Whoof. I can tell ya, I may
have gotten over a good chunk of my fear and loathing of creating free-standing
lace yesterday, but I absolutely hated sewing the darn pieces of that darn
chandelier together ! I did it last night to a mini-binge of The Crazy Ones on Netflix with Beloved
Hubby after dinner, and my fingers still hurt. I may try to glue the next one
together. Darn shame it doesn’t just fit and stay together. I kind of thought
it did.
It is so incredibly stupid
what I was doing wrong back then. And I didn’t fully clue in until after I
finished the chandelier and was pricing more stabilizer. Y’see, there’s two
kinds of wash-away (water soluble is the preferred term), one is like thin powdered
vinyl, the other is more fluffy fabric-like. When I first got Brody, I bought
everything the denizens on message boards said I would need, and kind of did my
own ‘slot A, tab B’, as most folks didn’t elaborate further. I mean, the
package said stabilizer, it’s for stand alone lace, how hard could it be ?
Maybe the question is more ‘how
dim can I be ?’. Turns out, the plastic type is used as more of a topper for
embroidery on heavy pile things, like towels and blankets, so the stitches don’t
vanish into the thick. It’s only occasionally used on stand-alone lace, again
as a topper for effects. The soft fabric stuff is *the* stabilizer for stand-alone
lace. Using the plastic stuff inevitably leads to tears and pulls, exactly the
problems I had. I feel so darn dumb. . .
But at least I’m not that
dim anymore. Just in time, as I was gonna try a small bookmark or something
using the plastic stabilizer next week ! Could burn through the entire roll
(about $6. on sale with coupons !) trying to get it to successfully do
something it was never intended to, and feel more and more like a failure when –
surprise ! – it doesn’t work. While I’m all for trying new and unexpected
combinations, there’s also reading the package and realizing some are a waste
of even thought !
I added the tulle in hopes
that the stabilizer wouldn’t separate – like the plastic kind always did ! – or
if it did, the netting would hold it together. Now that I know the fabric stuff
won’t separate, I can drop it. Frankly, cutting it out of those tiny holes was
a pain, and it didn’t add anything I could see to the final item. Although, if
I were to do another black one, I’d probably add white or grey tulle, cut and
pull it so it looks like cobwebs.
As for today, I started to
wonder, maybe my success was due to the excellent digitizing skills of the
folks over at Urban Threads, their stuff is always quality. When I remembered,
seems like the ones I kept mucking up so long ago were mostly freebies, kindly
and generously offered from other embroiderers. I shared a few of my creations
too, and they were as good as I could make them, but I’m no pro. Didn’t expect
theirs to be either, yet I seemed to be the only one having trouble. Now I know
why ! Doubt lingered, though. . .
So I went through the FSL design folder again and picked one I liked –
and I had no idea where it came from. The only files I had were the design and
a picture of it, no thread lists, no charts, no notes. Did pretty much what I
did yesterday, and it came out pretty well. The picture came out better than
mine because they went with blue flowers that don’t allow the green leaves to
show through so visibly, but they looked like daffodils to me, so that’s how I
wanted to stitch ‘em. Pretty good, though, and yay, new bookmark !
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