Fiber Monday - Oh, bobbins!
The bit of my mending pile that did not get tackled over Christmas break wasn't so much mending as adding. I had a few shirts and sweatshirts that I had collected that I wanted to embroider my business logo on and use for work shirts. This would be machine embroidery, not hand embroidery. I already had the file for my machine and had done this before, so in theory it should have been easy.
But machine embroidery involves getting out a lot of supplies I don't normally use and switching parts of my sewing machine. It is also one of those things I don't do quite often enough to keep the process fresh in my head, so it also involves a bit of figuring out as well. Yesterday afternoon I had a few free hours and I really needed the shirts that had been decorating my studio for months. It was time to bite the bullet and just do it.
When it's been a while since using the embroidery function, I always start with the shirt I care about the least. That way if I make a mess of it, I don't care quite so much. I should also add that I buy this type of clothing at thrift stores. Okay, I buy nearly all of my clothing at thrift stores so this shouldn't come as a surprise.
Back to the embroidery. I get everything out and set up. I'm pretty sure I remember how to do everything, so make a start.
All I have to do is sip my tea and supervise. I do notice that the bobbin thread is getting pulled up far more than I was expecting. But since I considered this my practice shirt, I just kept going. Except for that bobbin thread, everything worked fine.
(The thread is black, but you can see the white bobbin thread showing through. It's not supposed to look like that. I decided to call it a design decision.)
It made a weird noise when I started it, but it was embroidering, so I decided not to worry about it. And then it wasn't sewing. It seemed the bobbin thread had come unthreaded and there were some pretty heavy areas in the design. It was odd, but I rethreaded the bobbin and started again. Many more weird noises and I started thinking something was really wrong. Plus, the top thread had started bunching up again. I took it out and started on the long and not enjoyable process of ripping out machine embroidery on a knit.
When I had finally done that, I thought it would be wise to redo everything and do a trial run on a thin piece of muslin. This was when I realized I had another bobbin error. I had put in a bobbin that was meant for another machine. Because I own two embroidery capable machines and I didn't realize one of the bobbins had ended up with my current machine supplies. At least I knew what the problem was. Eventually the second shift was embroidered.
(If you look closely you will see where some of the fabric of the shirt was shredded in the unpicking process. There were several places like this, but most became covered up by the new embroidery.)
The third shift was a breeze. Everything went right the first time.
One good thing about this whole process is that I realized with all the cleaning and rearranging I had done in the studio over the past several months, I actually made it easier to get at the embroidery supplies and there is more room in the sewing machine counter to use the embroidery attachment. Maybe I won't put off using it for quite as long next time.
If course, I'm now out of the bobbin thread I need, so will have to restock that first.
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