Use wool felt if you can. This is a stitch intensive design with short stitches. Light cottons will not stand up to the design. If you have any thread breakage, use a larger needle and slow down your machine.

The stitches tend to “pat down” the felt and it gives a good look.

Choose a color for your felt in the range of skin tones – for instance – yellow, gold, tan, or white.

Your choice of thread colors is very important for the overall look. A PDF file showing the colors I used is included. Once you have lined up your threads in the order they are stitched out in – make sure that the values go from lightest to darkest.

There are many jump stitches – and you must trim each one – you can safely wait and trim the jump stitches as each color finishes stitching