I have invested in a course to improve my machine embroidery skills that I learnt over twenty years ago. Each month there is a new project to be working on and modules at the start of the course, this is from module 1 to be free motion embroidery on a sewing machine a flower. The flower design was nice, but I decided to freehand draw it into my sketchbook which was not great, so when I came to transfer the pattern onto tracing paper using a sulky pen, I adapted it to be more free flowing. What I didn’t realise is that once the pattern is ironed onto the fabric after multiple times the pattern disappears, also when I first iron the pattern, I had the heat set to medium which was for a polyester setting and the highest heat is for cotton, which calico is of course.

You can see a seam in the calico and that is because instead of using a new piece of calico I wanted to upcycle and reuse the toile of a waistcoat or vest as the Americans would say and I am exploring designs and ideas to do machine embroidery onto garments again. It has been taking me an age to be doing practice for machine embroidery which I cannot always do due to whether there is energy or if I am experiencing the bananas, (my replacement word for fatigue that I experience on a regular basis as I am recovering from long covid or cfs which are one and the same thing I think).

Below shows the underside of the toile, sometimes it is good to see the back of the embroidery to double check that the tension is correct.