Embroidered name tag

 A friend of mine works at Verizon.  And Verizon had a mobile payment provider called Isis.  Now a couple of years ago, that was not an issue.  But with today's political climate, she was getting some weird looks and comments for having that on her shirt.  Even though it had nothing to do with that, people would still ask.  She tried to black it out with a sharpie, thinking it might not show on her shirt.  But it was like that blackout embroidery.  People still noticed.

So she asked me to help her cover that part up on her shirt.  I thought that I could just take out the embroidered part that she didn't want, and put in her name.  Well, problem with that was when I took the threads out, it had left holes where the curved part of the "s" was, and it would not work to embroider just her name.

So we came up with an idea to embroider right over it with a patch.  So I digitized this:

This worked out really well, it was a little bigger than the area we had to take out.  I had thought to embroider right over the old embroidery, but I figured it would make the patched area a little bumpy.  So I got to work taking out the stitches of the old logo.  This is the end result:

I think it turned out pretty well.  I was a little nervous cause I didn't want to ruin her shirts.  But it worked out!

The birth of an embroidered design

A friend asked me to work on an embroidery design for his daughter's soccer team.  I haven't worked on one in such a long time, I almost forgot how.  But this weekend I started to digitize the design and even got a sample made.

 Everything started out with a design.  People think that you can just take any design and plug it into the computer, and out comes your program.  They couldn't be more wrong, there are lots of steps that go into digitizing.  First I normally take a design like this one, and have a black and white line drawing made from AutoCAD or a similar program.

I take the black and white designed logo, and import it into my design program.  I happened to use and older program called Palette. This program will take artwork like the above black and white drawing, and turn it into a bunch of stitches that my machine can read.  Tells it where all the stitches are going to go to make up the design.  It seems like that would be simple, but when you load the program in, some of the lines will not import into the program very smoothly.  So I spend a few hours, moving each point to make the artwork smooth.

After cleaning up the artwork, you'll then send it to the stitching program. This is where it will program all of your stitches for you.  You think you would be done at this point?  Nope. Sometimes the lines are drawn too closely together, so, you have to go back, move lines, restitch, and back again.  This one design must have taken 4 or 5 different tries before I could get the lines right.

 

 It lets you preview what the stitching would look like when you finally stitch it out.  This is the way to check to see if you like it or not.  I think that the above design came out pretty well.  This time I tried to applique the design.  This way I didn't have to fill the background with all white stitches, saving some of the stitching time.  Since I only have figured out how to make an applique design using stock designs, I decided to try it out using the outline multiple times to show you where to put the applique fabric, stitch out the shape, then tack it down

 This is what the design looked like after it was stitched out.  My first actual applique design.  I think it came out pretty well, I still might want to tweak it a little bit so some of the lines are a bit smoother, and I might not stitch out the black lines, but we'll see what my friend thinks.

 This is an applique design I used from an embroidery design company.  Since my boyfriend's last name is Louisiana, we like using the state for various things.  These are towels I am stitching out for everyone. 

Using premade embroidery designs is easier for me only because it takes a long time to digitize, so it saves me a lot of time.  But if I can't find a good one, at some point I'll make my own.  Here is another one that I did this weekend.

This is another design that I purchased, the discobolus with the circle around it was purchased from embroiderydesigns.com.  I just added the copy to the bottom.

So when you go to an embroidery shop, and they want to charge you to create your design, remember how many hours the embroiderer puts into just digitizing your design, let alone stitching your design for you on whatever medium you want them to use.  It may look like an easy process, but it takes longer than you think.

Embroidering and book necklaces

I've been back to embroidery this month.  A co-worker's daughter is having a Lalaloopsy party for her daughter.  So she asked me to embroider a couple of shirts for the party and a banner for her daughter.  I found the Lalaloopsy applique on iStitchEmbroidery's etsy site.  She had the hair in lavender, but since they were doing a blue color for the party, I just changed the fabric color and the thread.

 The alphabet banner design is from Big Dreams Embroidery.  I just love her banner designs. For the buttons, I used her perfectly round banner and her banner eyelet and ribbon holes for the holes.

 I'm also slowly catching up on some projects.  We have these really cool director's chairs from Cabela's. Since a few of us have the chairs, we wanted to put our names on them. Plus when you get up and someone sits in your chair because it's way more comfortable than theirs, you can finally say, "Yes, it has my name on it".  LOL.  I used an applique font from Designs by Juju for the letters. I've embroiderted digital camo fabric onto brown canvas.  I think the letters turned otu awesome.

 Next, my future niece loves to read.  And she had posted a book necklace on her facebook page that we all loved.  I really wanted a book necklace, and I don't have the time to put teeny tiny little books together, so I did the next best thing, made a necklace using these pendant blanks. Gunslinger is her favorite book, and Throne of Glass is one of mine.  I can see a whole library of necklaces coming up for me.

Sadie and Michael's Reception

Our niece Sadie eloped with her fiance Michael in April, so we decided to throw her a reception to celebrate at our other niece and nephew's home.  Since we had a month to prep and throw the party, we pretty much made everything.  I was in charge of the decorations, so I made the same type of displays like I made for another niece's first birthday party, inspired by my friend Debi Boring.  

 

 Medallions!  I just love making paper medallions.  I love punching the background "doilies" with Martha Stewart's circle edge punches.  They are so fun and beautiful! And easy, did I mention how easy they are to use? They are my favorite tools!  I had to make seven different centerpieces.  I picked up the different vases and pots from Michael's and Jo-Ann's Fabrics.  They had some great sales going on at the time, so they were very affordable.

 The yellow and grey color combo was not the usual combination for me.  I tend towards blues, purples, and pinks.  And I wasn't sure how the colors would come out.  I threw in an aqua blue color and a minty green, which helped make the colors kind of pop.  After using so much yellow, I think it's a color I can do again.  I think the combination together is really pretty.

 Her theme also was a bird theme and music.  Sadie and her husbands are singers in a band.  So I found sheet music books at the flea market to cut up into the medallions.  Everyone who knows me knows how much I hate cutting up books, really, I really hate cutting up books.  But I think this was a great way to recycle old music books. 

And for the bird theme I found bird salt and pepper shakers at the dollar store.  OMG, it was such a good find.  We were finding single birds for $1.99 to $4, so finding the two for $1, and having a dual purpose of being salt and pepper shakers were awesome.  Kill 2 birds with one stone! LOL No pun intended.  Ok. maybe a little intent.  ;)

 Also found the pinwheels at Jo-Ann fabrics as well.  That cut out the time that I would have taken to make those as well.  And they came in yellow!

 Sadie had been pinning on pinterest that she loved photos hanging from a clothesline type of looks.  So I printed out a lot of their wedding photos from Walgreens, and pinned them everywhere.  And now I have the photos to put in a scrapbook for them.

 We made a really cute table display for the sign in table for when people walked in.  Her step-mom saw a pin where they used a record album as a sign-in book. Very cool idea.  At the flea market I found an old Beatles album for $3.  And it was an album of a lot of their love songs, which Sadie loved!  I guess they just had been talking abou the Beatles earlier in the week.  :)

 We decorated the entry archway with dangling crystals. I saved them from a previous wedding reception we threw, and luckily this time the flowers were in bloom. 

 The reception food tables were decorated with photos and the tissue paper pompoms.  Those things are really cool looking, pain to do sometimes though.

 This is what the backyard looked like. They have such a beautiful backyard, and we're so thankful that they allowed us to borrow it for the day.

 We also decorated the drink area.  They had gotten this bar from someone else, and we just plopped it in a shaded area, decorated it with lights and more photos.

 The main course was tri-tip.  Phil BBQ'd the tri-tip on a BBQ that a friend of mine from work made.  It was so very delicious!

 Our friend Tom brought his griddle, and we had some really awesome fried potatoes!

 Phil's famous Coke meat was made into sliders, and we also left them meat in a pan in case they wanted to eat the meat without bread.

 The salad area, a really great tossed salad with Champagne dressing.  I loved the dressing!

 Phil also made some really great baked beans, and we had pasta too.

 The yummy potatoes with the sliders and vegetables.

 This is what the whole set-up looked like.  Not bad if I say so myself.  LOL

 Sadie and Michael inviting us all to dinner. 

 The cake table.  Her aunt brought a little wedding cake for them to cut, plus some cupcakes.

 How cute are they? 

This is how I felt after it was all done.  LOL