fiber arts and handicrafts

[RoseMorninStar]

Not to mention that it's not an everyday wear type dress. Perhaps a coming out gown or wedding dress. A one-off type occasion. It's stunning. The amount of work that goes into something like that is incredible.

I love embroidery, I always have. For a few years I worked at a computerized embroidery shop and.. it just boggles my mind that someone did the work on that dress by hand.

[Maria]

My husband has a computerized embroidery machine. He uses it to put the club logo on judo uniforms and ... well... just about anything his students want him to put the logo on.

When we first got it, I designed an elaborate multi hoop embroidery image of my (now deceased) conure. It looked really good, but it took forever to get it sewn, with all the thread changes. It looked nice on the shirt I put it on, but I never really wore it and eventually it ceased to fit and I ... well, I don't remember what I did with it. Probably donated it. It's certainly not in my closet any more.

I still have the pattern if I want to go through several hours of tending the machine embroiderer.... but that's just not an enjoyable process for me. And I didn't use the first iteration hardly at all, anyway.

I also designed a little Gandalf embroidery emblem, of him standing with sword and staff crossed on the bridge. My husband still stitches that one for himself once in a while. He usually does the half circle line above the sword and staff with glow in the dark thread. That's not as impressive as it sounds, though. When it's dark enough to see the glowing line of the force field, it's too dark to see Gandalf. :/

[RoseMorninStar]

Wow. That sounds incredible Maria! I used to work on multi-head machines and changing thread colors was a job. I have a needle through one of my fingers as those machines were fast.. We did a lot of logos, stuff for Harley Davidson, patches, caps, big jobs, small jobs. It was a sweat shop.

It wasn't as bright & clean as this shop. I suppose nowadays the thread might change automatically?

[Maria]

Oh, our embroidery machine is nothing like that. It's the size of a sewing machine and looks very like one, really.
(here's a similar model)

61RQCthQQ-L._AC_SX679_.jpg (25.98 KiB) Viewed 3623 times

That's why the thread changing is so tedious for the home machines. You have to remove the spool completely and rethread the machine for every color change.

[RoseMorninStar]

We had to manually change each color as well. There were posts for.. oh, 6 or 8 spools of thread, but what we'd do is tie it off and pull the new color through. It worked most of the time and we had to do it fast to keep the machine moving. Which is probably why I got a needle through my finger in the middle of the night. The machines I worked on were not as modern as the ones in the video.

[Maria]

Oh, yeah. The new ones are very fancy and have automatic thread color changing. A few years back, my husband tried to convince me that we really needed one that could handle 3 (4?) different thread colors at once. That's one of the few times I've utterly tromped on one of his ideas. It's not like he was making money on the embroidered logos anyway. Why spend so much MORE money just to save him a couple of minutes per project?

He loves automation and powered equipment. I don't. That's why this is the HANDicrafts thread. I like making things. I don't like the vibrations imparted into my hands through power equipment.

[RoseMorninStar]

I can appreciate a place for both so I guess I'm somewhere in between. How is your machine programmed?

[Maria]

Huh... my answer to your question never actually posted.

We bought some software in order to do the original design work, but the machine can understand any data that is in the PEZ format. We've bought designs from people on Etsy a few times for particular images that we didn't feel like starting from scratch on, and as long as the file name ends in .PEZ, it works just fine.

In other news:
I've discovered that a small square of crocheted acrylic yarn will work just fine as a dish scrubber. I used to buy Dobie pads all the time for that (a sponge surrounded by a scratchy plastic fine mesh) but this little crochet square does the job just as well. Now I have a use for all the old, harsh, unpleasant to the touch yarn that I've never managed to throw away. The acrylic doesn't hold water much, so they dry out fairly fast between uses. I'm pleased with them so far.

[Sunsilver]

I'm a leather worker. It's a very old craft. How old? Found this on FB yesterday: http://thehalloffire.net/forum/viewtopi ... &start=220

I'm sure most of you remember this, about the bone creaser/burnisher that hasn't changed much since humans first began working leather.
Here's another leather working tool that hasn't changed in thousands of years! This could easily have come off a modern craftperson's workbench, but it's from the pre-Hadrian wall period of the Roman fort, Vindolanda!

[Impenitent]

Sunny, that's really cool...makes that link through thousands of years of history tangible; the human chain of craftspeople who did what you do in the same way.

[Maria]

Last winter I made Christmas tree skirts:

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For scale, that's spread across a full size bed.

I made four of them, one for each kid and one for us. The pattern was complicated enough that I made all of them at once. At each color change I'd stop on the one I was working on and switch to the next one. That way I didn't have to figure out the instructions more than once. I also made a mini one for my parents, stopping when the diameter got reasonable for putting around a candle on a table top or something like that. My mom ended up putting it under her computer monitor with an image of a Christmas tree displayed on it.

Anyway, all are given to their intended recipients now and they seemed to like them. Now I've got to think of something to make for next Christmas.

[RoseMorninStar]

Lovely.

[Frelga]

Very pretty and festive

[Inanna]

So nice!

I don’t know if you Guys recall that my elder (dead) sister’s son has an SO. This is what she gave for irika when I went in Dec. apparently it took her a day. For around 10 such ornaments.

[RoseMorninStar]

Adorable.

[Maria]

Oh, those are so cute! I may have to do something like that for the kids next year.

[Impenitent]

Inanna, those ornaments are lovely! Talented young woman.