Wednesday 9 July 2014

2 sleeps to go

I'm getting quite excited - and slightly anxious - about commencing the project. The problem is that each day's effort needs to be uploaded. Which is not itself a problem but since I'm supposed to be embroidering 100 flowers, it will be if I can't figure out how to use the embroidery machine.

The machine has a cord with a USB plug at one end, so in theory the machine will talk to the computer if you put the embroidery CD in the computer's CD drive. Our attempt to do this failed miserably. The two bits of machinary were talking to each other but were clearly speaking different languages. So the Tutor, who is a bit rusty, had to go away and figure out Plan B. Hopefully Plan B will be nice and simple (we all have to start somewhere). The sewing machine in question is amazing and definitely a few steps up from my old but faithful Pfaff which does straight-sewing, zig-zag and inevitably scruffy (that's my fault) manual buttonholes.

Tomorrow the Tutor and I will have another attempt at the embroidered flowers. Fingers crossed because this needs to be sorted or I'll have to start late and fudge it. Here's a sneak preview of the design. It's a Jenny Haskins design and is nice and simple for obvious reasons. Just the flower bit, not the leaves. I'll explain my reasoning about the fabric and design choice in another post.



The process of making the cape to sew the flowers onto will also be a subject of this blog, and, very likely, intermittent ramblings about the decline of Western civilisation as well. In the meantime, here's some seamstresses not using electronic embroidery machines. This comes from a blog with a post showing the history of Pringle of Scotland (they're still in existence, remarkably, and sell knitwear should you want some). Link to the blog post is in the picture caption.
http://knit-and-pins.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/pringle-of-scotland.html