I have recently received another ask about my canvas pulling and since I've been thinking about making a serious tutorial for a while now, I took the opportunity to take some pics and vids while finishing the tree. Do please enjoy :3
1. Why pulling out canvas at all?
Primarily, this is a fantastic technique to apply cross stitch patterns directly to the item you want OR to make patches from old jeans, like this one:
With small patterns I usually don't bother to sew the canvas prior to embroidering, like with the pupper above. In case of the bigger patterns, I usually sew it lightly on the edges just to keep the canvas in one place. The more stretchy the material type is, the more important it's going to be to keep it in place.
2. Why not use a soluble canvas?
I'm sure you can and that they'll be as successful as the regular one 😁 However, as I mentioned in my previous posts here and here, I prefer to err on the side of cheaper, hence the tutorial.
3. Okay. I'm convinced - I even have a pattern embroidered on! What's next?
With small patterns (like the doggo earlier) it's going to be pretty easy. You just pull the threads one by one - preferably starting on the thinnest part of the pattern - and you may not even need the pliers. The fun (?) is with the large pieces, because the canvas has on average quite fragile threads and they like to break. Note - the canvas I'm using and I suppose most of the existing canvas types, will have four threads per one embroidery row. It's usually easier to pull one first and then the other three, bit that may vary when, for example, you managed to pierce the thread during stitching phase earlier 😉
If you were already careful during the stitching, you paid extra attention to embroider EXACTLY between the canvas threads and avoid piercing them at all. There are two benefits to that being extra careful: one, it's easier to pull it out later; two, the stitching gains an extra precision to it (and it looks great!). I recently discover that the round tip needle is making it much easier and if you're interested, there's a separate post about it as well!
On to the process! You can see from the pictures how I started with cutting out a piece of canvas that I can later reuse for something small (recycling is my hobby 🤷🏻♀️). I also pulled loose threads from around the tree:
Next part was to clean up the trunk and the grass on the right:
I then cut off the excess to avoid the threads tangling and slowly moved to the sides of the leaves on right and left:
You'll notice that the last photo has the thread pulled halfway through the pattern. That's because on this stage it's usually impossible to simply pull the thread out - even with the pliers it is just going to break off. I use a needle to pluck it from between the embroidery like this:
If you're more of the visual learner, I made this vid that I hope explains the process in more detail. You'll notice that I'm using my fingers and not the pliers here, because it's faster than to switch between tools.
And finally, when you're left with single direction threads like these, it's just a matter of pulling them out one by one.
And that's it! The final product looks clean and neat, AND you will notice that without the canvas beneath it's also getting a bit of volume that looks cool (and helps even out small mistakes you may have made along the way).
Thanks for reading this far! Let me know if there's something else I forgot to explain 😊
