Flatfold Easel Finish: Home Chilly Home

8/16/2020 02:13:00 PM

Flatfold Easel Finish: Home Chilly Home

In my July "catching up" post on Needlework Finishes, I included this Home Chilly Home project. This post includes the in-progress photos and steps I followed to finish the needlework as a flatfold easel.

Background: Material Girl Kris was clearing out her stash of needlework and quilting kits a few years ago, and I just had to have this one by The Silver Needle (December 2008 Secret Needle Night Kit) because it has a Westie on it. The design features a variety of fibers stitched on an evenweave fabric. The cross stitching was finished in July 2017 and the flatfold easel finish was completed between December 24, 2017 and January 1, 2018.

This kit did not come with finishing instructions and when I looked for them at The Silver Needle website, I discovered that too much time had passed and they were no longer posted.

I decided to search Pinterest for tutorials on the flatfold easel finish for needlework and found several useful blog posts (links for the two sources I used are at the bottom of this post). I used elements from each tutorial and improvised when necessary.

Referring to the photo included in the kit, I initially created a pattern piece by drawing a rounded rectangular shape using a ruler and a round embroidery hoop, but my drawings were not quite right. That's when I decided to use my Brother ScanNCut machine.

I had finally taken the machine out of the box a few weeks earlier and was ready to test it out on a project. I was able to create a much more pleasing shape using the built in ScanNCut software and tested the shape and size by cutting the pieces out of cardstock - and they were perfect!

One of the flatfold easel tutorials recommends using acid free mat board, and since I have lots of mat board scraps in my stash, I attempted to cut it on the ScanNCut. Apparently mat board is too thick for my particular machine (or because of my inexperience with cutting, I didn't set up the machine correctly), and it succeeded in cutting only part of the shapes, so I had to trim them by hand. I was much more successful cutting stiff cardboard.

For this project, I used 2 pieces of mat board and 2 pieces of cardboard

Next, I traced and cut two pieces of cotton batting and attached them to the back side of the mat board piecess with glue, letting them dry completely. One of the flatfold easel tutorials uses spray adhesive and the other uses fabric glue. I used either fabric glue or fusible web to adhere various pieces together.

I chose the fabric for this project because it was blue and had snowflakes, and I thought the color coordinated well with the needlework design

From the fabric, I cut 3 rectangles size 7 x 8.5 inches and applied fusible web to the wrong side, then trimmed it to fit the cardboard pieces.

Two of the fabric pieces were fused to the 2 cardboard pieces with the edges wrapped around the wrong side, trimming the corners as needed.

The third piece of fabric covered one of the mat board pieces, on the batting side.

Originally I thought I would use the fusible web to attach the mat board piece to the cardboard backing; this is when I realized that it wouldn't work because of the fabric wrapped around the edges. So I fused the fabric edges to mat board and set it aside.

The completed cross stitch piece was mounted on the batting side of the other mat board, attaching the fabric to the back side with fabric glue.

Next I made the fabric "hinge" piece for the top and the connecting piece at the bottom. The cut pieces were folded with the long edges to the center and secured with fusible web.

The hinge piece was glued to the wrong side at the top of both mat board pieces.

The bottom connecting piece was glued to the wrong side at the bottom of the back (non needlework) mat board piece.

I let it dry completely, then glued the wrong sides of the cardboard pieces to the wrong sides of the mat board pieces, sandwiching the bottom connecting piece between the needlework mat board and it's cardboard backing.

Here's a side view of all the pieces after the glue dried:

And here is a top view of the hinge:

For the finishing details, I made twisted cord from cotton and metallic embroidery floss, and added a sheer blue ribbon bow and a silver color snowflake charm.