Ferris Wheel Tutorial | Part - 2
If you’re over here, that means you read the first half of this tutorial and have finished the main structure of the ferris wheel. I’m hoping it hasn’t been too confusing thus far, however if you do get lost or have any questions, feel free to message me.
To continue along, I start this next process by immersing myself into the world of thread colors and choose the colors of the ferris wheel cars.
This is the fun part, you can choose crazy colors or soft pastel colors. I choose my lights and my darks -- for each color you choose, you need to pair it with its shadow color. I chose my 6 colors for the cars and found the shadow colors to match. (The 6 colors on the left are my lights, the colors on the right are my darks.)
Once all of the colors have been chosen, I start making each car. I drew out 2 examples of car shapes and then made them using the light thread first. I use the "shadow thread" at the end to give the car some dimension so it looks like it has shadows.
Each car sits on one of the ends of the ferris wheel structure.
This part takes some time because you spend a lot of time switching the thread colors, but once you make it through, we can start making the second ferris wheel structure.
quick tip -
If you're new to creating shadows in your artwork...shadows are typically placed on the bottom of the object and on one side -- left or right, not both.
The second ferris wheel structure is similar to the first, only this time, the white lines of the ferris wheel will be placed on TOP of the cars. Think of it as a "ferris wheel car sandwich", the ferris wheel structure is the bread and the cars are the peanut butter and jelly in the middle.
Keep coming back to the center of the ferris wheel if you get lost with all the lines, and always go slow and take your time. If you notice, I've shifted the center of the top ferris wheel structure to the right slightly to make it look like it has a third dimension.
Now we're just gonna add some little details and put a second layer of lines inside the structure. All of the threading should stay within the circle paint boundary.
It should look like you copied everything you did in the first part of this tutorial, only this time it's shifted slightly and instead of being behind the cars, it's on top of the cars.
The second to last step is making the center of the wheel and supporting legs for the ferris wheel.
It's a lot of straight lines using the same color as the ferris wheel structure.
When you’ve finished creating the legs and center, take this opportunity to add a pop of color by surrounding the center with some bright colorful thread.
Create stripes on the legs with the same color.
The very last step is adding the tiny dots of people inside the cars. I do this by using the french knot.
The “french knot” is a fairly simple technique that involves wrapping the thread around your needle a couple times and pulling it taut before you insert it back into the fabric right next to the insertion point. You can make bigger dots by wrapping the thread around the needle more times. For my people in this ferris wheel, I wrapped the thread around the needle 3 times.
If you have made it thus far, then that means you’ve completed your ferris wheel embroidery! Yay! Hopefully you’ll be able to create more for your friends and families, I personally love the idea of hanging this embroidery in a nursery for your children.
Thank you so much for following along! Please let me know if you try this embroidery out or if you have any other questions. I love to help.
WORDS AND PHOTOS BY JORDAN HARMON
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