We are now carrying a variety of lovely colors of the ultrasuede to use in your bead embroidery projects. It was developed for upholstery, and has nearly no stretch both side to side and on the diagonal. Slightly thick and plushy, it is a forgiving material to work with and survives pulling stitches out and doing them over several times (I have tested this personally).
Here is my latest bead embroidery project –
As always, I encourage you to start out with The Art of Bead Embroidery book, which has a number of good first projects in it.
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I use ultra suede as a backing after I finish embroidering on hard felt. I learned that from my friends on the Crow Indian reservation. They use hard or stiff felt (purchase at a craft store) and also a layer of craft paper(grocery bag paper) with design drawn on it. The paper holds the beads in place, the felt holds up well and then the whole thing backed with ultra seude and stitched around with picot or single stitch brick. The stiff felt holds up better than other products. You can stiffen soft felt with a mixture of liquid starch and sugar…soak, dry, press. I usually do not use the paper, the felt is good enough as I do not predesign. The felt will also hold a glued cabochon well if you use barge cement.