The image kind of says it all, but long story short, I'm about 2/3 of the way through making a stuffed rabbit doll using twill and cotton for the main material. I have all of the pieces cut out already and the image shows three pieces I embroidered. A face, an arm, and a leg.
As you can see, I'm coming across a not so slight problem here. On all three pieces (actually, all of the pieces I'm working with), the edges of the twill pieces are starting to fray just by standing still. To complicate things further, on the arm (the piece with the bird) and the leg (the piece with the flower), I think I've embroidered the images too close to the edge.
Any idea how I can sew pieces together without A) covering up the embroidered pieces and B) have the stitching come apart because of losing edges? The only thing I can think of, to be honest, is to leave the arms and legs unstuffed to put as little pressure on the inner seams as possible.
Obviously logic tells me to scrap this project, start over again, with larger pieces and give myself more room to work with. But, I've come pretty far and I'm a pretty stubborn guy and I just kind of want to get this thing done. At this point, I think it's more important to finish, learn from my mistakes, and do better the second time around.
Also . . . I should probably re-learn embroidery because I can't remember a single honest stitch if my life depended on it.
Shout out to Dala,flac, _refugee_, and tacocat because you're all relatively crafty people and if you don't have the answers yourselves, you might be able to point me in some good direction.
Thanks in advance. Hope everyone will have a good weekend. Sorry for a pretty poor post here.
Fashion-Design degree here... Create nice finished seams around the edge of each of your designs to make them into patches. Trim off the excess fabric. Re-make your bunny's body parts. Apply the patches to the finished bunny's body parts. You simply don't have enough seam allowance around the edge. Oh. And get some fray-check. It is essentially sewing glue that you put on fraying edges like that, that helps keep them from coming apart. Dab on the fray-check, fold over the edge, sew, iron, and it will last forever.
If you don't mind, can I ask a material question? Is my twill fraying so much because it's threads are thicker or because the weave and weft threads are an uneven ratio? None of the cotton I use ever frays this much, but I don't know if that has to do with thread size or because that fabric tends to have an even weave and weft ratio. I do know that the embroidery is a bit more difficult because the uneven thread ratio makes it impossible for me to count threads, but a) I'm kind of just freestyling and b) my ehes aren't what they used to be so I don't even know if I'd want to go back to counting threads.
Embroidery is not something I have done. But it seems like you need to have a 'well-made' fabric if you are counting warp and weft threads... if the threads are your grid, then loosely-woven fabric, small pieces that can be easily racked or twisted, or fabric with large threads (canvas-like cottons), could all be an issue. It would seem that embroidery should be done on a piece of fabric with finished edges. Sew a basic rolled scarf seam around the edge, and that will ensure the threads don't slip and the fabric doesn't warp on the bias, and throw your grid off. Then, when done, cut off the seam by trimming the embroidered piece to shape/size. So, in short, to answer your question, I'd say both things are an issue with this specific piece. And the problem made worse because the size of the pieces were rather small, had no seam allowance, and working the piece with the embroidery needles just caused the threads to loosen and fray with too much handling. Does that help?
You know, I do have some other colors of twill and the PVA glue I use for bookbinding dries clear and flexible and is acid free. So I have the components to give your idea a shot. If I sewed the extra fabric on top of the right side of the arms, legs, etc., I'd get a nice border. Only issue there is, I could see that fraying eventually, even with glue. Hmm.
Chalk those up to embroidery practice, remember to include seam allowances next time, and go get yourself some fray-stopper or pinking shears. Actually, I will look tonight, and it might be dried up, but I had some stuff that is supposed to keep ribbons from fraying that might work.
You should see the backs of these. You'd swear I haven't embroidered anything in over a decade . . . cause I haven't. ;) Halfway through the head I was thinking about scrapping that piece alone and starting over, if only because I messed up a bit and I worry about some threads coming loose. I just hate the idea of scrapping this. It's not a ton of work, probably five or six hours, but I'd hate to throw it away. That said, if I do have to toss it, I got quite a few scrap pieces to try and make some competent flowers and birds with.