Quilt Making: A Journey
Saddled With a New Project
When I moved in with my sister for college, this was the first craft project she wanted help tackling. Fast forward a year and we’re still not done! Eventually, it will be a quilt with each square based on characters from one of her favorite games. This seems to be Ben and Boogs' favorite project too! Its still an ongoing process, but I have learned a lot about embroidery already!
The Hardware
The machine we use is a Janome Memory Craft 350E. Its our secret weapon and what makes all of this possible. Hand embroidering takes hours and I sure don’t have that skill! But I can find the right file type to give to the Janome and let it embroider for me! We just started with finding patterns that matched each of the characters and using the machine to order them on the square. That worked out fabulously! ...for about 2 weeks. Then we ran into an issue. There were images we wanted, but they didn’t exist.
Inkstitch
This is where we got our second secret weapon, Inkscape. The program by itself allows you to make vector images. However, when you download the add on, Inkstitch, you can turn those vecor images into embroidery patterns. So thats exactly what I did. I started making embroidery patterns. It was a steep learning curve, but once I got it down, I could make things fairly quickly.
Testing, Testing, Testing Some More
I didn’t anticipate just how difficult it would be to perfect the patterns. Yes I could make something the Janome could recognize and stitch, but that didn’t mean it looked good. I had to mess with stitch length, border widths, sizing, all the jazz. But eventually I got it looking, if not perfect, at least good enough.
Embroider Til You Drop
This is when the grind really set in. We need about 75 embroidered squares. Each takes about an hour or so between switching threads, selecting colors, preparing the hoops, creating the design, and stitching it down. Now you might understand why its still not done! As for right now, we’re about halfway done and the journey continues!
Like what you see? Check out my other projects!
