are plain and without logos or printed designs. If you have a project in mind for a plain shirt and you see one available, you are lucky. I do like to actually see the shirt in person to determine the fabric quality before purchase, as many on line shops give little indication of fabric quality. If I had found a green or blue T shirt here, I would have omitted the sheer fabric in this project altogether.
My materials here were
DMC thread no.
-3829, 2 strands brass for the porthole
-E135 3 strands Light effects thread for tail
-950 2 strands skin
-310 2 strands body outline in black
-3830 2 strands for hair
-04 2 strands dolphin stomach
-934 2 strands dark green sea weed
-937 2 strands light green sea weed
Coats and Clarks floss No 1 White for pearls
Sticky Water Soluble Paper Stabilizer - Brand Newbrothread
Pigment Pen to draw the mermaid and dolphin
Fabric marker pen to draw the sea weed
See our Fern Stitch video tutorial on YouTube
Watch Daniel on YouTube
