Time to play

The days fly and in no time at all, it will be September and a new year of fun will kick off.  For now, we’re enjoying some days at home and for me, it’s a great opportunity to play in the studio.

There was time to get out all the printing stuff and do a bit of Gelli plate printing.

Though I had my ipad there and could watch the inspiring videos as I worked, next time I must remember to watch them through first and prepare one or two things.  Going rooting through drawers and cupboards with painty hands is never a good idea.  Anyway, mission accomplished and several new inserts for my Project Life were prepared.

Another item on my list of intentions was to explore the applique function on my sewing machine.  Thinking – wrongly as it turned out – that it would be better to try a purchased design before having a go on one of my own, I downloaded a couple of cheapies from OESD and set to work.

Well, these files come with a minimum of instructions and involved the cutting out of fiddly shapes, because although they were complete with files for the Bernina cutwork tools, I don’t have that particular accessory.  I do, however, have the amazing Silhouette!  Still, for now, it was scissors and spray glue to the fore.

The end result wasn’t bad but my cutting wasn’t very accurate, was it?  I felt I ought to have been a little more prepared and at least known what to expect.  Maybe I should go back to the drawing board and start from scratch.

So today, I began at the beginning and opened up the Bernina Software Workbooks Hannah had kindly sent me, following our conversation at the Festival of Quilts.  I didn’t really start at the beginning of course, but in book three, page 14!  In a little less than an hour, I had worked through the process and had an applique apple ready to sew.

But hang on a minute, we don’t like to make things easy around here, oh no.  What if I do a bit of jiggery pokery and get that shape into my Silhouette?

Well, of course, I couldn’t wait to try it out, so zoomed through the process so quickly, I didn’t even take a picture!  Needless to say, it wasn’t great.  Not only did the cut shape not quite match up to the stitched one, the thread kept breaking because I’d used the wrong backing fabric.  I didn’t even attach the fabric shape in place as it stitched, so it moved around as it sewed!  I stopped, told myself to slow down, to do things properly and not expect instant perfection.

I was going to make this work, though.  I began by changing the imperial units in the Silhouette software to match the Bernina metric, thinking that at least I’d be able to keep an eye on the size of the motif.  It was a start.

I then tracked down the correct Silhouette interfacing for sewn in shapes, hoping that it wouldn’t gunk up the needle as the other type had.  I cut the shape with the Silhouette and carefully peeled it off, doing my best not to distort the shape.

Having sewn the outline, I took the hoop from the machine and placed the shape on top.

The little Clover iron came in handy to fix the shape in place.  This one wasn’t going to move!

I couldn’t believe it when the stitching didn’t turn out perfectly in place once again.  Now what?  I thought about it carefully and realised that, although I’d checked the sizes of the shape as I’d rebuilt the design from scratch once more, I had foolishly forgotten to update the stitch file on the USB stick.  Duh.  I cut out another apple on the Silhouette, sewed out the first part of the design using the updated file then, rather than place the apple straight on the shape, I thought I’d check the relative size.

Suddenly the clouds parted and I saw the clear blue sky.  Rather than line the fabric shape exactly on the stitching, it should be centred to overlap it evenly all round!  Leaving the “hole” in place, I lined up the cut shape and ironed it in place.

All would be revealed when the shape was tacked down.

Sure enough, it was perfect.  It had been a case of “user error” all along.

Result of almost a whole day’s efforts. 

Now I know it works, I might feel brave enough to fiddle a bit.  Maybe reduce the size of the cut file by a tiny amount – 1% perhaps – to avoid the slightest little frayed edge showing around the shape.  But hey, getting Silhouette and Bernina working together offers huge potential and I’m eager to explore further.

That was all the ironing I did today, though 

Friday’s project

Keen to try new ideas and to take every opportunity to practise with my new sewing machine, I was quick to download and save a free project I spotted on a website the other day.  Though I knew there were many, many resources to learn from here and there, I didn’t know there were things like this to be done.  Here was an altogether new way of using the hoop and embroidery module of the machine and a morning at home was a good opportunity to give it a try.

It’s very clever.  The project comes together in no time and following the instructions to the letter, there’s little chance of going wrong at all.  Dare I admit it, no skill involved?  There is, however, a fair bit of mess when it comes to tearing away the stabiliser which is essential to the project and I think this is the first sewing project ever where I’ve made such copious use of sticky tape!

The end result is a neat little bag.  Hardly big enough to be of any practical use (!), it’s nevertheless satisfying and the concept could be easily adapted or enlarged.  I particularly like the accuracy and the precision with which the stitching is placed – all part of the design, of course, and not something the sewing machine user can claim any credit for whatsoever.

The only credit I’ll claim is for working it out so I could line up the pattern on the fabric, which turned out quite well I think.

My Hero was out cutting grass whilst I was sewing, but he came to the door to call for me to come and take a look at a small disaster which had occurred in the last couple of days.  Two large branches, fully laden with plums had broken off the tree and were lain on the grass with the fruit scattered all around.  Looking more closely, the whole tree is covered in a huge crop of fruit and it appears the weight, maybe assisted by the weather, had caused these two arms to fall.

Both plums and greengages seem to be in plentiful supply this year.  Here’s hoping the rest will ripen before another catastrophe strikes!

Today’s challenge

A week or so ago, I mentioned the blue nightie which was found in the WI archive when we were deciding what to take for our Tea and Textiles event next week and I wondered casually if working such a design would be any easier with the benefit of all the tech we have today.  I thought further about it and thought that it could make a good challenge for me to explore the Bernina software and maybe I’d give it a go.

Since then, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for a suitable motif to play with and came across this butterfly on an advert for a class at the Royal School of Needlework.  I did a quick screen shot, saved it into my Dropbox folder and opened it on my Note tablet.

With me so far?

Using the stylus and the sketch app, I did a quick trace and saved it back to Dropbox so I could open it in my Bernina software.

After a couple of false starts and program crashes, I gently worked my way around the shapes, using as many of the inbuilt outline stitches and variations as I could.  It took most of the day to complete, minus a couple of hours at lunchtime to run a work errand and have some lunch in a pub on the way.  But eventually, I was ready to save to a USB stick and take it across to my machine.

All was looking good so far.  I prepped everything ready to embroider and hit the button.

The quality of the stitch and the density which had been automatically generated was very impressive.  Bearing in mind that my previous digitising experience had been ten or more years ago using the POEM software, which needed settings to be made manually, this was pretty amazing.

Clearly I need practice in determining the order of stitching, to avoid those long thread jumps.  Although they’re pretty simple to trim later, there’s still a small end of thread visible (dark thread and a light background makes it obvious, too).  I need to consult my gurus to learn how to insert a thread cut after each shape, perhaps?  But generally speaking, I couldn’t quite believe how well my first scratch design had stitched out.

Perhaps I’ll dare to cut those eyelets later, though I don’t think the other cutwork areas are really viable for cutting at this stage.  But however neatly stitched my butterfly is, however perfect the curves and the alignment of the stitches, it lacks the spirit and the life of both the blue nightie design and the original hand stitched motif where the design came from, don’t you agree?

I will work some more on it.  Maybe resize to make it smaller, more compact and stitch out white on white, to see if that adds class!  I’m not done yet. 

I think, though, I’m rather glad that hand stitching isn’t so easily replicated.  Like live music and home made food, there’s an unmistakeable element of ourselves which we build into the things we create.  Oh, and more than a bit of love, too.

Half inch seams are for cissies

When I go to the supermarket I prefer to leave my handbag locked in the boot of my car and just take what I need.  Usually, that’s phone, keys and purse, though if I have a pocket, I’ll take my cards and a bit of cash out and leave my purse in the car too.  When I spotted this small project then, I knew it would be useful.

I had a piece of Kokka Echino fabric I’d bought in Japan which would be ideal, so bought a matching zip yesterday and gathered the ingredients this morning ready to sew.  Knowing my phone is larger than the iphone they’d designed this for, I added an inch and a half all round, including a half inch seam allowance.

I began by embroidering my initial.  Though I’d downloaded the free alphabet in the article into my software, this morning I wanted to focus on my sewing machine and rather than be distracted by the software idiosyncracies, I chose to use one of the built-in fonts.  I soon realised that I’m still not competent enough to work without the book close to hand and in the first half hour needed to refresh my memory of how to centre the design, how to return to the beginning after stopping half way through and yes, how to retrieve a piece of broken thread.  I’m getting good at that last bit.

After lunch I put the bag together.  I quite liked the way this pattern set the zip with a piece of fabric at each end, though preferred the order of working explained by Lisa Lam.

I chose a piece of green/blue tie dyed cotton for the lining, which picked up colours in the fabric and contrasted well with the pink/black/cream.  I enjoyed using the 4D zip foot and the dual feed and turned the whole thing right way out before closing the gap in the lining by hand.  Hmm.  A couple of bulky corners weren’t quite as good as I’d hoped, but I might have a go at poking those out a little more in a minute.

Feeling very pleased with myself, I went to get my phone to give it a try.

Guess what? 

No amount of breathing in.  No squeezing an extra few mm opening on the zip.  Like an Ugly Sister and the Glass Slipper, my phone just would not fit through that opening.

Grrr.  Yes, sweetie, I know, I’d made it so nicely, too.  Double Grrrr.

With a bit of an harrumph, I went back to my sewing table and using the best unpicker in the world I unsewed top and bottom seams and restitched them as close to the edge as I dare.

Of course half inch seams are for cissies.

And you know what?  I suspect the phone in the picture on the project page wouldn’t go into that purse, either.

I ran out of time

This could be the last sewing-related post for a few days because real life is kicking in again and believe it or not, I can’t spend any more time sewing because I have other responsibilities!

Today, I’d set myself the task of bringing some artwork from Photoshop into the Bernina software with the intention of stitching out a couple of the designs on some fabric before making it into a bag.  Avening WI have been working on a table runner as our entry to the Tomorrows Heirlooms competition to celebrate the centenary of the WI and, having completed our cloth, we needed a protective bag to put it in.  Our design includes several figures which I cut out on my Silhouette machine before applying them on traditional slips and stitching by hand.  We loved the idea of working with the technology whilst also utilising the age-old techniques at the same time.  Tomorrows Heirlooms, see?

In between a supermarket run and a few loads of washing, I managed to wrangle the software and actually got as far as stitching out five different figures with my machine.  But I’d left it too late to tweak them to my satisfaction and late this afternoon, with the deadline looming, I decided to forget about embroidering the figures on the bag and did a quick stencil instead.  Mind you, the bag is beautifully made with french seams and all that

So, not much to show for the day today, then, but these few days have got me off to a good start, I think.  No more worries about threading or sorting out the occasional snafu – I feel quite at home with my machine now, even if I do have to sit and think about every process.  It will be interesting to see how much of it all I can retain until my next opportunity to play on Friday.

Of course, I might have forgotten everything by them.