Couching Beads In Wool Work

hello this is a merry middle step whoops excuse me here jiggly and I am with design and be merry and this video is going to deal with the way to couch down beads so that you can add more than one bead at a time and if you see on some of my work here let me get get it a little bit closer and you can see that I'm adding these nifty little three bead buds whatever you want to call them just a accent to the stitching around this map that I have and we're gonna talk about how to do that and give you another skill to add to your work anyways in keeping with my usual process a few things about materials we are using Japanese beads I am using Japanese size eleven beads it's important that you use Japanese beads because they have larger holes flatter surfaces and particularly if you want to use the the fall Donnie size 12 Pro cotton you certain here's the example of the pro cotton I like bhavani it's colorfast and it looks very well and that goes with the embroidery red work size nine needle from Jenna Kimball's foxglove cottage it's a nice long needle with a sharp point and it's got a nice slender head so it slides through the beads very nicely you might find a sewing needle that works but it's hard to find one with the same size head and I have just found that this needle I have no problem ever with it sticking or dunking they are my go-to needle and I can do all the rest of my embroidery as well with them that is if you're using this if you want you can also if you have some feeding experience or beading thread at home you can use a thread called a sillim I'd you may have seen this in my other videos it is a very strong and you can just buy a couple cards I think the cards are like $2 apiece and there's like when he has 100 yards but otherwise they have about 40 yards was just plain to go you can buy it in a spool but that would be only if you probably we're gonna do a lot of beading because there's 900 yards on it but anyways this works very well you use this in a beading needle however so if you have some experience with beading or have some beading supplies and are comfortable with that that works great and this will also allow you to use Czech glass which is got smaller holes and is much more difficult you could not get the Jenna Kimble metal needle through size 11 Chuck B generally speaking and this goes with a beading needle and I use a size 10 beading needle you can sometimes stores will sell you individual ones it's a long slender needle it's very nice to work with you don't have to force it or bend it John James makes them buy the package but quite often the stores will sell just a couple at a time and you may have one in with sometimes they come in those sewing kits where they give you an assortment for your home but anyways I'm really excited about introducing the general Kimble and the pearl cotton because that's what many of you have and some of you who don't live with easy access to materials it becomes a real chore to do that anyways the other thing that we're going to do is you're going to with your wall you're going to need to use fusible and I've got the paper here you can see the fusible on the back the fusible does a lot of things for you one it'll trap all the threads in the end but it also gives you a really nice firm surface where the threads do not pull together and it may seem a little strange at first and if you've got the wrong needle you could have some sticking there is absolutely no sticking with the Jenna Kimble I've also heard that some people say that a lot of people don't steam it hard enough to get the fusible on the back but anyways it'll keep your wall in shape and you can do all these things and and to the accents the downside is that it will make it slightly firmer so formats and wall hangings and those types of things that's fine if you were trying to apply these to garment where you might have to look into some different types of interfacing maybe a woven interfacing and then you would have to be very careful about how you pull your thread on the back so that it doesn't pucker up but let's get going on the little piece now like the sample I showed you I had been embroidering a little piece and I ended the line and in order to do one of those little flowers and couch it down and I want to explain that couching is a method of having the beads on one thread and then sewing another thread sewing the thread that is in the beads down and that's what holds the beads to the surface so we're going to pick up I'm gonna pick up one bead here and I'm gonna go down just thirty second or so just the width of the bead and I'm gonna go through that bead twice get back on the screen here anyways so I go through the bead twice now I'm gonna come up right next to the bead and you can pick up any number of beads that you want you can pick up three four five whatever however you want them to look it doesn't make any difference and you can kind of experiment with your hand you can kind of go around and see how this fits around your thing to get an idea how many beads you want you could actually go all the way around once you have an idea put your needle down approximately where are the other end is and the real cotton is very forgiving okay so you see me I've gone down and I'm gonna hold my thumb there and that's gonna kind of curl around but it won't lay down you notice that it pops up it's just kind of wobbling back and forth okay so I hold the thread from the back make sure you hold the thread with your finger and you're gonna come up right in between the first two blue beads and then what you're gonna do is you're gonna go down in between over the thread that is in between those two beads make sure you're over the thread and pull it down snug and you'll see that it starts to make the baby'd adhere and lay down come up again between the next two beads and go down I kind of aim my needle in a little bit coming up again and like you say you can see that I'm aiming my needle in towards the side and one last time in between the two and there you go you have a nice little flower I can stitch that the nice thing about this is if you notice I'm actually doing the vine the same thread that I'm doing the flower you do see a very small amount of the white thread if that's bothersome you can obviously I'll show you later you can obviously just stop with the white thread leave all the ends and go back and do each little accent with a matching colored thread but usually I don't find this an issue and I'm gonna do another one here so that if you didn't catch the first one so we go through I'm gonna come up I'm gonna grab a bead and I'm gonna go through that bead twice and that'll make it sit very nice then I'm gonna come up and this time I'll make a I'll make a bud with uh well I'll make it the same I'll do the next one let's see we did five one two three four okay hold it in the back hold it tight now the one thing that's kind of a caveat about that is usually usually good coaching involves two threads one that carries the bead and one that goes over and sews it down obviously in this case it's all one thread and for this purpose that works but most of the work if you ever look at Native American beadwork they did use two threads again you can see it just stitched in between each bead you put one piece of thread pull it through and then tie it off and when you're all done with your piece again slide this in between the fusible for about a quarter of an inch and just that will be sealed and there you have your little floral and you can use that process for almost anything now up in this other quarter I'm gonna show you what to do in case you don't want to have that thread showing and I'm gonna do it with the beading thread obviously you can do this also with the embroidery thread but I thought I'd show you some of the beady make sure you make a big lumpy not because you want a single roll off not as not gonna be enough usually for wool to hold on okay in this case if you've made your vine or your design and you just want to add on you're gonna kind of do some of the same things you're gonna pick up a bead and you're gonna go down and then you're gonna come up and this time I'm just going to pick up three beads just to show you that you don't have to have you know you can have fun with these motives they don't have to be quote real and you can take an stabs an estimate of where and I am using the beading thread now that blends in with the background so you will see nothing again you hold the same way and you simply go down this time you only have you have only have two places one between those two beads and sometimes you have to guide it a little bit though even once two beads wants to sit together instead of having the thread in between them but there you go and by tugging it the beads kind of sink into the wool and so you can give it a little tug you can also see what this looks like on the back and here's here's the back of the previous one so it doesn't make any difference it can be kind of a little messy now the other way of couching is i'm going to show you here you can couch a short length right in couch a long length that if the long length involves two threads you're not gonna get away with one thread to couch just a few I will show you you can add probably about three or four beads and the reason for this is that when you couch more beads for some reason the couching thread the thread that goes in between takes up space and if you think you can measure cuz now like here I can measure this and I can say okay oops get this here my beads I can measure this I can hold it down and I can say okay I want to go down about there oops that was off-screen you can you can see that I was holding it here and you can kind of guess how far to take your needle down in and again much like you went around the top flower you simply start and go back and you won't have any problem but you can only do this for about three to four beads beyond that you really need oops excuse me here again go in between each bead and you'll notice you don't see any threads at all always use again reminder always use a thread if possible that matches your wool if you want it to be hidden so anyway so that that's now all held down and you can tie a knot now what happens when you want to have a longer number of beads excuse me here I'm trying to get a knot tied off-screen and I'll show you how that goes ok now what's if you look at let's see if I find it here okay if we look at this we see a longer length and you're thinking ok I would like to do a longer length and you can string quite a few beads on your strand but you're going to need a second thread to work with I just I can't explain what happens all I know is that I learned from a native and they said yeah by the time you start putting those threads in between they end up the length ends up growing so if I were to just go like this I would find that by the end that this bead wouldn't fit and it would bubble up so we don't want that to happen so let's say that I'm going to hold this and everybody's got their own technique of how to hold this strand tight and I'm going to take a second thread in this case I'm going to use the pearl cotton and it doesn't seem to make a whole lot of difference so what you do is you hold the beads down against the pressure I've got it kind of hold the thread is held in my hand and I'm gonna come up and go down between the first two and I'm gonna go up between the second two okay I guess I need to pull that one up first pull up the knot from the back if it's if it's doing this type of thing just push the thread down in between where you want it to go the other thing you can do is with a little bit of dexterity you can actually bend your line of stitching when you do this you can just make sure you're covering over each in between each bead each of the two beads that you're going over the thread that is carrying the beads another advantage of doing this system is that you can actually use two different colors of threads if you have a white bead and you you wouldn't put a black thread but let's say you're sewing white beads on black felt you could put a white thread through the beads which would keep them nice and white and then you could use a black thread to couch them down okay get a knot there and as you can see I can actually bend this line so that I can make it curved and I think I'm gonna have to make it curl a lot because otherwise it would hit the edge again I always aim my needle a little bit when I come up I come up almost between the beads and then when I go down if you notice I'm aiming my needle kind of so that it's over the thread but it goes towards the center it makes it less visible now at this point I have all my beads sewn on so I come back and I take this one and I simply go through and I cannot off that thread and I would tie it up a couple knots actually if it's worth it and trim it off and the same with the couching thread you tie that off and you proceed to slide your needle in between the fusible and the world trim it off and there you go and you know you'll get you'll get different results it does take some practice to do the to do the longer two thread coaching here's a straighter line here's one curve but it can certainly add some beautiful accents and in any of your world work anyways I hope that you will enjoy oh by the way if I didn't show you the the fusible on this one is still pretty good shape it may get real crinkly and that's okay it still will function later on when you put the backing on it and all the threads will be nicely fused in place and you're ready to go well I hope I've given you some other beating technique that you can now use on your wall work and if you want to see more of my work and how I've used beads in my work go to [Music]

Channel: DesignAndBeMary

Views: 1,905

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: beading, beading on wool, wool work, woolwork, wool applique, wool applique embellishment, beaded embellishment, couching in applique, couching, bead appliqué, beads in wool work, applying beads to wool appliqué

Id: AoAxV0qTx88

Length: 19min 49sec (1189 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 26 2020