pond_ripple's Fabric Blog

The medieval embroidered pouch that I wrote about here needed a little something extra to make it complete. Even before I started on this project, a row of little coordinated tassels was up on the agenda, but the thought of making them was intimidating. After cruising around on Pinterest several times looking for tutorials, I thought I had the general idea down, and set about making a few simple tassels. The tops of my tassels were frankly, a bit of a mess. Fortunately I planned to cover up that sad poof with this DIY .  Even more fortunately, I started trying to make my fancy buttonhole stitched top on a throwaway tassel (above). It took a lot of sewing and unsewing, stitch tutorial videos and frustration, a process that did some damage to that poor gray thing. Finally I figured it out, and got down to the real business of making my delicate looking black tops. Here you can see the unfinished top of one of my green tassels along with the embellished ...

This intricate embroidery project has kept me very busy for the past month or so. It started out with a pattern book that I found online:  Modelbuch aller art Nehewercks un Strickens, by Christian Egenolf, 1527 There are a ton of embroidery designs, but these two pages caught my eye: I did a lot of fiddling around with the patterns on my computer to create a perfectly mirrored combination pattern. At first I made it to fit a standard piece of printer paper, but the detail required me to scale up my version to fit on a piece of legal sized paper. This gave me a little bit of trouble when tracing the design onto my fabric due to the loss of resolution. That was solved by first tracing onto a piece of thin tissue paper with a fine pen then using that version to trace with water soluble pen onto my fabric. Here's a group of pictures taken near the tail end of the embroidering stage. Most of the work that I did on this happened while I was on a long car trip over the ho...

I really am going to stop making rice socks now that I've got a brand new one for myself. I usually get my swatches on quilting weight, but I got my Jinxed Rust Lion on the organic cotton knit. The organic cotton knit is wonderfully soft, but it shrinks vertically more than it shrinks horizontally after washing. After I filled the sock I made up with rice I realized it stretches even more horizontally, which is perfectly fine for a rice sock to do. I just think it's funny. This Elvis rice sock is one that I made by hand several years ago that is being displaced my my new sock.

Saturday, I made the hour long trek to Jacksonville to get everything my sewing machine needed. The motor and bobbin belts were replaced, and there was a very tense moment where we finally got to see how it ran. It made the most awful screeching sounds, but it was doing everything it was supposed to do. The man who was assisting us took a good look and told us that oiling it up should do the trick. He was right! It runs really well. I still have some issues. The bobbin belt they gave me is too big which doesn't really matter since my bobbins are too wide to fit under the thread guide on the bobbin winder. I'll be hand winding for awhile. :) My stitch length regulator is still rusted in place, but judging by the few test seams I ran, whatever I make is going to be super durable. The stitches are tiny and the seams are impossible to tear with brute force and almost as tough to get out by hand. I'm just happy that my stitches are stuck at something I can work with.