Sadia’s Blog

For quite a while now I have been asked time and again if I would create something special for children in machine embroidery designs. My interpretation had been via heirloom reproduction of antique laces, embroideries that could adorn children’s garments etc. However, that was not what friends were asking….they wanted really children’s designs. I had to sit and ponder. Children type designs are not my forte and not something that I have worked on. My journey has been to recreate yesterdays’ heirlooms for our tomorrows. This indeed was a challege as I have not sewn for little girls or boys for a long time now. Any  embroidery that I have done for children has always been purchased designs.

There are probably thousands of artists online with absolutely breathtaking sketches. Contacting a few I was able to put together a guideline for ”children’s corner” section. Hopefully I will be introducing one of the collections shortly called “Lil’ Ballerinas”. The artwork for the four ballerinas in the collection comes from Mimika’s Art Room (http://www.mimikasartroom.com/)   I have to admit that I completely enjoyed working with the artwork and adding a few adorable little flower shaped stars and ribbons etc to complete the collection.

When I think of little girls, I think of the colors pink and purple with hints of light greens and blues mixed together. It came as quite a surprise to me that I had none of these shades of fabrics in my stash, LOL. I had tons of mottled and batiks and bold prints but nothing pastel….hmmm. Upon deep search however I was able to find some prints that would work but still they were pretty bright. As the nearest fabric shop is about a 45 minutes drive, I decided to improvise. I did find some sparkle sheer organza which gave me a great idea!

Placing the sparkle organza on top  of my fabrics and then embroidering I was able to create a softer look to the prints that I had. Ofcourse every little girl must have a purse and that caused me to look further in my patterns to find one that would be small enough for a little girl. While I was searching I happened to come up with the idea of using my friend Carolyns’ Rose draw string purse pattern but without the drawstrings! Instead I attached two straps at the top and added a bit of Swaroski crystals to the centers of the flower shaped stars. The whole purse simply cried “Little Lady”…..oh how I wish my little girl was small again!!

It was while I was making the purse that another thought came to me. It really is difficult for aged hands to manipulate small embroideries on small items. As I was making the items myself it was fairly easy to first do the embroidery and then cut out the pattern. But how many times do we find a cute shirt that just cries for a bit of personalized embroidery. Taking a hard look at the four ballerinas I realised that making patches of them could overcome having to manipulate small items onto the hoop to embroider.

Some years ago when I had introduced the “For Pansy” collection, I had created a wall hanging where the pansies were stitched out on cutaway stabilizer and then tacked onto the finished wall hanging to give a dimensional effect. Well, the same could be done with the ballerinas, only I decided to use polymesh stabilizer. Using two sheets placed opposite to each other in the  hoop, I embroidered one of the ballerina designs.

Once the deisgn was completed, I trimmed closely to the edge of the design making sure not to cut into the design itself. Some while back a dear friend who was visiting showed me a neat trick that she did with the soddering iron. She had stitched out several designs on double layer of tulle and polymesh stabilizer. Using the soddering iron she had completely evaporated the stabilizer from around the design making ornaments. Unfortunately I do not have a soddering iron but I knew that dh did. He was a bit surprised at my sudden interest in his tools but brought the iron to the house. While I was waiting for it to warm up, I thought of another idea! Why not use my Lorna wand to do the same…..well, no…the Lorna wand and others like it that are used to attach crystals to the fabrics do not get that hot as a soddering iron. Oh well it was  a try.

Using the soddering iron, I carefully singed away the excess stabilizer from around the design. A word of caution to friends here. Be extremely careful when using this gadget. Don’t burn yourself and more importantly don’t burn the design so much that it starts to smoke. I did both!

From what I could remember, my friend had a much smaller soddering iron and the tip was quite small. The tip on this one was a bit large and very difficult for me to get inside some of the areas within the arms etc but I did a pretty good job considering this was my first attempt.

I did improvise a bit in my soddering. Instead of singing away all the stabilizer I made sure that the arms and hair were kept attached by simply a hair piece of the stabilizer. This kept the whole motif from twisting apart and showing the back side etc. It is rather a neat thing to do. If I had my wits about me when I had started to embroider, I could have place a piece of ribbon in the head area and that way could have created a small ornament. However, this is a patch and now that the stabilizer is completely gone, it can easily be attached to a tiny tshirt etc. Personally I would further treat this by ironing on wonder under type fusible and then simply ironing it to the garment. As you can see from the closeup I managed to singe quite a bit of the design also with the soddering iron. Oh well…think I may need to buy my own but one that is a bit smaller and definitely with a smaller tip. The tip I used was quite large!

Well, I always have to find some project that could be considered a look alike of hand made and heirloom. With that in mind I decided to use the same sparkle organza technique on top of cotton fabric and created an adorable pillow.