Embroidery project

Okay, for those of you who don't know, I have a Brother Embroidery machine that my parents gave me for Mother's Day about 10 or 12 years ago.  I use to use it all the time when the kids were little to make all kinds of cute Disney things and I even made quite a few outfits for them too.  So over the weekend I dusted off my machine (literally) and went to work.  First I spent most of yesterday on a few awesome sites.  The first one is Polka & Bloom which can be found at Polka and Bloom, where I ordered several hand embroidery patterns and a couple of books which I can't wait to get.  The second site was Etsy where I ordered several patterns for my machine from Embroitique.

Here is what happened today in all it's hilarity.

First I thought about all the cross stitch bread covers I have on hand right now because I have also decided to start cross stitching again after about a 15 year absence.  Then I figured I could just as easily machine embroider on a square meant for cross stitch as I could on a towel or shirt.  So I got out the iron and made sure it was all nice and pretty.  Then I got out the sizing and my hoop, backed the material and got it hooped without to many readjustments.  Then I sat down to my machine and had to adjust all the colors because of the fact that my machine is set up for Brother colors and I don't really know if I can change that (but I'll be looking into it soon).  Then when I got the pattern to an agreeable color scheme I attached the hoop and started to stitch.  All was going well until the first goof up of a particular color and it bunched the thread up on the bottom and tangled in the bobbin three times.  Each time I had to take the hoop off the machine and snip the threads off the fabric and clean it all up.  Well, after the third time I decided to take the plate (I'm sure it has a technical name)off the machine and clean out all the little snippets of thread that were caught under the plate.  I ALSO decided that maybe that pink color was jinxed and really, how many candies in life are pink?  So I changed to a different color and reattached the hoop and off I went....For about another 3 minutes until I tried to figure out where that left side of the bread cloth had disappeared to????  You got it.  I had folded it under the hoop and now it was hopelessly sewn to the back of the cloth.  So it will forever reside in the land of "Oops".   I did make a second one, without even trying the pink and it came out beautifully.  Now I am on to more towels and when I get my hand embroidery patterns I'll post those too.

First Bread cloth:

 My beautiful machine.

Ironing the bread cloth.  Call me crazy but I do love to iron.

All hooped and ready to start.

Ready, set, go....

And this is what happens when you try to blog and think that machine can be left all by herself with nobody watching.

And this is where the bread cloth ended up.

 

Here's is the happy ending.  The second bread cloth was adorable.  And you would never even guess it's supposed to be used for cross stitching on.

This cute design is from Embroitique.