Branching Out

Someone, I believe me, left the camera turned on so it has a flat battery. No photos of my work tonight.

I've branched out :-) I've tried lots of normal embroidery patterns on stable fabrics, so it was time to move on.

I re-did the wedding present on a satiny sort of fabric. Probably a poly, not really sure, but lovely and shiny, and slippery and a bugger to sew (that much I do know). Looks very pretty though. I think I might have originally bought it for vest backs.

Today I tried my first t-shirt with sticky stabiliser. It turned out quite nicely. I used a grey/black variegated thread on a black shirt. The image I used is from cute embroidery. I rotated it so it runs down the neck line of the shirt.
My second branching out was a lace angel, also from Cute Embroidery.

I have some Solvy bought several years ago. The lady at the shop said it wasn't really very good for embroidery, and she's right. At least for this sort of heavy stitching. It tears too easily. I stopped one angel part way through 'cause tearing meant the stitches weren't catching on each other in some parts. I used a double layer and it was better, but not brilliant. I will have to 'invest' in some washable stabiliser better suited for this sort of work. I'd like to make some of these for a secret santa we have in a week or so.

I've also be investigating applique embroidery. Seems pretty simple; not sure if it's easy though. Applique embroidery has a fabric behind some or all of the stitches. Seems you stitch the outline of the fabric bits on to paper to create a template, sew the outline on your backing fabric, carefully place the fabric bits inside the outline, then keep stitching the rest of the pattern. One of my favourites on cute embroidery is this gorgeous heart. In the close ups on the website it looks like the inside fabric of the heart is a felt, which would allow this to be used as a brooch or similar.

One issue I've hit on already. The tutorial I watched on Embroidery Library Projects suggests creating the template by stitching on paper without thread. My machine knows when it has no thread - and it won't stitch. Normally that's a good thing, but in this case, it's annoying. Guess I might have to revisit the instruction book and see if there's a way around it.