Category: Crafts

First T-Shirt

The first t-shirt on my new machine is done! Lowering the thread tension was the answer. Other lessons:

  • The machine stitches a few times then pauses for you to cut the tail. It is not telling you it thinks the thread broke.
  • Not shrinking the pattern makes a HUGE difference. Compressing stitches is not good.
  • Cheap embroidery thread is frustrating. I made a test pattern on a scrap of fabric using some cheap thread I had purchased and used for hand stitching. Very cheap, large variety of colors. But in a machine? It breaks constantly. Every couple hundred stitches, I was re-threading a broken thread. Using my good thread, I only re-threaded the machine to change colors.

Bernette B70 Threading v/s Tension

I got an embroidery machine – found an amazing deal because it was a “holiday” bundle with CDs of Christmas designs. It’s basically the November 1st Halloween candy of embroidery machines. As most machines do, it came with a sample from quality control testing the machine. It works. Except I could not get the thing to work! The bobbin thread was used *all* of the top pattern. The top thread was barely used. Everything I found online said you threaded it wrong. Don’t muck with tension settings, you absolutely threaded it wrong.

I couldn’t tell 100% that I didn’t thread it wrong. At the pretension section, there’s a tab that I had the thread “pinched” into — maybe that was wrong (although not pinching the thread in there and having it on the left hand side didn’t work any better). I spent hours yesterday re-threading the machine. I re-threaded it again and again today. I finally found a video on YouTube of someone who provided detailed instructions on what threaded right means. Turns out I was threading it right.

So, even though all of the advice online is to not touch the tension and just thread it right, I decided to adjust the tension. Can always move it back. It’s a digital control. I can return it to ‘4’ readily enough. Voila – my machine actually embroiders.

Embroidery

The library system in our neighboring county has five or six locations with 10-needle embroidery machines. They’re free to use, but you pay $0.10 for every 1,000 stitches. And you cannot just bring your own thread (they will, however, order colors if you request them … not thirty shades of orange, but they’re happy to stock colors that aren’t really close to something they already own). Lesson of the day: even if it’s not “a computer”, it’s a computer. Reboot it.

I took a day off work, and we planned to spend the day at the library embroidering an entire stack of shirts. Five hours later, one was not even complete. There were two staff members going through the really big manual. They tried everything. The threads breaking issue turned out to be a badly would bobbin, but we still had trouble with the machine locking in the thread when it would move to a new run. Try enough times, you could get it to start. But, when it locked off the run, cut the thread, and moved elsewhere to start another run? The thread wouldn’t get locked in, and it would come out of the needle. We tried “fast forwarding” the job to the point of using a different needle. Same issue. We tried a simpler design (we started big, which was probably a bad idea). Same issue (although we managed to re-thread the upper needle frequently enough that the job completed). Kind of a last ditch effort, we rebooted the thing. And it worked perfectly. I’m guessing there’s some re-calibration steps that run on start-up because I don’t see this as a purely software issue where clearing the memory and starting over would have done something. But, sigh! Reboot it!

Wood carvings

Anya had whittled a few things (even a crochet hook!) with her multi-tool, so I bought a set of actual wood carving knives, safety gloves, and basswood cubes. She’s been doing a lot of wood carving this summer, and she’s gotten really good! The left-hand owl was coated with linseed oil and submitted for a local art showcase. The snowman has the cutest (and pointiest!) little stick “carrot” nose.

Crochet Project: Anya Scarf

Anya taught me how to knit, and I am slowly knitting her a scarf … but it’s more of a fancy going out scarf than a “keeping warm” scarf. I found the same yarn that I am using for our sofa blanket in a variegated color (Tidepool), and I used that to make a really warm scarf. I started off knitting, but the Bernat Blanket yarn doesn’t knit well for me — I managed to get about three rows in after more than an hour of working on it! Took that out, grabbed a crochet hook, and used double crochet stitches. Two days later, voila! She’s got a warm, snuggly scarf. Just in time for … 60 degree weather. It’ll get cold eventually. And her scarf is standing by!