One of my co-workers at the Sewing Cafe is a major machine embroidery fan. She doesn’t really sew, but she loves to embellish or make simple projects which feature the embroidery. In late November she brought in the Dec issue of Designs in Machine Embroidery magazine. There was a project featured that was a very nice mantel scarf which spelled out stuff like “NOEL” or “JOY” or whatever you wanted.
She made one and it was so cool I decided that would be the main Christmas gift project for the year. Alas, I never do anything the easy way. I have to pick the most difficult thing I can imagine. I wanted to do the gifts on velvet! Yay velvet! I went to Oregon Patchworks, found the designs and bought them. Then I went to the local fabric store and found some velvet. The front of the velvet felt great, the backing for the velvet … not so much. But it’s a mantel scarf, no one will be wearing this, so that it’s crappy feeling on the back should be fine, right? … Right?? As I was to learn later, oh how not-right that was.
Here’s the finished piece. I made two of these, and this is the second. I had the same problems on both of them, and ended up being so absolutely disappointed with the actual piece that I just could not give it as a gift. I sent one to my brother and told him that I made this, and he could have it but it’s really for use in that formal greeting room which no one uses. Put it on the fireplace way in the back. It looks GREAT … from a long distance away.
First, the successes. I decided, rather than trying to do any sort of hem on this thing, I would instead use a serger to do a 3-thread rolled hem using wooly nylon as one of the lower looper threads. I was so proud of myself for successfully taking my 936 off the standard 4-thread overlock and onto the 3-thread rolled hem stitch and then BACK! And it all worked! I was so ecstatic I ran around the house with arms up chanting “Uh Uh Uh!”. My family thought I was nuts. Overall, the rolled hem looked great and worked like a charm. Not only was it the first time my serger came off the default stitch, it was the first time I had ever used wooly nylon. Total win.
I was looking for some really nifty fabric to use for the lettering, but couldn’t find anything. I decided to get creative. I bought white flannel, then used my 6D software to create an all over fabric motif using snowmen and angels. I then embroidered the flannel with a shiny white rayon embroidery thread. I love the look of tone-on-tone embroidery! That came out pretty good. It’s a small detail you’d never see until you were right up on the thing, but the embroidery thread helps to break up the light so that when you’re looking at it straight on there’s some visual interest which enhances the overall look, rather than fighting with it. I did do some tests with different colored threads, but colored embroidery was just too visually overwhelming for this particularly piece.
And now, for the not so successful. That O in the picture above looks pretty good, yes? Yeah, well that was seriously doctored to get it into a passable format. The problem was NOT the design. That was digitized pretty well. The problem was that I was putting the fabric on top of napped velvet. That means that during the stitch-out process, the nap caused the fabric to shift back and forth. The O was the single worst culprit because it had center stitching in addition to the outline stitching. The shifting caused the final satin stitch to miss the letter entirely in some places. I used the satin stitch function on a Bernina 350PE to very carefully go back around the outline of the letter in order to finish tacking down the shifted piece. I can see on this picture exactly where I started and stopped, but you’d have to have a really good eye to pick it out if you didn’t know what you’re looking for.
Here’s a close up of the lower edge which is indeed repaired. You can very faintly see the gold thread used for the outline, but for the most part it’s now covered up entirely.
The golden lace on the bottom is a free standing lace design. It stitched out very nicely, but I made the horrid mistake of getting a dry-clean only material to be used with a wash-out stabilizer. DOH! The first of the two NOEL pieces made was particularly bad and I water-stained the material trying to get out enough of the starchy stabilizer that the lace looked good. By the time I got to this second piece, I had sort of figured out a way to accomplish this without destroying the fabric. You can see on the very first image that the lace is still a bit on the stiff side, an indicator that I need to rinse it again to get out more of the starch. So, lesson learned.
For the other 2 projects, which are still under-construction, I’m going to be lining them so they hang better, but also attaching the free-standing lace individually. Above is where I’ve hooped up 2 layers of wash-out fabric weave stabilizer along with a layer of golden tulle. The tulle will help give the piece more strength and something for the seam to bite into beyond just the stitched out design. Doing it this way also means that now I can rinse and rinse and rinse and rinse to my heart’s content without worrying about destroying the velvet.
When I was attaching the velvet to the lace as per the directions, on one panel I trimmed too close to the anchor stitch line and the velvet started to separate from the lace. This made a lovely little hole in this lower corner which I then had to figure out to how repair. From the front, it looks somewhat reasonable. Clearly a booboo, but not a neon flag waving around. Until you look at the backside…
Ouch! This hurts every time I look at it. You can see how much the lower edge of my patch insert has frayed. No matter how many times I tried to tack down the patch to the joining satin stitch there, the velvet just frayed and the stitching literally fell out. Bummer! At least the rolled hem securely caught the patch. After about 3 attempts, I said “screw it, I’m gluin’ it down.” I broke out the fabric glue and voila, really hideous patch job complete!
Now, remember way above when I said that I thought the (cheap) velvet would work for this project? Boy did I learn some things about velvet, let me tell you. While this stuff was $25 a yard without a coupon, and it felt wonderful on the front side, I’ve learned that the true way for me to evaluate velvet is all about the backside. Why? Because the back is the foundation of the fabric. It’s what will ultimately determine drape and how well the finished piece will stitch together.
I decided to be festive and used green thread to serge the final seams. This actually worked really well, but now I’m looking at these really ugly seam lines. In addition, the cheap velvet foundation material just doesn’t hang as nicely as my mind’s eye was picturing. On the front, the seams are not very pretty and since I don’t yet have a pin board, ironing them was quite challenging! The end result was a sloppy looking project that I’m really not at all happy with, and the biggest culprit was my choice of the wrong fabric for the job.
I shall know better next time I want to work with velvet! But in the meantime, I have 2 more of these things to make and I’d like them to look a bit better. One experiment is stitching out the lower lace edging separately to be attached later, which I already talked about. Another idea for improvement is to line the overall piece. I may also attach some stabilizer or something to the material to give it a better presentation. On the third set, instead of using the NOEL letters, I’m embroidering a set of angels that I got from
Embroidery Library. I was horrified to see the velvet start to scrunch up and pucker around the design. It didn’t do that on the lettering! Oh yeah, the angels are intense stitching with full fills and layers, while the lettering was an outline only.
The absolute BEST thing about working at a sewing machine retail store is that I work with some seriously talented people and I can easily tap their brain. One such coworker has an embroidery side business (she doesn’t have a website, or else I’d link it for you) and her biggest customer is a lady who pretty much works exclusively with velvet. I asked for her suggestions. I did everything she suggested. In the end, I hooped up 2 pieces of stiff paper-like tear-away stabilizer. I put a 3rd piece underneath the hoop, then used the hoop basting option on my Viking Diamond deLuxe to anchor all pieces together. After this, I spray basted the fabric into place, then went back and did 2 more basting outlines – one for the entire hoop, and another around just the design. This velvet was now seriously anchored and the stabilizer was laughing at the stitch tension, more than strong enough to keep everything flat and lovely — even around the scroll work! So while the angels came out heinously and I have to pretty much chuck those or find something else to do with them, the Santa and his 3 reindeer look (singsong) aaaawesoooome!
So while overall I’m less than pleased with the results of the red ones, my mom and brother love them and are perfectly happy with them. While the 3rd one with the angels embroidered will have to be redone entirely, the 4th set with the Santa theme is looking really promising. I’m going to have to set these aside for now and revisit them next Christmas.
We’re going to Great Western War in October and my hubby’s fair clothes that he’s worn for years are really tired, and I pretty much have 1 dress I can wear. That means I have 5 full German Renaissance outfits to make, along with a custom designed art quilt for a June deliverable. EEP! But knowing I had to do all that is part of why I set up this post-mortem blog — to inspire me to get to work!
I now LOVE Britney Spears’ song
Work B**ch. “You wanna hard body? You want a Bugati? You want a Mazarati? You better work, b**ch.” Damn straight! Booya! In my case, it’s “You wanna be really good? You want to be happy with your stuff? You better work, b**ch.” It’s my work room song now. heh
