Southern Charm “Dogwood/Wisteria” wall hanging

Since I introduced the Southern Charm “Dogwood/Wisteria” yesterday, I’ve had a barrage of emails asking about the silk wall hanging that is on the top of the page. The wall hanging is not complete as yet as I have not found the right color silk for its trimming. The design itself uses eight designs from the collection and measures approximately 12″x16″. It was quite a challenge to put it together but I am glad that I tried.

With so many requesting the blueprint for this large creation, I decided the easiest way would be to go back into my notes and recreate them on my blogpage. Much easier than emailing everyone the images and the instructions. Eight designs were used: 6a (twice), 3(used twice), 6, 7 (used twice) and 9. I normally print off a template of each of the design and place basting stitches around the perimeter of each design in Embird. Make sure that if you use Embird that you do not have any spacing between the design and the basting stitch, it should be set at 0. Having the basting outline around the design lets one know exactly where the placement should be. Another point to note…if your software will allow, you really do not need the basting stitches, rather if you can print the template with the hoop markings as well as the dashed grid markings, these will also aid in placement of multiple designs absolutely perfect. There is more than one method where placement of multiple designs is concerned, what matters is that one method that works for you.

First I chose the largest possible hoop size that I could make in Embird. I’m sure that other softwares will allow that as well. This is only so you can first set up each and every one of the designs and be sure that their set up is to your liking.  I know that PEDesign and Palette (newer versions) will let you set your designs as you prefer and then you can go ahead and do a print preview which will automatically split the design so you can have a hoop size of 4×4 or whatever largest hoop size you prefer. Ofcourse, that is not what I want others to do as that can distort the design in many ways. It is best to stitch out the complete design one at a time to create a larger design. I made extremely sure when placing each of the designs that the overlapping was minimum and that is what you want to do as well.

Looking at the blueprint above, you can see where I placed each of the designs. Once I was satisfied with the placement, then came the part to determine which design stitched out first and so on. As there is a bit of overlapping, I wanted that to be minimal as well as giving the effect where some flowers are in front and some in back.  The first to stitch out was design 6a on the top right side. Another little trick that I do is to cut a window into my cutaway stabilizer making sure that the opening in the window is the exact size of the basting stitch. This enables me to match up the designs even better. However, rather than go into details of it (as it can become quite a job explaining, LOL) look at the image of the 6a showing the other basting stitches of the designs that are yet to be stitched out. Notice how each of the basting areas has a notch at each sides and top and bottom. Those can also be used to determine correct placement….as I said so many different ways.

Next came the second design which is the same as the first one 6a, only that it is mirror imaged. There was a bit of the overlapping of the dogwoods on top of the one stitched in the previous stitchout but it was minimal and looked natural.  The idea of my plan was to create a cascading wisteria vine with dogwoods at the top  hinting at perhaps a branch.  As wisteria grows on a vine I did wanted to bring a bit of the vine design (design #10) but it just didn’t look possible….sometimes it is for the best…too many elements can be a bit too much in a design. One of my thoughts had been to paint the background but I opted to leave that for another time. This time I just wanted to embroider.

My next piece to embroider was design #6 (the largest of all the designs) in between the two 6a with design #3 filling in the gap of design 6 to the right.  This is just like painting actually. You first work on the objects that are in the back and then work to the front or similar to digitizing. This was actually the most crucial point of the whole embroidery. If anything bad was to happen, it should happen now as that is a lot of stitches to undo, LOL.  Next came the design #3 again at the top center of the two 6a filling in the gap there.  As you can see the overlapping was really minimal. Some might say, well use the function in Embird to rid of the overlapping but in this case, I strongly suggest not to do such. One of the main reasons being that we are stitching out each of the designs as a complete design by itself. There really is not too much density in all the designs. One of the tricks I learned long ago was that if after stitching out a design you can easily fold it up in your palm then that design is excellent digitizing. If you cannot fold it up then there is too many stitches and the density needs to be looked at.  As these designs (although there are a lot of stitches) do not have too much density to them they are okay to overlap one another without making that horrible tap tap sound on your machine.

Now came the easy and fast designs. On the left bottom side I used design #8 to give the impression of the wisteria phasing out in thin strands and hanging. The same design is used again as the last one, mirror imaged and hanging on the last box at the bottom. But first I placed design #9 in the box placed just above the #8 that I show on the side.

I had been a bit hesitant in stitching out the designs on black as black is one color which will either showcase or hide any problems immediately. In this case as the flowers (dogwoods) are white, any and every mistake would be a glaring one so I took my time and worked at it slowly, breathing between each hooping and measuring and double measuring every time.

One thing I will advise to friends. If at all possible use your cutaway stabilizer as the print out paper. Regular paper has a stiffness to it which makes it a bit hard to exactly be 100% sure of the matching  up. Fabric has a tendency to start shrinking when designs are being stitched on it so it is important that it be made as stiff as possible especially when doing something of this scale. The best stabilizer that I can advise for this is Totally stable. It is an iron on tearaway which makes the fabric stiff yet tears away easily once  the embroidery is finished. I used tearaway washaway in the hoop from Hollingsworth & Vose but as I was a bit low on that particular stabilizer I found that the Pellon tearaway brand available at Wal-mart is just as good. It is a bit stiff then the H&V stabilizer but tears easily. As this is supposed to be a wall hanging I do not intend to wash it. My biggest dilemna is how to finish it, either frame it or??? Not sure  yet.