Current Mood : Mild frustration.
Thinking back, I was about due for another machine embroidery failure. I was getting kind of cocky about things....
Beloved Hubby and I got to share a busy day. He was home working for most of it, in the Shop, and I was getting things ready for the refrigerator magnet art project at Dearest Son's school. We ran up for Subway for lunch, and Beloved proposed a quick trip to Target - he'd broken another set of Mp3 ear-buds. In the Dollar Spot, there were magnetic Disney Princess note pads, but I didn't get any, and I'm as surprised as you. I stood there for a minute, trying to figure why sheets of disposable Belle or Cinderella-decorated paper was bothering me, but it didn't hit until later.
Back in the day (pause for collective sigh), any DP images to be found were in coloring books or other Little Golden Book-type media. And good images were hoarded amongst kids, especially little girls. Heck, we kept our Barbie clothes brochures darn near hidden away, so they wouldn't vanish ! Wasn't such a thing as Princess notepaper, and most ‘scratch pads' had little to no printing on them. Now the DP phenom is so omnipresent, magnetic notepads are a good idea. Just about everything is disposable, even when funds are tight, so scratch pads are nearly as fancy as formal notecards, like anyone uses them anymore. It was an odd thing to realize that.
We got my rice crackers, and I've been good about not consuming the whole container in one day. Last time I had rice crackers, I got terribly tummy-sick, and I really don't wanna repeat the experience. Even though I don't know if it was due to that binge or something else, I'm unwilling to take the risk. Just the other day, I felt severely nauseous, and it'd been weeks since my last Target visit. I try to hold down the binges to one a month.
Anyway, between Subway (Club sandwich ! Yum !) for lunch, the fridge magnet thing in the afternoon, and Chinese for dinner, I've been good about the crackers. However, they're calling to me now, since it's midnight. Darn things. So. We found the Crystal Sweeper Lego set Dearest has pined for over the last couple weeks, and snagged it.
The fridge magnet project went very well, and gorgeous magnets were sent home with their new, proud owners. One little boy sort of attached himself to me, and talked nonstop. Hard-to-hear stuff, but he desperately needed someone to listen, so I did. It was a combination of ‘Gramma called CPS when Daddy went back to drugs, and Mommy divorced him, but Gramma was trying to get Mom in trouble, not Daddy. I miss him, and he cries a lot' and ‘Dearest Son say says he has (insert gizmo) - I have a bigger, better, shinier one. In fact, I have three', with some ‘I'm getting an X-Box once the power gets turned back on, and we get the TV out of the pawnshop' mixed in for good measure. Between the contradictory fibbing (right after he says they don't have internet anymore, his three laptops are all online all the time) and the "I'm better than everyone in this class, that's why no one plays with me" (yes, he said precisely that) , I didn't know whether to hug him or tell him to please give me some space for just a few minutes. The teacher tried to get him to sit at his desk, but that only lasted for a minute or two - soon as she was engaged, he was right back. I really feel for the kid, he clearly has too much going on around him.
He even tried to walk out with Dearest and me to Molly - their teacher had to get someone to take him to where he's normally picked up, since he wouldn't go willingly. I wished I could do more for him, but after over two hours of nonstop heart-rendering and occasionally insulting chatter, I was ready for a quiet room and a nice jacket with really long sleeves. Beloved understood, and directed me to a nap while he and Dearest put the Lego Power Miner set together. I thought of how fortunate we are as I crashed.
Got to help Beloved with the overgrown lawn - by picking up a few dozen branches and odd garbage that seems to spontaneously appear in the yard as he mowed. Between the wind and the 7-11 next door, we get lots of trash that was never ours. And, I finally sat down to stitch out the Wall-E Eve design. I confess, I wasn't near as precise as I could have been when I hooped up that t-shirt remnant. But heck, I'd worked with knits before, and I was using the new good stabilizer, not the used dryer sheets. I was confident. No problem.
Um, big problem. For some reason, the Eve design stitches out part of the left side, then goes to the far right, and starts stitching from there. I evidently didn't have the fabric hooped tightly enough, and a pinch, a pucker, a pleat of fabric between the stitches soon developed. And got bigger as I watched. *&^%4. I stopped the stitching and removed it. No way to fix it - if the design started, say, from the left and continued on to the other side, any loose fabric would pucker outside the design. Not in the middle of it. No, this pleat was too big and too messy to finish the character.
So I read up some more, and cut fresh stabilizer and found the blue rag remnant I'd used before. I had that in there good and tight, it thumped like a drum, and was on grain. I reduced Brody's upper tension a bit, and double checked the threading and bobbin race, all good. And the exact same thing happened again ! This time, I actually cut the fabric pleat off the stitch-out, reworked some of the design over the blank spot, and continued on. It still looks bad, but at least I got to finish it.
About the only thing I haven't tried is hooping the stabilizer, then using a spray adhesive to attach the shirt to it. The shirt doesn't get hooped this way, so I'm not sure how good the stitch-out will be, but it's recommended. So, next time either Hancock Fabrics or Hobby Lobby have a good notions coupon, I'll pick up a can. Stuff's $13. for an eight ounce can at regular price. I also wrote the design seller, asking for any tips she may have. I wonder if she ever worked it on a knit before. According to the design sheet, the stitch-out was tested on a woven cotton. Oh, well. All else fails, I'll stitch Eve out on cotton, and make a patch out of her. For that textured 3-D effect all the kids like on their T-shirts !
