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Lesson 39, Cutwork Basics
Like appliqué work, cutwork designs need a neat line stitch outline of the areas of fabric to be cut away before the rest of the design is stitched out. It is smart to use more than one row of stitching, and make the stitches short (1.5 mm or so). I used a double border so the stitches "walk" back over themselves to the beginning point. Amy Webster recommends using two rows of line stitches that stitch in opposite directions, so each thread is stabilized on either side. This makes trimming fuzzy edges easier. Follow those lines with an under-layer of X-stitch, zigzag or similar anchoring stitches in a second color. In this design I used a stack of square fo than one layer of satin stitch with a tight fill spacing. That causes ripples in the design, and cutwork needs the layers of straight stitch to secure the edge that is to be cut. I used Thred's "Center" function to stack all the forms shown above on the center mark. Use "Shift/M" to make a mark at the center of the screen, then select the form and press the "minus" key, or use "Edit/center/both". This is covered in lesson22, Center. The little ornaments on the corners are made with a square "Regular Polygon" form, filled with a picot border. The clip can be retrieved by selecting the form and pressing "F4". You are welcome to use that clip for other designs if you wish. To see the form data box shown below, press "F".
The final layer of stitches was made by selecting a simple line form ( with more than two points) and using "Edit/convert to satin ribbon", or the hotkey combination "Shift/C". The converted form did not look like this until I had edited it by moving some of the form points. I copied it for the other sides, but stretched it for the longer ones.
To finish the design, after I centered all the parts, I saved the design, then used "File/ Insert" to copy. When I had two copies arranged in a way that pleased me, I then used "Rotate and Duplicate" to make the final shape. |
