Welcome your New Robot Overlords!

Robots Completed

Now to make the quilt...

And my granddaughter (AKA Voracious Reader) wanted to learn embroidery this weekend. This is her very first project! Pretty darn cool, if I say so myself!

More Robots

My mom and grandma taught my sisters and I how to do this kind of embroidery when I was eight or so, about the same time they taught me to knit. For awhile, no pillowcase in the county was safe from iron-on transfers. I hadn't done any in many years, and I had forgotten how much fun it is. I'm having a blast with these guys.

And, of course, I sing this song as I work...

Robots and Quilts

I got a couple of new quilt templates. The apple core one is fiddly but not difficult. It's easier to sew the curved seams on the machine than I expected.

I don't know what I'll do with the template yet- this is just a sample block from leftover 5" pieces. Evidently, every couple of years, I feel the need to buy precut collections whose colors are very similar...

The half-hex is also fiddly, but it works pretty well (ignore the far right row- it got off somehow). I do like how this goes together though. I'm intrigued. This is a sample block too- both of these will go in a jumble quilt eventually.

This herringbone pattern went together quickly- these are all leftover fabrics. I guess I have a pink and green phase every couple of years too.

And I'm still working on the robot embroidery. It's such fun.

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

They're spaced so that the embroidered part can be an 8" block, which I will sash with rainbow colored strips.

What 3 months, and 28,000 hand stitches, looks like, and the next tv-watching project

Further experimentation

Remember the Mucha transfer and the 14ct needlepoint mesh? I haven't started work on it yet because I'm not done with Arhelon, but I knew when I made the transfer that the image would be better served by using a smaller mesh, like, oh, say, an 18 count. Well, the 18ct canvas that I bought on eBay arrived today, and in the nature of further experimentation, I decided to make an identical transfer and iron it to the 18 ct just to see how it looked (the canvas isn't wasted if I don't use it, I can either use it with a charted design, or I can iron another image on the back side).

The first thing I found out is that printable t-shirt transfer sheets for dark fabric aren't the same as t-shirt transfer sheets for light fabric. For some reason, the image didn't transfer to the canvas at all. I mean, not even a spec. I have no idea what I did wrong, but I'm sure it was something. So mysterious.

I have more light transfer sheets coming, but I'm too impatient to wait, so I used the leftover piece from the first transfer, and ironed that on the 18 ct mesh. There was enough *ink* left to make a transfer. The design was very faint, of course, but still visible.

I positioned the plain paper printout of the image under the new printed mesh...

and used a sharpie to trace the most important outlines. 

 Here are both of the canvasses side by side- the 14ct (on the right) is prettier of course, because it has far more ink. But even at a distance, I can see that I'll get much more detail in the finished piece if I work the 18 ct (with embroidery floss most likely).

And even though the colors aren't perfectly transferred to the canvas, I can refer to the printout for help. I will probably do both faces though, just as a comparison, though I doubt I'll needlepoint both full images- there are far too many other designs I'd like to tackle.

But I'm not starting either one until I finish Arhelon. I'm over half done now. Woohoo!!!