Advanced Certificate Major Work No 2

One of my aims for this year was to get through the Advanced Certificate in Traditional Embroidery Techniques Course that was being offered buy our Embroiderer's Guild here in Sydney. It was lots of work, having to produce a portfolio, a visual diary, two major works, and a study in the history of our chosen technique. About 6 weeks ago I was having reservations about finishing major work number 2. I was at the point that I didn't care any more, I had achieved what I wanted and that was all that mattered. I had discovered that there was a lot more to this drawn thread world than meets the eye.

Well, today I am happy to say that my Major Work number 2 is finished! With one week to spare! All I have to do now is present my work! Yippee! So without further ado, here is is for everyone to see. I have used my own hand dyed fabric & thread and hours & hours of labour!

Linnwood Verandah Tile Challenge


This afternoon was planned with some stitchouts of a piece of lace I have been digitizing. I set the machine up, downloaded the design, and off I went. Well, there is more to this digitizing world than meets the eye! As the design had no mesh backing behind it, I had used lots of underlay and lots of connectors which also had lots of underlay. Not so good in the machining! All it did was stitch up & down in virtually the one spot, the WSF plus gold thread got jammed under the base plate & the whloe thing ripped!

I tried again, this time with a nomal thread rather than a metallic, and I also increased the size of the design, thinking this would help. Unfortunately it didn't & the same jamming problems kept happening. Oh well, back to the drawing board! I knew I kept all the levels of my design in seperate files for a reason! It will make it easier to go back & fix.

So, Miss Muffet, if you are reading this, the Linnwood Verandah Tile Challenge is still happening, it just has to go back to the drawing board.

FSL Digitized Chrismas Bell

This was my first attempt at stitching out this design. The red was interconnecting well and I was hopeful. When the gold border started happening I knew it wasn't going to hold together well. The outside edge didn't even connect with the red center. So I let it finish stitching, and before I washed it out, I manually stitched another row of zig-zag so it would connect the outer border & the red center together. It overlapped on my screen so the only thing I think could cause this to happen is "pull compensation" or the WSF was not tight enough in the hoop. I thought I had the WSF drum tight so I must look into pull compensation. Something else I need to learn about.

Back to the drawing board to fix up the file. I then stitched out a second one but in different thread. The design stitched out well.

Now to the wash out test. The red bell shrunk heaps and the gold one only stightly. As they were both stitched on the same WSF I can only conclude that the thread played a part. The file was only changed slightly to bring the border in closer, so I don't think that played any more part other than to have the border connect to the body of the bell, which was the problem in this red one.

I've now printed out a template which I will use when I block them. It should help keep the shape more true to what I want.