After owning a fancy new sewing machine that does embroidery for nearly half a year, I finally got around to testing said capabilities just this week. I was spurred on by two things: 1) I was finished with Collegium so I had time & 2) a new group popped up on Facebook devoted to historical machine embroidery. Coincidence? I think not!
The FB group mentioned several pages of free downloadable files of digitized blackwork (one & two) that come from the amazing work of the Blackwork Embroidery Archives (which have free patterns for those who wish to hand-embroider). I had previously looked on EmbroideryDesigns.com & found some fonts that I liked & a bat — since my SCA device features a bat, & my longterm goal is to put bats on all my household linens. So a-downloading I went.
Caveat: While both the free & purchased patterns are all fantastic to embroider (I’ll get to that in a minute), none of them display very well on my machine. Ugh, it’s kind of guesswork! While the designs preloaded on the machine show up crisp & clear on the LCD display, all of the downloaded ones appeared as either blobs or as sketchy connect-the-dots-like images. Updating the file names doesn’t help, since those don’t display. I have no idea how to fix this. I may have to take cameraphone pix & stitch out each pattern to make a sample book of all the downloaded files I like, then cross-reference that to the file number (since that displays). Anyway, do beware of this problem, at least if you have a Babylock machine, since it may be different with other file types.
That said, once I tested out some designs, WOW, how freakin’ cool??? Omg, I love it. See, I do not embroider by hand. I’ve tried, & I hated it. Most I ever did successfully was my initial. I did a fair amount of cross-stitch when I was a kid, but proper embroidery eluded me. And yes, many people have said if you can cross-stitch, you can do blackwork. But whatevs. I have a machine that can do this now!!! Holy crap, it’s amazing. It’s magic. It’s brilliant. It’s totally worth the money spent on the machine.
The hard part is the setup — you REALLY have to plan where you want the design, & then you have to keep fussing with the placement so that the repeat lines up. I sense a steep learning curve, plus each design is a little bit different. So no, I won’t have it down for a while.
I decided to make a square-necked smock as a test garment because I actually need one (all my smocks are round-necked, but I have several square-necked gowns). I copied one of my smocks for the pattern; it’s super-basic & sleeveless because sleeved undergarments irritate me. I made it in a soft, thin cotton, which I knew would not be ideal for embroidering (a heavier linen would be better), but linen feels like sandpaper on my skin. I don’t care how historically accurate it is, I’ve tried so many types, & unless it’s a blend with cotton or rayon, it rubs me raw. I’m so much more comfortable with cotton.
Of course, I made a rookie mistake that I knew the second after I made it: I cut everything out before embroidering! Doh. When embroidering near an edge, like a neckline, if you cut fabric away, you won’t have anything left to put inside the embroidery hoop. I usually bind the neck & arm edges of my smocks, so I cut it & then realized the problem. So I had to make a neckline facing just to give me enough fabric for hooping. Still didn’t have enough fabric to hoop the arm holes (tho’ I suppose I could have if I put sleeves on, but see above re: hating sleeves), so no embroidery there. Ah well, this is only a test.
Definitely a test … some misunderstanding of how the pattern fit within the hoop space meant that one side has poorly aligned motifs — let’s just call that the back. And the motifs aren’t as tightly closed as they should be on either side. Still, it’s kind of pretty & was a good, wearable experiment. Or it would be for someone else … because after I finished it, I found that somehow the smock is about two sizes too big for me! Yeah, even tho’ I copied it off a garment I’ve been wearing for years. I’m guessing that something in cutting the square neck & adding a facing instead of binding put off the measurements just enough to be slipping off my shoulders. Oh well — it was a learning experience! And the result can go to the garb exchange at 12th Night for another lady to wear.
Looks awesome 😀
For your gothy side, check out Urban Threads. I have to be a good girl and refrain, but they have good deals sometimes that are too hard to resist.
Ah yes, I’ve drooled over Urban Threads! So many things I want to use this machine for…
Oh wow, thanks for the linkage! Those are beautiful and I can’t wait to try a few designs out.
In the future, when you’ve got pieces that are too small to hoop you can baste them to water soluble stabilizer (available in multiple forms at JoAnns) then hoop the stabilizer. Afterwards, it washes right out with water. A bonus feature- it will make your thinner fabric act more like an ideal embroidery fabric! I used it to do about 40 yards of embroidery on a super light cotton voile and it was fabulous. Good luck with the machine embroidery!
Good tip about the water-soluble stabilizer! Really must pick some up.
Not going to lie….I got a little excited when I ran across this mention of my Historical Machine Embroidery FB page. Chat me up later (I’m pretty sure we are FB friends) and I will share what worked for me in my ever evolving search for blackwork (and what failed miserably). Catharine Myers