I have been wanting to learn about stumpwork for a while now. Stumpwork, in very simple terms, is a way of making your embroidery dimensional. I will show you two simple ways to create stumpwork in today’s post followed up by two more next week. I made these examples with Valentine’s Day in mind so you can experiment for the upcoming holiday.
I started by gathering a few simple things.
A fabric to use as a background for the stumpwork (I am using the white as my background fabric) .
A fabric to create stumpwork on, which will be sewn onto the background fabric (I used the tea stained fabric from my last post for this).
A piece of white felt.
Thread: I used variegated thread but any solid color would be fine.
Needle: I like a size 8 or so.
Scissors for cutting thread and small bits of fabric.
EXAMPLE 1:
Place the felt heart on the background fabric and stitch into place by bringing your threaded needle up from the back until the knot catches and making small stitches around the edges to hold the heart in place.
EXAMPLE 2:
It can be any shape you want but they must increase in size by 1/8 to 1/4 inch for each shape. The idea is to sew the smallest piece first, then the medium piece over the smallest, then the largest piece on top of the other two, giving it a raised dome effect.
Some puffy hearts would make a super cute valentines card, wouldn’t it? Stay tuned for next week’s post on two more ways to create dimensional embroidery!
Thanks for stopping by!
Pam