My journey into machine embroidery

Hi all,

A few months ago I was having trouble with my sewing machine, it does this thing were you are sewing along and then take your foot off the peddle and it keeps going...not very nice! It has been an ongoing problem and I thought it had been fixed but it didn't last. At the same time my mum got a new to her embroidery machine and wasn't sure what she would do with her old one, sell it, keep it, etc. So, lucky for me she is letting me use it! And I am learning a new skill - machine embroidery.

For someone new to machine embroidery it is a pretty complicated process. You get your designs from a website or disc. You need a program on your computer to store them and fiddle with them. Then you need to get them over onto your machine. And this process will vary depending one your machine and software.

I am using my ipad and this is what I am doing, because I am cheap lol, is I have found an app called "Airstitch" which is free. I can download designs to it when I buy them from an online shop, such as Urban Threads, who I love btw! It is only a basic app for storing your designs, if I want to fiddle I will need to buy software.

But then I needed to get the designs from the ipad to a USB....and Airstitch recommend this USB called Airstash. So I looked into it and it is a bit of an investment but the possibilities seem almost endless. My stick on steroids (it is bigger than you average USB) arrived this week and I got stuck into trying it out.

I picked a simple design from Urban Threads that I already had in the Airstitch app. And did what I had to do to get it on the stick and plugged it into my machine and....it worked! Yay!

Then I had an embroidery with no purpose...I want to make some lunch bags for a couple of friends so I thought I would try out the pattern first. This pattern can be found here.

It is a good size and went together fairly easily. I'm not really happy with how it goes together at the ends of the zip, so I might try and figure something out for that.

I used regular patchwork fabric and iron on pellon, a layer of insul-bright and lined it with a food grade fabric. It was pretty bulky by the end. For the next ones I will use a thinner pellon.

I took it to embroidery club day yesterday (wait until you see what I made there!) and I used an ice brick and my lunch stayed cold so I think it passed the test.

Bye for now, Jess :)

 

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