Poppy Pouch - Finishing part 1

Today will start a series describing how I finished my bead embroidery into the pouch. I received a document from my teacher with instructions on how to do the finishing and I used my experience from past projects. I'm sharing my process in the hopes it will help other stitchers finish their own piece as not everyone is comfortable doing this type of work on their own. When I can, I will also put in notes of what to look for or things I would have done differently if I was doing this again. So let's start.

Before we can take the embroidery off the frame, we need to investigate the back.

No matter how good a stitcher you are, there is always a chance you will have loops, knots or loose threads as the cotton sewing threads tends to tangle. I looked for them and put in little pin head stitches to tack them down. It's important to be careful that the tacking stitches doesn't show at the front.

Once the back is nice and neat, l sprayed the back with water until the entire piece was wet. With my hand, I rubbed the water into the threads to make sure it's well absorbed. I then left the piece to dry thoroughly.

Note: if you do the clean up of the back beforehand, you can wet the piece early in the morning and leave it in a patch of sun. It will be nice and dry by the next day to take off the frame.

Finishing the back of the bead embroidery:

1. Before cutting out the sides, I marked the fabric, using a blue pencil, around the beaded pieces to leave a 1 cm seam allowance.

2. Once marked, each piece is cut out. Note, the darts are not cut. Not shown below (but can be seen in the next step), the curved edges are clipped about 1/2cm into the seam allowance. These cuts will help fold the edges later.

3. I used the paper pattern to cut out a piece of cotton batting and a piece of thin iron on interfacing. Two of each will be needed to complete the pouch. Note, here that the darts are cut out for the batting and interfacing. 

Note: despite the paper pattern, you want the batting and interfacing to be much smaller than the actual beaded piece. The batting takes up more space, so it should be smaller than the interfacing. This will help later to stitch the darts.

4. In this step, I used fabric glue. I placed the batting on the back of the beaded piece and applied glue to the edge of the seam allowance. The edge was folded inwards, making sure the fold is as close to the beading as possible. We shouldn't see the fabric from the front. I used fabric clips to and set it aside to dry.

Note: whenever applying glue, try to keep it to the edge. If there is any glue near the fold, it will make sewing through the fabric harder when putting the sides together.

Here are some things to look for in a glue:

• it has to dry clear
• it needs to be flexible when dry
• look for acid free, which is not the same as non-toxic. Acid free means it will not yellow with age
• I've used craft glue in the past, book binding glue, if you can find it, has all the qualities I noted above
  

5. Once the glue dried (this particular glue dries fast), I took out the clips and ironed the back to press the edges down.

6. The last step to finish the back of the bead embroidery, is ironing the interfacing. This not only gives the embroidery body, but "seals off" the entire piece.

Both sides are treated the exact same way. In the next post, I will show how the darts are sewn and the two sides stitched together.