Tex's Guide To Stitching
Couching
By Esther Dix
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Hello there!
Here is a big chance for you! Learn to couch in 5 easy steps - no, that's not
sitting around on a comfy sofa, it's a cool embroidery stitch.
Couching is a way of attaching a piece of something, like wool, to your work.
It can be used to write, make a picture or pattern, or whatever you like.
You can couch with anything: wool, ribbon, thread, even wire - experiment!
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Choose your materials - I have used green fabric and red wool for a christmassy effect. Lay the wool onto the fabric. |
| Decide on a thread to couch with and thread it onto a needle. I have used gold thread. Tie a knot and bring the needle and thread up through the material by the wool |
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Take
a stitch over the wool and back down through the fabric, holding down the
wool. |
| Carry on taking stitches in this way, holding down thewool as you go. (Remember not to actually put the needle through what you're couching - stitch over it.) |  |
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If you want to, you can change the shape of the wool as you go. (You could also try shaping it before you start, and possibly pinning it down depending on what material you're using.) I've bent it at an angle. I've also changed the colour of the thread I'm couching with to silver. |
Please
let me know how you get on, and send me some pictures of you couching and other
work to put on my pages!
For some
examples of couching done by Birmingham Young Embroiderers, see their pages
Couching 1 and Couching
2.
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Embroiderers' Guild | Embroidery | STITCH with the Embroiderers' Guild
created and maintained for the Young Embroiderers
Guild by Fiona Dix at hiraeth
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