Infinite possibilities.

Much of the last week I have spent thinking about what kind of embroidery to put on Sonali's green and white striped shirt. In the past I have done hand embroidered embellishments on doll clothing with great success but it is very time consuming.  It's also limited to my freehand embroidery skills. Luckily my husband is a rockstar! On Friday evening he bought me a professional embroidery machine from the local sewing shop. Now I can put really cool anything and everything (so long as it's not licensed, right Disney?) on whatever I want. I spent the first evening practicing with my new machine and named her Myrna. I was up until 1am that night experimenting with knits, wovens and different combinations of stabilizers. Who knew there was such an art to a computerized process?  It definitely takes practice to get all of the variables just right. For now I'm happy to practice with the built in designs and some that I've gathered from the internet. Myrna has a handy USB port so I can eventually learn to digitize my own designs
My kids love to watch this machine make pictures and spell their names.  My first real project was to label my son's backpack. He has the same bag as quite a lot of other boys at school and it has been mixed up in the past.  My smallest hoop is actually quite big and it didn't fit on the face of his bag so I put it on the back. I actually think this is better since I don't like their names being visible on anything they are wearing in public.

Next up is a dragon for my little guy's plain hoodie. He picked this himself and said "His name is Blackie and he wants a cookie." 

This machine is so much fun to use, I will get some orange and green thread tomorrow to make Sonali's shirt. I'll embroider the fabric before I cut it out. It was a pain to do the backpack and the hoop barely fit between the seams on the hoodie. I may buy a couple of patterns to make my kids some nice clothes with embroideries. I'd like to scratch that itch between making doll things.  I'm also eyeing up our plain towels. Nothing is safe here anymore :)