Previously in my workbasket…
For the baby shower, one of the activities was to decorate onsies. GmaC took one home to tie-dye one. I held one back to embroider. The flower basket iron-on pattern didn’t transfer very well to begin with. Letting the onesie sit around for a week or two, only allowed it to fade further. :-/
The solution was to take a micron pen and “trace” the faded lines. Unfortunately I didn’t get the pattern quite correct. I realized this as I started the embroidery. Luckily I still had the paper transfer to reference as I stitched. I had to continually remind myself that the image was reversed when it was ironed onto the fabric.
To stabilize the stretchy knit fabric of the onesie, I stuck a small piece of transfer-eze to the inside, behind the design. With the knit fabric stabilized this way, I didn’t feel the need to place the garment into a hoop. I don’t think a hoop would have worked well on the knit fabric anyhow.
The second time around and I am over half way! (the first time around)
Once the old backing fabric had been stabilized, the quilt “sandwich” was loaded onto the frame and quilting commenced. The plan was to quilt the straight lines of the blocks and sashing. Additionally I was going to trace the designs of each pieced block. In the past, when I have used the frame, I haven’t had much luck with any diagonal lines (Imagine diagonal lines on an etch-a-sketch). Since the the Twelve days of Christmas Quilt, I have replaced ALL of the rubber o-rings on the stitch regulator sensors. I was hoping that would be the answer. It was not. :-/ Deciding to just do the straight lines, stitching in the ditch of the pieced blocks, I got down to business. After a rainy morning of teaching, the rest of the day was free for quilting! At one intersection of many seams, I broke a needle. Part of it being wedged into the feed dogs. It took a little convincing to remove it, before installing the new needle. I was super giddy to finish quilting the whole thing. Well not actually the whole thing. I planned to free motion the wide rose boarders after taking it off the frame. Eagerly I removed the quilt to find this:
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo! Gah. After a pout, I figured that it was essentially already basted. If I cut out 1/2 of the stitches out, started in the middle and worked my way carefully out from the center, being careful to smooth the layers as I went, that I could just sit down at a table and re-quilt it.
This worked pretty well. There were a few very small puckers, but totally liveable, and only some very small thread nests (on the back again). After such an unpleasant surprise above, you’d think that I’d know to check as I was going along, but no. At least they were small. Easy to cut out and re-sew with corrected tension.
