Current Mood : Sleepy
Well, things always look better after a decent night's sleep. Too bad DC didn't want us to have one ! Darn cat slammed the screen door to be let in at 10:30, just as I was heading for bed. Dearest Son and Beloved Hubby had been snoozing for a while by then. At 12:30, once even I'd been asleep for an hour, the hairball decides he has to go outside RIGHT NOW ! Luckily for him, I went right back to sleep, or I'd be considering embroidery on cat leather.
It's another super-nice day, so I decided to spray-paint ! It's still a bit too high humidity to try doll shoes - maybe next week, when the ground isn't as spongy - but I had a tarnished basket I'd Dumpster dived a few centuries ago (or so it seemed) and the duo of frames I'd snagged for 25c last weekend getting underfoot. So I cleaned the basket and let it dry while I sand-paper scraped the frames.
The only paint I could find was the Fusion grey I'd bought for doll shoes, but heck, it says it works on wood and metal, so time's wasting ! I soon had all three drying in the sun, waiting for the next coat. Hopefully, two is all it'll take !
Once I accomplished that frequently-put-off job, it was time to tackle a few more. Got the iron cleaned - I'd thrifted a tube of hot iron cleaner years ago, but never used it. No time like today ! It smelled nice, and got a lot of the old carbon scorch marks off the soleplate. It's not ‘like new', but it's much better ! Amazing that I can even tell the difference, it was only a $10. iron when it was new, and I scavenged it from a junk pile back when we lived at The Pit ‘o H#ll Apartments. Back in 2002 !
It was a good day for the iron. It was nice and clean and needed. For I was gonna embroider... a wearable t-shirt ! One of Dearest's, and with a simple, small design, but I was gonna do it today ! If you knew how often I'd put it off, you'd blush for me. But I was out of excuses. I had stitch cover. I had knit fabric experience. The design had been in Brody's memory for weeks. I needed experience in centering and hoop placement. Time to get busy ! I did a test-stitch on more of that beigey skin tone fabric, and it went well - so I stitched the tire part of it twice. Much better. It was too sparse with just one pass. And I wanted to make sure using iron-on interfacing as a stabilizer worked, it wasn't just a fluke when I tried it with the Eve Wall-E design. And every time ya work a new design, ya gotta do a stitch out ! So I did. And it wasn't a fluke. Used dryer sheets again, under the interfacing, too. I don't know if they work that well, or they're just my lucky charm ! So, in the hoop, there was (in order ) shirt, interfacing, dryer sheets.
Getting the interfacing in the right place and centering the hoop right at the shirt's center front was a challenge. I bet I rehooped his shirt about six times. Learned to draw a crosshair on the interfacing, line it up with the center marks on the hoop. Luckily, I realized that I'd be embroidering on the wrong side of the shirt that way ! Plus, adding the dryer sheet stabilizers made it hard to see the pencil marks. So I pushed straight pins along the crosshairs, and centered the hoop on the pins... which was centered on the crosshairs.
This time, I repeated the stitching on both the car body and the tires, since the white didn't show up as well on the black as I'd hoped, and I already knew I was doubling the tires. Went pretty well ! I'd never done that before. Of course, I'd forgotten that our washer was fritzed when I started. How was I gonna get that interfacing off ? I couldn't put the stitch cover over it, it's permanent, and the stiff interfacing sort of makes a textured shield that's visible on a t-shirt. And what if it washes off in the laundry under the stitch cover ? Well, a bit of picking and a spritz of water took care of that. It peeled right up. Whoo-hoo !
The stitch cover went on just perfectly, on a ‘Wool' setting for 15 seconds. It took me longer to open the packaging it was shipped in than it did to use it. I kinda wish I'd gotten it a bit higher, but it's centered well, and looks good on Dearest. He's looking forward to wearing it tomorrow ! And I'm glad to have learned all that I did. While I was looking for a good shirt to potentially sacrifice, I found another with a small hole...Hmmmm....
Maybe later. Tomorrow, I have to work out the bus driver and bus monitor's candy jar gifts, since I'll forget about it over the weekend, and I don't stand a chance at getting it done Monday, and I'll give them out Tuesday. Once those are done, I'll have space on Brody for a buncha new designs !
