Crafting Free-Standing Lace embroidery designs: Adorned with Beads

Curious about how to create these bead-embellished embroidery designs?

As embroidery designers, we are always eager to experiment with various techniques. This time, we've combined free-standing lace embroidery with beading.

You can create our embroidery designs, suitable for individual bead adornment, just as you would with a standard FSL design, using water-soluble material.
( For detailed guidance and more information on free-standing lace, please refer to our blog post:
https://embrighter.com/blogs/blog/how-to-embroider-fsl-embroidery-designs )

The final size of each of our beaded embroidery designs exceeds 10x10 cm (4x4 inches), but all of them can be embroidered using a 4x4 hoop.

For these FSL machine embroidery designs, we recommend matching the bobbin thread to the color of the first thread. While embroidering with further colors, consider changing the lower thread to match the color, as it will enhance the backside of the embroidery. However, this step is not strictly necessary.

It's essential to select embroidery thread colors that complement the colors of your available beads:

After embroidery, you'll notice that the small stitches on the bead strings act as guides for embellishing the finished embroidery with beads. Once you've threaded a bead through, it won't slide back. To ensure a secure fit, you'll need beads with a hole diameter of 1 mm. If you want to use larger beads, you can string a smaller one directly beneath the larger bead.

Upon completing the embroidery, remove the water-soluble material from the frame and trim any excess thread on the backside of the embroidery to achieve a clean and polished look before rinsing out the water-soluble material.

Soak the embroidery you've created in water to dissolve the water-soluble material. Rinse the bead strings thoroughly to reduce any residue of the water-soluble material, making them narrower and easier to thread. Before drying, shape the bead strings in a way that allows them to be easily strung after drying.

In order for the pearl strings to dry in the desired shape, lay them on a felt sheet and straighten them while still wet. Press them a little onto the felt. The small amount of water-soluble material left in the embroidery temporarily "glue" the strings to the felt. Since there is so little of the water-soluble material in the embroidery, it is easy to separate the dried embroidery from the felt after drying.

Once dry, give the backside a final ironing.

After completing these steps, you can prepare your beads and start decorating as you desire. You can adorn individual threads or connect different threads with beading, as per your preferences. For single stringing, you'll need beads with a 1 mm hole diameter, and for double stringing, a 2 mm hole diameter bead is required.

View the video demonstrating how we connected the bead strings together:

We've digitized a sample embroidery design so you can try the FSL embroidery technique. It's now available for free in our webshop:

Click here

You can find our embroidery designs that can be embellished with beads here: