- I believe what brings a garment to life is texture.

Texture gives garment dimension and differentiates it from plain cloth.

There are many ways to give a garment texture.

Today, we'll see my favorite embroidery ideas that keep garments unique, not tiring.

Embroidered garments will quickly become your favorites.

Our guest today knows so much about embroidery that on a scale of one to 10, she's a 20.

Even if you know a lot about embroidery, I bet you'll learn something new.

Today on "Fit 2 Stitch".

(upbeat music) (gentle music) - [Announcer] "Fit 2 Stitch" is made possible by Pendelton, Vogue Fabrics, Bennos Buttons, Kai Scissors, OC Sewing, Mike Gunther Industries, and Sew Steady.

- So, remember I said that each episode we were gonna take it up a notch.

This is notch two!

(laughs) We're gonna do exactly that.

We're gonna learn to embroider, and I don't think I've ever really learned how to do it because I'll tell you why.

When I go shopping, I see all kinds of beautiful wraps, and these beautiful wraps they have, they're border prints, and they're custom-made, and they're made exactly for what they're going to do.

We can't do that at home, but what we can do is we can do embroidery that really duplicates a lot of what we see out there.

So the angles, this is so fun to do because it's straight angle lines.

While I have the idea, I don't really know how to do the execution of that idea, but I do have someone who's gonna come on today who's gonna do it all for us.

Like I said last episode, we did this wrap.

We're gonna show you what this wrap becomes.

So it's just a lot of fun.

So for over 20 years, I've known a woman who does embroidery, and her name is Nancy Brigham.

I'm gonna bring her on because I really decided that on this show, hi, Nancy!

- Hi, Peggy!

- That I needed to default to somebody who knew what they were doing, and that is Nancy.

I always say on a scale of one to 10, Nancy's a 20.

- Oh, thank you so much.

- So thanks so much for being here.

How did this all start for you?

- Well, I was working in the sewing machine center in the early '90s, and we just didn't have an embroidery machine.

And then around '94.

- So you're right, around that time there weren't embroidery machines, like they are now per se.

- So there was one company that had kind of an embroidery machine, but in '94, they brought out a machine that had full-blown embroidery and software to go with it.

I was first in line.

I couldn't wait to get started.

- That makes sense because all the computerized, all that software, we really didn't have much before then.

- No not until '94, and after that, then there was a long string.

Everybody got an embroidery machine, software, every brand.

- Right, so this is really beautiful.

What we did is this is the wrap that had just the long rectangular wrap, sewed the two ends.

Nancy took it, she picked out the fabric she liked.

She embroidered.

So what we wanna show you today, what Nancy's gonna show you today, is how to keep going on that embroidery.

- Right.

- How to align it and keep it matching and all that kind of stuff.

- I've brought different methods to do that.

- This is really pretty because this can be a scarf, too, you know.

- Right.

- Where we embroidered it, we thought about that, was so that it was, so she could where it either way, and it's lovely.

It's really pretty.

- Thank you.

- Really pretty.

- This is a very, what I consider elegant design.

This is not your run-of-the-mill cartoon characters and things like that a lot of people do with embroidery for the mature woman or any woman who's gonna dress up, and if they wanna take a piece of beautiful fabric, and this fabric is just to die for.

- Yeah, a little eye, too.

and it's a knit, too.

- Right, it is.

- That makes it harder?

Will you go over all that?

- Yes I will.

It makes it a little harder, but if you have the right skill level it shouldn't be hard at all.

One of the things is.

- Question why you're teaching this and not me, go ahead keep going.

(laughs) - One of the things is with any knit, with any knit, you need a fusible interfacing that works with stretch fabric.

People really don't know this, but when you're embroidering, you wanna try to make your fabric react like a woven fabric.

With every fabric.

- It almost has to wouldn't it, so it doesn't.

- Yes, so that it doesn't stretch, pull, shrink, or otherwise just bind up.

You care barely see it, but on the back there is the fusible part.

- The shine.

- Yeah, the shine, that's the fusible side.

Don't put your iron down on that.

- (laughs) It fuses the iron.

- (laughs) Yeah.

This particular type of fusible, it's called Fuse'n Sew.

Different brands have different names, but they all are the same.

This is what you wanna use on the back.

I don't even know if you want me to show this, but I will.

You can see that there it is, back there.

- It becomes a permanent part of the garment.

- Yes it does.

There's a reason for that and that is so that the fabric does not get distorted by the embroidery.

You're taking very small areas and putting lots of stitching into.

- I've even noticed that on store bought embroidery, that when you turn it over, it still has the backing on all of it.

- Sure, it does.

- It has to stay on there to stabilize the cloth basically.

- That's correct.

The reason that we do that and a lot of store bought that you buy, ready-to-wear, they use what's called a cut-away because they can put that on everything, anytime, anywhere.

They don't really care about what happens after you wash it, dry clean it.

They just want it to look pretty when it's hanging there on the rack in the store.

- What is the difference between that and this?

- Well this, the ready-to-wear people don't use a fusible knit interfacing.

They just put that cut away back there and go for it.

If you've ever washed anything that you've worn, you've noticed that it gets all shriveled up.

- It pulls up.

It does, it pulls up.

- That's because they're only using one kind of stabilizer for ready-to-wear garments.

- So, take us through it.

- In the home industry, we have so may different ways.

- Can I do this after I listen to this?

Will I be able to do?

- Today, of course.

- Okay.

(laughs) - Because one of the things that we're gonna look at is first of all, I wanna just talk about this.

This is a called an endless hoop.

See how that flips up and down.

- Endless.

- Endless.

- It's continuous.

- Right, you embroider in here and then you're just gonna pull the fabric through by lifting this and pull the fabric through.

- So the embroidery is actually coming down this way.

- Either way, you can go either way with it.

- You just pull the fabric down and start again.

- That's correct.

- That's cool.

- Most of the embroidery machines today, and especially embroidery software, we have what's called aligning marks.

So that we can actually line up between one to the next one, to the next one.

- Oh, so that makes it really easy.

- Correct, you'd have to have a three hour show for us to do that kind of thing.

- Right, it just stitches out the pattern, then you move it up.

- That's why this lifts up.

- You're always embroidering on the fabric, you don't try to do the garment.

You always do the fabric.

- I prefer, if I had the opportunity to start with clean fabric because thataway you get to line it where you want it and then you cut around instead of having to manipulate the garment.

Sometimes manipulating the garment is not the easiest thing to do.

Have you ever tried to sew a baby's onesie?

- (laughs) Not lately, but anyway as far as doing it that way.

You have to be less precise, is that fair?

- Correct, you don't have to be so point on, right on there because if you do a top or something like with this.

I was able to just take that piece of fabric, sew it on, and then cut it out to a pattern to make this lovely shawl.

- If you're nervous, then the only thing you'd have to do is just buy more yardage.

- Correct.

- Then you can practice.

- Right, and I always recommend that people practice on something in the closet that maybe has mustard on it or ketchup.

- That's a good thing to practice (laughs) on.

- Can't wear to anymore.

You just cut out the side sleeve, lay it flat.

- Honestly, have you ever embroidered to cover up the mustard.

- Absolutely and holes too.

(laughs) You get holes and you feel like, I've done jeans that had holes in them.

- You're not supposed to cover up jeans these days.

- Well okay, I'm from a different generation.

- On these hoops, do those come with your machine?

- This one is optional item.

This one does come with the machine.

I am gonna kinda go through here since we have the opportunity.

You have two pieces.

You have the bottom piece and the top piece.

This is the securing part of the hoop.

To embroider anything, you're just going to lay your stabilizer in.

There are hundreds of scenarios that you would use to embroider.

My recommendation is always to use your local people to have them help you with whatever product you buy or wanna embroider.

- That makes sense.

So if you have questions.

you can go back.

- With this, you notice that we've put this fabric in here, so that it's kinda ready to go.

What we really need to do first is stabilize your fabric.

It's very easy to do.

You set your fabric in here.

This particular hoop has line marks, four marks where you can actually line up the dead center and you do that actually with a cross hair in the middle.

Then all you have to do is push this in, snap it down.

I need to loosen that.

Snap it down.

- That's a good thing to show.

If it doesn't go in, you just loosen it, it has a tension.

- On this particular brand, this always needs to be open.

When you're actually hooping, and then you're going to release the tension.

Pop that down, if it's hard, you don't wanna pop it because guess what?

You'll break it.

Then you just tighten it down.

I'm turning backwards.

- On a knit, you're gonna use a woven stabilizer because it needs to stabilize the knit from stretching.

- Correct.

- Can you use that same stabilizer on no matter what the fabric is?

- You can.

This is a little pricey.

There's not necessary for every fabric.

- Oh that makes sense.

- Right, if you're sewing on a woven, or a child's T-shirt or something like that.

We use this on the back of kids T-shirts too for another reason.

So it's not itchy.

This is a very nice.

- Oh, that makes a lot of sense, okay.

The fusible is really for knits, where as this is for almost any wovens or anything.

- Right, wovens and this is what we call a fibrous water soluble.

It acts like woven tear away, but what it does is wash away.

This completely washes away.

Completely washes away.

- Can you use that with knit?

- Yes you and if you hoop it properly.

- The easiest thing to do with knit is the fusible.

- Right, if you use this fusible it's always gonna be there.

If you're making something.

- To hold the shape of that knit.

- Correct, that's important.

- I'm learning.

You're saying this more than one time and I gotta hear it.

- This is a double stretch knit.

This knit stretches two ways.

Most of the stuff that we buy in the store has a one way stretch and it goes this way.

- Does that make this a little more difficult.

- Nah, this was really easy to embroider because I just used the fusible and I did a process called floating.

In other words, there was this piece was in the hoop and then I used a spray.

This is a professional spray.

- Adhesive spray.

- Yes, and it goes away after awhile.

You would just spray this area, then you're just going to put your product on here like this.

You make sure that it's lined up.

- Oh and it just sticks.

- It sticks, until you take it off, because this is going to be cut and fused on the back to make sure that you're not moving around.

Then you have a perfectly stabilized product.

- That makes sense, which is really important with all those needles.

- You can make the most beautiful embroidery in the world and if it's not stabilized and you walk out of the house and it's all droopy, or it's all puckered.

Then you've defeated the purpose, and you've wasted all your time.

- Can I ask you a question about this?

- Sure, of course.

- When you're putting your stabilizer in there, let's say you're not using this.

Would you put your fabric in there too as a second layer.

So you've hooped.

- In fact.

- The stabilizer and the fabric as one?

- If we were gonna do this shawl and we'll just kinda do that real quick.

- You kinda did, except that we did the embroidery on the straight.

- Can you hold that for me please.

- Yes ma'am.

We did the embroidery on the straight and then cut.

- You would just put this in here and you would have a little pin or some kind of marking that this is your center.

You might move it somewhere, but there's always a dead center of your hoop.

- That's kind of your axis point.

- Right and that's real important, you need to know where that is because it's not the center of the rim.

You have areas here in this hoop that are not embroiderable.

Does that make sense?

- Yes, it does, it makes a lot of sense.

That was a good tip.

Can't use your hoop as the axis.

- No, this is not your area.

If you notice on the back of that there.

That hoop is wide in the back.

It would hit this frame if we didn't have.

- It's all based on how the sewing machines sews the frame and how, got it.

- Correct.

What you would do if you want to embroider this.

You would just put that little mark right there and most embroideries now have the ability to go into software.

That's what's really cool, you can go into software and we can line everything up to whatever hoop size you want.

This is a huge hoop.

- It is.

- There are wider than this and there are super sized hoops.

- The advantage is, wouldn't you say the bigger hoops are more contemporary, for more contemporary designs?

- Absolutely.

You know when we started out Peggy?

We had four by four hoops.

Four inches by four inches, and we lined up, and we lined up, and we lined up.

If we wanted one over here, or over here.

- The newer technology has really made a big difference.

- Yeah, because now I can four four by four's, or three four by four's in here at least.

- Got it.

- I have another hoop that I can actually get four by four's in there or five or seven's or whatever you wanna put in there.

- Let's just say this angular pattern that I'm looking at over there.

How long would it take to do that?

It wouldn't really take that long does it?

- It depends on your design.

This was pretty quick because even though it's a gorgeous design, there's not like a 100,000 stitches in it.

You wanna keep your stitch count low when you're working on knits because you don't want it to make a hole in your knit.

More and more needle pricks.

- Embroidery saturation versus the fabric that you're choosing to mix that together with.

- I see that a lot, that people will buy an inexpensive T-shirt.

- I wouldn't even have thought of that, I just wouldn't even have thought of that.

- You buy an inexpensive T-shirt.

- Makes total sense.

- Put a design with 60,000 stitches in it and the next thing you know all of that area around there where you pokes it with holes is now either falling out, or it has holes in it because of so many.

- I would not even though of that, that's such common sense.

- That's one of the reasons why that the ready-to-wear folks, they use that cut-away because that really gives the stability.

I use cut-away a lot in my T-shirts.

I didn't bring any with me today, but cut-away, it feels like felt.

It's not felt, but it feels like felt.

It provides a really nice base for the back of a heavy stitch count embroidery.

Does that make sense?

- Yeah, it does.

What's a good general fabric for me to start with?

- I tell everybody to start on woven actually.

- Like cotton, or a linen?

- 100% cotton, linen is to die for to embroider on.

- It would make sense on an easy shawl like this - You can do this really easy.

- You took it too hard, you did a knit, but let's just say easy.

This shawl could be knit or woven.

- You could put this design on this shawl, or you could put something a little more intense on it.

I tried to stay demur, is that a good word?

- Yes, it's a perfect word, I like that and it's just so pretty.

Question for you, when you're deciding upon your stitches, is there a little?

- You mean on design?

- Yes, the number of the stitches that it has on that design?

- Sure, you also know how many what size it is.

- Oh, it's always labeled.

- Right, you know what size it is and how many stitches it has.

- Is there a book that says silk will only hold x amount, and linen will?

- No, no.

- That's the Nancy book?

That's Nancy's head book.

- Down the road we might do another one of these sessions, and I will show you how we embroider.

- Oh, goody.

On just this.

On just this, no fabric at all.

- Oh, just this.

- No fabric.

- Oh, how interesting.

- We call that free standing.

Most people call it free standing lace, but not everything that we do is free standing.

It's just a matter of knowing what you want to embroider.

- I think it's what you said a little bit earlier, it's nice to have a store that you can go to.

- You need support.

- You need support.

There's a lot of questions.

- I will tell you, I maybe not oughta say this, but there's a lot of social media support out there.

- Oh, that's good, no that's good.

- Yeah, there's oodles of social media support.

- So people who have got more experience than you, they can kinda help you through.

- Sure.

- How do you get started?

Where do you start, where would you start?

- I always tell people just to start, well first of all you wanna start with what's included in your machine.

Everybody wants to go to the internet and download the most exciting design they can find, slap it on something.

Then they have horrible results, because they haven't practiced.

You need to practice putting it on there.

- Well we all wanna do that.

Of course that's why we.

- But you know that, everyone wants to run before they walk.

- Everybody wants to make a blazer before they make a T-shirt, I got it.

- T-shirts are a good place to start.

The problem with a T-shirt is you're embroidering kind of in the round because you have two seams.

I tell people if they're just learning to embroider, cut one of the seams out, make it flat.

We have sergers, we have sewing machines.

- To sew it back together.

- It's a whip to sew it back together.

It's nothing to sew it back together.

- So, then if you were gonna start embroidering, let's just say no pretense here.

You're almost better off to buy something that's made to embroider on?

- Unless you're really, really good at pattern construction.

Patter construction is an art form.

We know that, you and I know that, we've been sewing all our lives.

Not everybody has those sewing skills.

Maybe someday we oughta do a show on just how to embroider a T-shirt because that in itself is a major project.

- Really, just embroidering.

- You gotta turn it inside out, you gotta put your embroider.

I mean it goes back and forth, and back and forth.

There's a lot of tricks to the trade.

One of the things that's new that I am so excited about now is what we call metal hoops.

These are metal hoops and all you have to do with these.

I'm gonna move things around here.

- That's all right, what can I do.

I'll roll this up.

- I don't need that.

All you have to do with this on a metal hoop is you just take your project.

Now some people like to use this sticky paper, but all you really have to do is spray this up with this, and put it on the back side of this hoop.

To give you your stabilizer.

You just put it back here.

- There's no hooping it sounds like what you're saying.

- Exactly!

It's what we call floating.

Watch.

- Ahhh.

- These will take your fingernails off, literally.

- They're obviously strong magnets.

- They're very strong magnets and people say, "What about the machines, "they're all computerized?"

Eh, nope, they've been tested, tried and true, so these work.

- Do these come with your machine then so you know which ones-- - Four of these come with the hoop.

- Which ones do.

- Four of these come with the hoop.

They come with this particular brand of hoop and we recommend eight.

You can get four extras and once you get this done.

I told you these things.

- They are fingernail breakers.

- These are powerful.

I always found that if you really sew and you sew right, fingernails are not a good thing to have.

(laughs) - They just get broken a lot.

- Ugh, okay.

Then if you see this, look.

- Oh that's so cool.

- Isn't that awesome?

You like this in the machine, you put a piece of this water soluble right here on top, because we don't want the stitches falling down into the knit.

They'll just go away, you won't even be able to see them.

Put a piece of this, or if you're design is very heavy.

If your design is very heavy, you would use something like this.

- So here's what I know.

We need to do more.

We're gonna have to say goodbye.

- Oh, well thank you.

- I know, thank you, but you gotta promise to come back and show us the whole T-shirt.

- I promise to come back and do anything you would like for me to do.

Thanks Peg.

- Thank you Nancy.

(laughs) You know I just wanted to do this for so long.

We are gonna have Nancy back, stay with us because I just really wanna turn this into action.

There's so many beautiful things that I see in the stores when I'm shopping that are so pricey.

That embroidery, I think because it has to be placed, it has to be done just right.

It just sends the price way up, and I love it, it's just beautiful.

Now you get to pick all your colors.

I've heard so many people say that they would never wear a tank top, and maybe you feel that way.

You might reconsider when you see what we do with tank tops.

Next time on Fit 2 Stitch, we're gonna show you some tank tops you can't resist.

(calming music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Pendelton, Vogue Fabrics, Bennos Buttons, Kai Scissors, OC Sewing, Mike Gunther Industries, and Sew Steady.

(whistles) To order a four DVD set of Fit 2 Stitch series eight, please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.