Stitch Dome Tutorial
By the Shibaguyz
Your favorite top. You know the one. It might be past it’s prime or maybe it’s brand new, but you love how it fits, you love how you look in it, and you look forward to wearing it again as soon as you take it off. Then, one day, as you eat your lunch, your pulled pork sandwich or your bowl of ramen decides to get a little out of control. Glop, blop, splash! Lunch attack!! Just that fast, your favorite top is in jeopardy of becoming a cleaning rag. NOOOOO!!!
In our case, this is a white linen button up. Crisp and clean, this favorite is the dominant force in the Spring and Summer wardrobe lineup and makes frequent appearances in the Fall and Winter layered over turtlenecks and beneath pullovers and jackets. The offending lunch here was a bowl of ramen with extra garlic soy and fermented chili oil. Yeah… little droplets noticed well after the fact had carried the once yummy spices and seasonings through the air and delivered them squarely onto the cuff and forearm of this white linen beauty. Soaking and treatment just wasn’t taking out all of the evidence of the lunchtime attack and a faint trail of the splashy stain still remained.
Y’all know by now that we are all about the upcycle and reuse of garments (and textiles of all sorts) whenever possible, so the white linen fabric wasn’t destined for a second life in a future garment project or quilt. But, thanks to this NEW tool by Clover, we took this fashion fav out of the reuse bin and gave it new life! Yes, the Stitch Dome by Clover allowed us to tension the fabric perfectly for some fine embroidery handwork in a spot that we could NEVER have serviced with an embroidery hoop. The small, gleaming, convex dome and the perfectly designed securing band held the cuff in place and even made working over the seams easier by allowing us to adjust the tension and maneuver the fabric without undoing screws or moving stiff frames. And, yeah… there is the fact that, again, no way could an embroidery hoop have been used to do this handwork with such ease.
Try the Stitch Dome out for all types of visible mending but don’t be shy about putting it into action for embellishing tough to reach places like collars, pockets, shirt cuffs (like ours!), and inside sleeves and pant legs. You don’t have have an offending bowl of ramen as an excuse to grab a needle and thread up some embroidery floss to create custom embellishments. Give it a try and tag us and Clover in your posts. We’d love to see what you create!
Materials and Tools
- Clover, Stitch Dome – Art. No. 8830
- Clover, Gold Eye Embroidery Needle – Art. No 235
- Clover, Embroidery Threader – Art. No 8611
- Clover, Patchwork Scissors, Mini – Art. No 493/CW
- Aurifil, Embroidery Floss – colors 2250 and 2145 (or your favorite colors!)
Notes
A couple of quick notes about our process shown in the video:
- We used 6-strands of the two individual colors for two of our flowers then we used three strands of each for our third flower.
- The French knot in the center of each flower is made with the color of the next flower we made. The tail of the French knot is the start of the next flower.
