Here is the second project I made for Eileen Roche's Craftsy class: The Machine Embroidered T-Shirt. It's the cowl neck t-shirt and is actually made using 2 t-shirts. You cut up one shirt to use as fabric to construct the cowl neck and then it is sewn on the other shirt which you
wear. It's really easy to embroider on the cowl neck because it is one long piece of fabric. You stitch out 3 designs before sewing it together in a tube and then Eileen shows how to hoop it and stitch out the last design.
I learned a lot from this class. It was my first time sewing on or with knit fabric so that in itself was a new experience. I had to change my needle to a ball point one and also use a stretch stitch on my machine. In terms of the sewing I learned that it is impossible to pick out stretch stitches - which are super tiny zigzags! I started off badly by sewing my 2 panels for the cowl collar together with one side inside out and then I couldn't pick it apart so I had to cut off my seam and start over (resulting in lost width).
I also learned not to start stitching too close to the edge of the fabric because my machine ate it! I can't use a single hole plate with the stretch stitch and when I started sewing I added a lock stitch (where several stitches are sewn in place) and that just pushed the knit right down the hole! I had to stop, unscrew the plate, and remove the fabric by cutting off the tip! Problems, problems! And yeah, I did that twice! Are you kidding me???
One of the tips I shared when I wrote about the first shirt I did for the class, was to wrap the hoops in athletic tape to avoid hoop burn. I thought I would do that this time since I was working on an actual, wearable garment. However, when I started the big swirl stitch-out I got single lines of stitching that I wasn't sure were correct. I posed the question to Eileen on Craftsy and although she replied in a timely manner, I had already stitched out my second design before I learned that there should NOT be a single line of stitches. I thought perhaps it was a design element since it didn't really look bad, but it should actually be a swirl of solid satin stitches. Then I realized the athletic tape was hindering the movement of my hoop on the machine (der...I wrapped both hoops...you should just wrap the inner hoop) and it was not stitching out correctly for that reason. Once I removed the tape, the next 2 motifs came out lovely!
I didn't have any difficulty attaching the collar to the shirt and the end result was quite nice. I think I could actually wear this in the winter since it's nice and warm without being restrictive (I'm not much of a turtleneck person!).
One other thing: Eileen provides an extra digital file with a stand-alone satin stitch circle. It can be used to sprinkle around the cowl neck as an extra embellishment (to link the swirls or add interest to blank space) and I had a lot of fun adding them around the collar.
This class is quite fun for me and I'm enjoying learning more about knits, sewing, and embroidery on clothing. You can use the link above to check out the Craftsy class to get more information.
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