My summer here and there has been a blur so far. I always admire people who are able to blog daily, get the mowing done, clean the house, bake an amazing dinner and get the kids ready for school while working a full time job.
That is soooooo not me!
I miss the days when I had help as I no longer do. So I apologize for not posting new items and new articles but there is only one of me and she's getting older! However, I HAVE been busy this summer.
When we acquired our commercial Tajima embroidery machine, I was given 2 hours of instruction. Period. The rest of my time has been spent balancing on the learning curve and I've learned a lot. While I hate making mistakes on the machine that ruined designs, broke needles and created birds nests at the bottom of a clogged garment, it is true (in my case anyway) that that is the best way to learn. At least I remembered the mistake and corrected it so that it wouldn't happen again.
One of the things I was desperate to learn was FSL embroidery. Or rather, Free Standing Lace. A design is actually embroidered on a filmy backing with a plastic feel and look. It is actually a type of dissolvable adhesive that allows the image to stand on its own after the backing has been washed away in warm water.
The butterfly design was listed as butterfly earrings, but no matter how I looked at them, I was convinced they were too large for jewelry. Instead, I put them in a plant pot of mint that I had and then posted the photo to my personal Facebook page. The reaction and comments I got back shocked 
me! People thought they were real….
I decided that the best way to show them off and market them was as plant sticks. The other designs I had were much larger butterflies, like the monarch and the yellow swallow tail, but these tiny little guys were immensely popular and worked even better as a selling point than the larger ones. Who knew?
It was a simple matter for me to get the right guage wire, cut what I needed and attach it to the wire before 'planting' it in the pot.
I also learned a lot about making caps. What to do and what NOT to do!
Aligning the design is so cricital. I did make some embarassing mistakes such as thinking I had the alignment correct and found instead that just even a fraction off made the design off kilter. The frame I used did not have the best way to align the cap, yet the one that came with the machine was a definite nightmare that could easily take 4 hands and a lot of naughty words to get it on the machine bar. NOT one of my favorite things to do.
But after a few false starts, I started churning out several caps tha looked really good. One of the ones that seemed to sell was the one with a buck deer. As I had posted to my personal FB page…it's a bit naughty, but I didn't make the design. I just sewed it !!!
While I made a few in different colors, the gray one seemed to be the most well received and the most popular color. The deisgn shows up much better in white, but I suspect the fact that white gets so dirty and is so hard to clean makes it a bit less desirable than others.
It was quite fun to watch from our booth/table the men that walked by and guffawed at the cap! Guess it wasn't too naughty after all 🙂
Here we are with out booth. You can only see part of it as the other tables were on the side and the embroidered shirts and jackets were on the outside of the tent.
The day was hot AND humid, so I brought one of those wet wraps. My hubby, for some reason, didn't want to wear one because he said it felt slimy….but then I find that he's put in on top of his head under his cap! Go figure.
So….now you know why I haven't been online as much as I should. All this and I still get to wash dishes, do the bookwork, vaccuum and shampoo the carpet, feed the chickens…….:)
And just an FYI….one of my main goals is to get 'Choose-Your-Design' pages online for caps, shirts etc. You get to pick the shirt size, color and then choose from the available design to complete your order. And Ive been asked about an applique page. Appliques are so much easier as you don't have to send me a garment, or order one online. If you have something in your wardrobe in mind, then pick the design to decorate it!
That's it for now……..I'm going back to embroidering and sewing.
