April TIF - Initial Thoughts

How do you see change? That is the “Take it Further” challenge topic for April.

Looking back at my life, I would have to say that I am resistant to change. I have lived my entire life within a twelve-mile radius of my childhood home and have had only three different homes (four if you count a flat sit I did for family friends who went to Australia for 6 months). I have been in my current job for 10 years and only left the previous job of 14 years because I was made redundant. I don’t make major changes with out thinking long and hard them but when things do change I think that I am quick to adapt and settle down.

When I left school and starting work, I brought myself an electric sewing machine. Although it was basic, it did everything I needed it to and I loved it. I did a fair amount of dress making, but it really only had light use and I took great care of it, cleaning it before putting it away and having it served regularly. About two years ago, I did a couple of workshops that touched on free machine embroidery. I could drop the feed dogs on my machine but it was not designed with FME in mind and didn’t cope very well. After a lot of thought I decided to buy myself a new machine - a Bernina Artista that came with a free embroidery unit as a special promotion. For Christmas, a few weeks later, I receive various accessories including a flower stitcher. I imagined myself not only becoming proficient in FME but also learning to digitise and stitch my own designs with the embroidery unit. It is a magnificent machine and a pleasure to stitch on but to date I have only used it for the same type of stitching that I used my old machine. The embroidery unit is untouched as is the flower stitcher and I have only had a couple of brief attempts at FME.

For this challenge, I am going to do a machine-embroidered piece for a change!

Too many posts without pictures lately, so to make up for that here are some that I did earlier!




I made this embroidered box in at a workshop lead by Janet Edmonds. The machine embroidery is not exactly FME and most of it was completed in the class. At home I reverted mostly to hand embroidery to complete the box.

I had made a beaded bead to fasten the threads at the top of the box but unfortunately I lost it.

Happy Stitching