Humble beginnings

A few days ago I mentioned purchasing a pattern from BFC Creations for an embroidered hobo bag.  I wanted to make a test purse first, since I find purses rather challenging to begin with.

Digging through my stash, I came across some horrendous pale grey denim (???) that I have no recollection of buying, it’s so ugly!  I also have some rather ugly blue denim, both in fairly large quantities, that I decided to make my test purse in.

The instructions are not the best, in fact I am finding them downright confusing, so we’ll see how my actual assembly goes!  But the front is embroidered, with some appliqué… I used a gray denim circle in the center, and two blue denim hearts on the sides. 

It would have been nice had the designs been digitzed with the shape of the sections they’re to be embroidered on as an outine. Lining up the side pieces was challenging to say the least.  The pattern piece was too large to fit my scanner, so I wasn’t able to digitize it in.  I ended up viewing my design layout onscreen, and holding up the pattern piece to the screen, so I could look through it and line things up!  I know someone will read this and laugh and have a much better suggestion… sometimes my brain simply doesn’t function right.  Happens a lot these days!

I used a decorative stitch on my Bernina 830 down the seams on the front.  Next time I’d use a heavier thread for this. 

Anyway, it’s fun to see how some embroidery (some eight hours worth!) can transform some ugly old fabric!

I did it!

I actually managed to blow off nearly an entire day yesterday!  I was so proud of myself!  The only “work” I did was to feed the critters and do a load of laundry… and make dinner.

Otherwise, I spent a wonderful crashed on the couch, cruising quilting, sewing and embroidery websites via my wonderul little Asus tablet, how I love that thing!  I did some shopping while I was at it!  I ordered more bulk embroidery stablizers, I think I will be doing a fair amount of embroidery this year.

Over at BFC Creations, I found a gorgeous embroidered hand bag, designs and pattern all inclusive.  While they have an “in the hoop” version, I’m not overly keen on most ITH projects.  I don’t like the exposed seams or the satin stitched seams, although some are well done and I like doing those.  Anyway, I went with the pattern (Brocaded Hobo by BFC Creations) that embroiders each section individually, then the purse is assembled. Go check it out, it’s beautiful!

I cleaned the rails on my longarm, cleaned and oiled the machine (because shame on me, it’s been untouched for about two months) and wound the bobbins needed for the quilts in the wings.  I hope to get one of them loaded up today and work on it.

Because my Bernina 830 just came back home again and I missed it so much, I decided I needed to embroider something… anything.  I grabbed a floursack towel (I have gobs of them) and pulled elements from several designs and stitched it out.  Oops… I flipped the design and the wording is backwards… DOH!

 Who does that?  It isn’t centered evenly either… another large appliance cover yay!