Recently at Jolly Dicey Towers we purchased a shiny new Embroidery Machine.  Well, new to us at any rate.  Initil experiments were not promising.  I managed to break the machine in several new and interesting ways, break the thread, break the needles, puncture small holes in things etc.  But I persevered.  I asked the collective wisdom of my chums on the Book of Faces.  

This blog is where I will be recording what I have learned the hard way, mostly so I can find it later when I lose the exercise book I would otherwise record stuff in.  With pictures.

First project for actual money.

Obligatory woolly hat selfie

Put the name of a netball team on 20 woolly hats.  How hard could it be?

Not including the fact that I'm almost out of stabiliser, not that easy.  Woolly hats are a pig to embroider on.

First creative idea. (Thanks to the lovely Su Wainwright for this one.)  Woolly hats won't go even in my smallest hoop in such a way that the design comes out in a sensible place.  And they are thick and bouncy and a pig to hoop. 

Solution. Hoop the stabiliser.   Spray baste the hat onto  the hooped stabiliser.  Also then you can draw a line on the stabiliser where you want the edge of the hat to be, and position it easily.

First, spatchcock your hat!

Second creative idea.  I have bugger-all stabiliser left, the deadline is SOON.  What do I have lots of?  Tatty old bits of calico from making toiles.

Solution.
Sew narrow strips of stabiliser, enough to fit under the design to scraps of calico.  Takes a couple of minutes.  Uses up bits of used stabiliser with a tiny bit out of the centre.  Win!

Third creative idea.  
Spray baste is nasty sticky stuff, gets everywhere and I don't have much of that either.  And the hats are doubled over, so it doesn't hold them flat anyway, and the ribs on the knit wander about underneath the embroidery.  This is going to go horribly wrong at some point.

Solution.
Abandon spraybaste.  Hand baste the bit of the design where the embroidery needs to go into the hoop.  Pin around the edges where the embroidery isn't using long pins.  Seems to work!

 

Refinement, baste vertically along the ribs rather than horizontally across them.  Quicker, and holds them in place more firmly.

 With Spray Baste

Basted by hand

Each hat takes about 20 mins not counting the faffing about with the stabilizer which I would not bother to do unless I was short of the stuff.  Will invest the profits from this excercise in more!

I'm getting paid real money to do these.  Not making a huge amount on them, as it is for a local volunteer sports team, but it's a fun little project.  Having seen the ones she got done by a professional firm, these are as good or better.