3D Light Bulb stitch for needlepoint

I’m going to demonstrate how I’ve used Flair, or some kind of ribbon thread, to make a dimensional light.

So, you’re going to take your piece of thread and knot it — make a big old knot. The reason you do that is that this becomes the padding. I’m going to trim this because I don’t want these loose ends coming through. I’m going to do a knot or two, maybe three, up in here.

But here’s the trick: I start on the top side. I take my knotted thread and pull it through. Now I’ve got a knot on the top. This technique works really well, especially on this canvas. We have an open background, and you don’t want the threads carried from piece to piece, so here’s why I developed this idea.

Then I’m going to come up again in a hole near the other knot that I just did, and I’m going to do a French knot with a twist. Submerge it.

And now I have created the padding that I need to create a bulb. So now I’m going to do satin stitches, and I’m going to be careful to lay my thread. I do a couple of vertical stitches, then I go over it in the other direction. This will give you a nice effect — don’t pull it super tight.

See how this one is kind of poking out? I want to do another one adjacent to it to keep it in there, in different positions so that you create coverage.

All right, see how that works? Now I’m going to go side to side with this. I have used either Flair or Frosty Rays on this, and I’ve done it on a number of canvases. I go this way; sometimes I come up in the same hole and then go down so that there’s a little bit of an angle on it.

You can see the dimension — I don’t know if you can see that.

Then on the backside, you can anchor it right through your stitched area and cut it. And tada — you have a nice light, for example, on this string of lights on the reindeer.