hi I'm going to show you how to embroider this silk ribbon bluebell group so to start with here I've got some tea dyed cotton open weave fabric and this happens to come from graphic combat any open weave that you have will do fine I'm going to put it into a 15 centimeter hoop so I only need about half of it this piece is 49 by 27 off the website very cheap and so I'm going to pop it in but I think I want to press it first because it's a bit creased from being posted so I just give it a little press and I'm going to use another piece of cotton as well just on the back if you've got some muslin or something that's ideal I just happen to have this cotton sheeting lying around so I'm going to use that and so I'm going to put it in my hope nicely put the smaller hoop on the table lay the other fabrics over the top of it and then put the hoop over the top this one's got a tension screw at the top and I'm just going to leave this one in this so I want to arrange it so attention to who's at the top and I can use that to hang the picture later so I've just got some permanent marker pens here these are pro markers and these are bought by letter set then I made by Windsor Newton same difference so I'm just drawing on a few and grassy bits to start me off this will give it a nice background to the piece and I've got a wall sorry an error raisable pen here from crafty attic and we're just going to draw on where I want the Bluebell stems to to go the air erasable pen will just erase itself after a few hours or you can use certain eraser on one end to get rid of the mark sooner than that if you wish so I've got some white 13 millimeter pure silk embroidery ribbon and I'm just running it through a set of mini hair straighteners if you don't have any of these you can just iron it just run it underneath your iron but I find mini straightness very handy so if you're going to do a lot of this purchase a purse where did they're useful so just tied a knot in one end and I'm going to bring it up through the fabric and just twist it so that it forms a little stem there I'm just going to count this down with a regular thread this is just a regular sewing machine thread cotton and couch it down I've just stuck a couple of or a we'll stick a couple of pins in it just to hold it in place the air erasable pen mark is going to guide where I'm going to couch it down so it's all very easy when I get to the top just bring the silk ribbon down through the fabric and just continue to couch to the end you can then use the thread just to fasten off the ribbon when you get to the other side and I'll show you how to do that so I'm just using a few pins there just to stick in and hold it in place so always use white ribbon and pure silk ribbon is really the only thing that you're going to be able to do this with because nothing else folds small enough to to pass through a fabric the ribbons from crafty attic are manufactured specifically for this purpose so they're very very robust but they're also fine enough to pass through your fabric and because they're silk they're a natural fiber they will take guys really really easily so you can easily color them after you've sewn them and I'll show you that process in a minute so we're just coming up to the end of the stem there you can see that I've passed it through the fabric here's the reverse side so I've just clipped the ribbon off and I'm just going to put a couple of tiny stitches with that and tacking threads there just to hold that and that's it that's all you need to do just clip it off so I've done the other stem there I've got my air erasable marker again and I'm just going to mark on where I think I want the the Bluebell flowers to drop down and this will help me place my stitches and like I say these these marks will just vanish after a couple of days if you want them to disappear before then there is an eraser on the other end and these are available from the website as well at crafty attic com you can see now how the eraser works there so I've got some milimeter again this is a pure silk white embroidery ribbon and I'm just going to get some out when you cut ribbon always cut it on the bias so cut it on about a 45 degree angle and that will stop it fraying also make it very easy for you to thread your needle and I'm just passing it now through the straighteners this IND out also makes it nice and silky and glossy to look at so I've just threaded it through my needle put a little knot in one end and just clip the knot off nice and tight if you if not bother you I mean it doesn't matter at all on this one because I'm just going to leave this in the hoop so nobody'll ever know there's a knot on the back but it's not stupid you can just tack the end of the ribbon on and before you start and that will avoid the need for not altogether so I'm just going to use the tacking threads of the little machine thread there just to catch the very end of these stitches because when I'm doing the little sticky-uppy bits in them and out I don't want to accidentally catch this ribbon and pull these flowers out of shape so I'm just going to put a couple of little stitches just right in the end just to hold everything where it wants to be so the great thing about these mini straighteners is that after you've done a couple your ribbon might be looking a little bit mangled so you can just run it through the restraint as to straighten things out so I've got a pro marker pen here these are permanent alcohol-based marker pens I'm just touching it to the stalk and the ribbon actually does the work for you it will suck the dye that it needs to saturate itself and it won't leak out into the backing fabric as long as you don't touch the backing fabric with the pen everything will be fine so I've got some two millimeter ribbon here I'm just going to prepare it in exactly the same way as I prepared all the other ribbons by running it through the hair straighteners and threading it onto a chenille needle and tying a knot in one end now chenille needles are very sharp-pointed on one end and they've got fat eyes that can take the ribbon so I've just brought it up through the fabric now I'm just twisting it and I'm going to stitch down through the center of the ribbon itself and then pull very gently and that will make a nice little tip to the end of this petal so twist the ribbon slightly that is facing in the direction you wish it to and stitch down through the center of the ribbon pulling very gently to pull into a point so this is called Bluebell whisk color very handy so I'm just again touching it lightly to the silk ribbon don't touch the backing fabric or you'll die it you don't want to do that so this is a violet pen I'm just touching so because the Bluebell color is still wet those colors will blend beautifully together by themselves so I'm just moving along now to take care of the second flower in exactly the same way just by forming these little twisted petals at the bottom and I'll then go on to color them the same way so by using white ribbon and your pens all you need to keep in stock are four possibly five colors of white silk ribbon you don't need to keep every color in the rainbow because that's impossible and also if you if you use flat colored ribbons you get a very flat result you can imagine that these bluebells wouldn't be as beautifully shaded as they are and that stalk would just be one color green but it's not as vibrant it doesn't look as lifelike it's really not as delicate so I like to do everything just with the pure silk white ribbon makes it a lot cheaper for you to do it this way because you only need to keep a little bit of white ribbon in stock you don't need to buy as I say all the colors of the rainbow so to do these little stalks here I've just got some two millimeter and I've twisted it in exactly the same way as I twisted the 13 millimeter for the main stalk and I'm just stitching there leaving them quite loose and I've got a pine colored pen just to touch the little stalks and guide in the right color so I've now got some what is this four millimeter white cell ribbon I'm just going to pre dye this with a pen this is a pine color again I'm using the satin to the pen and you just quickly pull it through pull the ribbon through underneath the pen and then to dry it off and set the color just run it through your mini straighteners and this will be ready to use so this is going to be for the little leaves and bits of grassy bits at the bottom I'm dyeing it beforehand because with something long like this you can get into a bit of a pickle and you don't want to be dying with fabric behind obviously you could stick a piece of card or something behind to help you along and I do sometimes do it that way but I just thought I'd show you this way of pre dyeing your ribbons so this is exactly why you don't need to keep any other color but white because it's so easy to dye your ribbons the color the exact color that you want them it's the work of a moment doesn't take very long at all so there we are there's got a few different greens now so I'm just going to make some very large twisty stitches again I'm stitching a ribbon stitch so stitching the ribbon through the center of itself when I get to the top and you want to allow these ribbons to twist a little bit because they look more natural if you allow them to do that so I'm just putting a little kink on the end of this one and then I've switched colors I'm just going to do another couple of large stitches with a slightly darker green to give us the effect of a little clump of leaves and greenery at the bottom so just going to keep going with these green ribbons I'm going to use the the lighter green thing that I died as well just to put a couple more bits of greenery in and you can see how the pen marks that we made at the beginning of helping helping whistle and adding to the effective depth here with all of this greenery again we're using ribbon stitches so passing the ribbon through the center of itself and pulling very gently to get the effect at the bottom here I'm just using two millimeter pure silk ribbon and I'm just doing French knots so if you haven't done a French knot before you just need to wind the ribbon three times around the needle and pass the needle back down through the fabric and you get this little raised knot on the surface these are very effective you could you can use them for all sorts of things but in this instance it looks a little bit like moss when it's finished which gives us a nice a nice touch here so I'm just going to do a little mound at the bottom I'm using pear green olive green and marsh green and I'm just touching the tips of these knots with these pens and allowing the silks to do the work of drawing the ink from the pen and soaking through to color everything nicely using three different colors here we'll get a nice variant make it look a bit more natural than it will be in one color so there we are that's what our little group currently looks like I think I want to do another one up here and I'm going to use exactly the same technique with the couching to make the stem with the little flowers I think I'm going to have these so to look like we haven't opened up for Lea so I'm just going to do a single stitch with seven millimeter ribbon and I'll color it the same as I have done with the others and do the little stalk stitches with a two millimeter twisted in exactly the same way as I did at the top of the others so these are very much quicker silk ribbon embroidery very quick business doesn't really take very long at all so as you can see I've done four flowers there and I've actually had four stitches so it comes along very very quickly these make great gifts it looks like you've spent an awfully long time on them and in effect they don't take that long at all to finish but they look beautiful and very very delicate when you've done them so just touching the pen to the ribbon there and you can see the silks done the work so you can get these silk ribbons from crown see a sitcom there's also page with a link on our website to a company that sells the pro marker pens at 40% discount so it's worth following that link there so here's our little group finished I'm actually going to leave it in the hoop and use the hoop as a frame just to hang it on the wall so I'm going to click about an inch all the way around the edge fold this back on itself and just use a doubled thread here just to tackle we're going to pull it tight so that the edges of the fabric are not sticking out from the front because these hoops have little tensioning squeeze on them you can use those to hang them on the wall which is quite handy much cheaper than a frame so we sell these on the website too there's our little project nearly finished so if you would care to subscribe to us on YouTube that would be great and you'll get all of our videos as soon as they come out we'd love to have you on our subscriber list there thank you very much for your time and watching this video please come along to the website and have a look at what we're doing because it's hundreds of videos up there for you to watch as well thanks your time I'll see you soon bye you