Friday, November 16, 2012

Machine Embroidery

Do you have an embroidery sewing machine?  I do... I think I may have blogged about that early on.

I used to be an embroidery snob -- thought it had to be done by hand on fine linen to be right.  Then I got into silk ribbon embroidery for a while.  I branched out into doing that on denim and on baby knits.  Those little onesies can be so darn cute!

I finally broke down and got a machine several years back.  Having this very low end Brother satisfies my need to do embroidery, now that I've embraced this art!  But the stabilizer market is crazy with names and types and brands, don't you think?  I was using something to do my church's baptismal napkins.  It was sticky so I could embroider Irish linen without hooping it to death and it washed away.

I tried to order some more but they stopped making it or something... oh my gosh why does this always happen??!! 

In October I saw an ad for the local Ben Franklin store promoting a Floriani seminar.  Well, if anyone knows embroidery, it's Floriani, right?  Their logo says so!



I signed up and was so excited to get their expert opinion about everything machine embroidery related.  And boy did I get lots of opinions!!  The educator was knowledgeable but she moved so fast, I was furiously writing notes on my samples and the list we got, trying to figure out what I should use instead of what I was using.

My brain was spinning!  It didn't help that is was late afternoon on a Friday and only my second day back to work from the surgery.  But I diligently wrote down what I thought were the main points I needed to know.  About halfway through the 4 hours, she switched to talking about software and designs.  After that I was kind of brain dead anyway, and I don't love-love-love every 50,000 stitch design I've seen, so I kind of tuned out a little.

The main thing I got was that you can go to the Floriani website and use their stabilizer workbook to help you decide how much stabilizer and what kind you should use on a project.  And that they recommend one layer for every 10,000 stitches in your design.

So while I could not be induced to spend $1800 on the software, or $289 on a box with one roll of every kind of stabilizer, I did manage to spend more than I thought was possible on four rolls of various melt away and/or sticky stuff to use when I embroider a small scallop shell on an Irish linen napkin.




I'm hoping to try them out this weekend.

Oh, and in case you're wondering whether I thought this was worthwhile, I have to say YES, I did!!  I came away with a sample, labeled, of almost ALL of the Floriani stabilizers, ten gorgeous spools of polyester embroidery thread, four CDs of designs and a couple of other things which were all free with the price of admission. 


And by the way, no one paid me to write anything about Floriani and I'm not employed by them or anyone in the embroidery world.  I work for engineers, boring and colorless most of the time.  (Kidding, guys, I love my job!!)  But everyone gotta do something, so I work for engineers during the day and live my creative life on weekends!
What color is your life??

Sew on!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for your visit today!