Embroidered Clothing: A Pocket Full of Posies

Hi guys, I'm Olivia. I'm the face behind River Birch Threads. Today's tutorial will be focusing on using embroidery to jazz up the pocket on a pair of denim jeans or it can be pants, you can use a shirt, anything that has a pocket will work. The pattern we'll be using is available on my Etsy shop for download with the PDF. It's linked in the description of this video. This project is aimed at beginner to intermediate level stitchers. Embroidering on denim can be a little bit trickier but hopefully by the end of this video you guys will all be pros. All right, so let's get started. For this project I'm using Sulky Stabilizer. So it looks like this. They're 8x10 sheets and they're printable so you can actually stick this right into your printer which is what I've done to get my pattern. The reason I've chosen to use stabilizer is that it allows me to pre-print the pattern, stick it directly onto the fabric and then I have a guide while I stitch. So now I'm ready to put it onto my fabric. You'll just want to make sure it's free of any hairs or dust before you stick it on. So you peel off the mesh sticker like that and I'm going to place it, sort of tuck it just underneath the pocket part like that and just push it down making sure all the corners go down. As you stitch the sticker does kind of pop off a bit but it's okay you can usually just push it back down. I'm happy with that placement and then I'll take my stickers that are going to go on the pocket and repeat the same thing. Peel it off and just position it where I want it to go. So and once you have something like this you are ready to get stitching. Starting with the sunflowers and for that I'm going to use DMC 732 for the stems. So pull down from the bottom of the skein about an arm's length of thread. embroidery floss or thread is comprised of six individual strands. For this you're going to separate two and you're going to just slowly pull it down. Once you have your two strands separated thread your needle and pull it through. Now for this project we're going to pull it all the way through so that the ends match up and tie a double knot which looks something like that. For most of this project I'm actually going to be stitching upside down. The reason being that in order to access the stitching area I have to go into the top of the pants. Make sure the pants are undone and this way you'll have the most room to work with. I'm making sure there's nothing in my way here like pocket liners or tags. I'm going to take my threaded needle and I'm going to go underneath the fabric and I'm going to find the bottom of that stem for the sunflowers and I'm going to pull my floss all the way through like that and I'm going to start by doing a stitch called back stitch. So I'm going to do a stitch length which is for me about a centimeter and I'm going to pull that through like that and then I'm going to jump a stitch length ahead pulling up all the way through and I'm going to come back down through the tail end of my previous stitch and I'm going to pull that down. One more time I'm hopping a stitch length up pulling it through and going back down through the tail of my previous stitch and I'm going to keep repeating this process until I've done all the sunflower stems. I've almost finished stitching my stems but I ran out of floss and so what that looks like on the other side I have about this much left and this is where I want to cut it because I want to have enough room to tie a secure knot on the back so I'll show you how I do that. Take my scissors, snip, separate the floss into those twos again and then I'm tying a double knot and I'll trim it. You should do this every single time you run out of floss as you go. This will keep the back side nice and tidy and I'll just trim that original knot there we go so it should look something like that. So now what I'm going to do is again I have my original strand and now there's four left so I'm going to again split it into twos and separate the floss and thread the needle. Now I can jump back in from underneath and I really just had one more stitch to do. Pull it through and go down through the bottom side there. Okay so now what I'm going to do using the same color so I'm already set up is I'm going to fill in those leaves. So for the leaves I'm going to be using a stitch called fishbone stitch. So to start I'm going to come up through the top of one of my leaves like so pull your floss all the way through and I'm going to come down another stitch length so approximately a third or halfway down the leaf. Next I'm going to come up on one of the sides it doesn't matter which one. Pull through and I'm going to do a slightly longer stitch and just slightly cross over that original stitch and now I'm going to switch to the other side and do the same thing and go back and forth and eventually you'll start to see a leaf formation taking shape. Keeping in mind we're following the pattern but also that this will wash off afterwards so you don't need to worry if there are lines showing. If you're not using a stabilizer if you've decided to go the route where you've drawn on the pattern then you would have to cover up all your lines because if you didn't use a washable pen then the lines would show up and they won't necessarily go away from washing. So I'm almost done. There we go so that's our fishbone leaf and I'm going to repeat the same process for the other two leaves on the sunflower. You reach this point where you have the salmon leaves filled in wherever you are with your floss, cut it and tie a knot. Now what we're going to do is the two leaves on the actual pocket part. So if you need to re-thread your needle do so or just re-tie that knot. It is a little harder to work with depending on how large your pocket is you don't have very much room. So as best you can you're going to get your needle to the top of one of these leaves and push it through and then you're going to continue doing your fishbone stitch. Now you may have noticed that when you're stitching on a seam it's a lot harder to push the needle through. This is absolutely true and all you can really do is just use more finger strength if you're finding it's hurting you. A thimble might be the right answer for you. Personally I just I guess have developed a callus but you should give yourself breaks because it's definitely a lot harder to stitch on clothing than it is just stitching using just fabric stretched in a hoop. So I'm just repeating that same technique for fishbone stitch. This time it's not upside down so that's nice. I'm going to do that for both of these leaves. Get something like this you're going to trim off your floss and because you're so close to the edge here just be really careful that you trim it well so that you don't have floss popping up through the like up the pocket. That was probably pretty difficult. I still struggle with it just because it's just kind of awkward to stitch like that so don't be discouraged if you poked yourself or you found that difficult. It definitely is. Even though the stitches we're doing aren't super advanced I would say this project is more advanced just because it's really awkward to stitch inside a pocket. For the sunflower petals I'm going to be using PMC 3820 and again pulling an arm's length of floss. I'm going to split it into threes this time and thread my needle. So I've split my floss into three I'm going to pull down and I'm going to thread my needle. Again I'm always starting from underneath. I'm going to start at any point on any flower petal pulling through the fabric and I'm going to do a stitch down like that. This is just a straight stitch that I'm doing and I'm going to continue doing that. Super easy. You can always fill in more petals than I've shown with the actual pattern markings if you'd like just to make the flowers look more full it's totally up to you. So I'm just going to continue doing that on each flower. So you should end up with something like this. This next part we're going to be using DMC 840. I've split the floss in twos and I've doubled the floss over and tied my knot. We are going to be filling in the center of the sunflowers using french knots. So this is probably the trickiest part of the project so once you're finished with this part the good news is the hardest part is over. So we're always starting underneath the fabric you're going to come up it doesn't matter which flower you start with just somewhere around the outside of the flower in the circle. So you're coming up and then using your non-dominant stitching hand hold your floss about this distance you're going to wrap once twice holding that tension you're going to find a spot right next to where you came up but not the exact hole push down and then basically you're going to find the needle underneath and pull down all the while you're keeping the tension with the other hand and giving yourself a nice little knot there. So I'll show you again coming up through the fabric and holding it about this distance wrapping once twice keeping that tension pushing through and then I'm finding it on the bottom side and pulling it through. The stitch is really tricky because you kind of have to use two hands and you kind of have to maneuver your garment a bit. So once twice push through for me I find that the trick is all about tension to get good French knots. There's another video on my YouTube channel you can watch that goes into more detail about how to do French knots if you're struggling with this. So I'm going to continue doing French knots until I've filled in all three sunflowers. Okay great job if you've made it this far that means you're through the hardest part. So next we're going to be doing the daisies I'm starting with DMC 3362 I'm using two strands of floss so again I'm always going to be starting underneath the fabric I'm going to find the bottom of one of these daisy stems and come all the way through being careful not to snag the pocket and I'm using that same back stitch to do these stems so just to recap I'm doing a stitch length up like that pulling it through and hopping forward a stitch length coming all the way up and coming back down through the tail end of my previous stitch and I'll continue doing that until I've completed the stems. So once the stems are in we're going to do the little leaves and we're just going to be using a satin stitch which is just a filler stitch so I'll come up through the top of one of the leaves pull all the way through I'm going down to the bottom of the leaf pulling down and then I'm just going to switch sides and do just a straight line of stitch until these leaves are nicely filled in it's probably only going to be three or four stitches I'm going to hop to the other side and it'll look something like that so I'm going to continue doing that for this leaf and then I'm going to go over and do this side so now you should have something like this I'm going to use the same color to do these two outside vines on the pocket now if you're like me and you still have some floss left over you do have to cut it you can't just come up through the fabric because otherwise you'll close off your pocket and it won't be functional so make sure you're snipping the fabric before you're starting or sorry the floss before you start on the pocket so I've re-threaded my needle two strands of floss doubled over and again I'm going to pull up this pocket and I'm starting at the end of my little stem here pulling all the way through and I'm using again back stitch to do the stems and I'll be using statin stitch to fill in the leaves so when you're finished you should have something like this now at this point you may be feeling kind of frustrated I'm sure that was pretty difficult when you're working in a pocket you have such restricted stitching room if you stab yourself with your needle you're not alone one thing that may be happening to you it may be feeling like your needle is getting kind of sticky that's because you're passing through a sticker essentially every stitch you make so if that does happen just wash off your needle it will continue to happen as you stitch that's just kind of the price you pay for working with a stabilizer so next up are the daisy petals we're going to be using DMC I've split the floss into threes and doubled it over starting underneath the fabric at whichever daisy petal you want you're going to come up go through and again we're just using those straight stitches go to the next one pulling up and coming through I'm just going to continue doing that until I've filled in all of my daisies so you should now have something like this I know I said that we did the hardest part of the project when we did these sunflower centers but I also forgot that we have to do french knots for the daisies so we're using DMC 781 I've split it into two strands of floss thread my needle so I'm going to go start from underneath like always find that spot pulling it through and just to recap non-dominant hand wrapping once twice and then pushing the needle through and pulling it down and I'm probably going to do about three french knots for each daisy so again finding my spot coming up wrapping once twice pushing down sorry if this is hard for you to see trying to keep that tension and pulling it through okay moving right along um next we're going to be using DMC 500 which is like a very dark green I'm using two strands of floss doubled over and for this I'm going to do my little bud stems so this one this one and this one so again I'm going to start from the underside at the end of the stem pull all the way through and I'm going to go up my stem using back stitch super easy you guys know how to do that now once I get to this point I'm going to just do two stitches at the top sort of encasing that little bud just kind of in a v-shape like that and then I'm going to go down the stem doing one sort of side stitch on every bud like that and here and here and I'm going to repeat that for the other two stems as well okay so you should have something like this um you'll notice I just filled in this little guy that was attached using back stitch and our satin stitch for the leaves um if you struggled doing this fine because it was hard to get up in this pocket um you're not alone um obviously you're in a very confined space again um if you absolutely couldn't get all the way up there don't sweat it remember this washes off and you can always like make your design curve over this way or something like that there are always ways around around it okay so next I'm going to be adding the little flowers um I'm going to be using DMC 3064 and I'm going to use that for these two stems um for this part especially if you feel like switching up the colors and making it your own absolutely do that um these are just colors that I'm using but these can actually absolutely be substituted so I'm starting with three strands of floss doubled over I'm coming underneath the fabric and I'm just going to do straight stitches following the shape which is three stitches so one and then doing a v shape like that two and then my third one it's just kind of going through the middle of those two stitches so I'm just going to repeat that pattern going all the way up this stem okay so now you should have something like this um I'm going to use DMC 972 or 927 to do the little buds on this last one here so I'm using the same technique just using straight stitch so next I'll do the lavender um I'm using DMC 209 I split the floss into threes I'm going to start obviously underneath the fabric at the bottom of one of the lavenders like this and I'm just doing straight stitch all the way through in v shapes and I'm going to go about halfway up each stock of lavender using that v shape like this so once you've gone about halfway up you're going to switch to DMC 210 which is just a ever so slightly lighter shade of purple and this will give you a nice subtle little gradient and you're just going to continue up till the top of the lavender okay great work guys we are in the home stretch now um so everything that's left over so basically all these stems and leaves we're just going to use DMC 3053 splitting it into two strands of floss doubled over and I'm just going to use that same technique I've been using all throughout the project where I'm using backstitch and satin stitch for the leaves okay okay so great job guys yours should look something like this you can turn it around and everything's filled in so um the next step would be washing off the stabilizer so I'm going to show you how to do that um I just wanted to say that uh if you're wondering what to do with all the little tiny scraps of floss um I like to keep a little jar of all my scraps it's kind of just a fun way to um just a nice little decoration and also just keeps the scraps out of the garbage so you're not wasting anything I'll show you what mine looks like on the inside so it should kind of look like that I don't have really very many long pieces I'm going to go in and further trim it but this won't bother you while you're wearing it it's nice and soft a lot of people ask me if I put anything on the back the answer is no just make sure you do obviously a double knot every time you are trimming your floss and that will keep your stitches in place so I'm going to go over how to wash off the stabilizer and then we'll talk about washing the garment sink with lukewarm water and a little bit of soap and I'm just going to submerge the jeans into the water and then I'm just going to start rubbing around the stabilizer and you'll see it starts to dissolve um I would give this at least a few minutes and then you probably will have to wash it a second time because it can dry a little bit hard and stiff so you don't want that you want the floss to be softer so you'll probably want to wash this at least twice and you can even let it soak for a little while if that helps the stabilizer should wash off fairly fast but there is still sort of glue residue so you do want to give it a good rub