Friday, June 29, 2012

Dusting off my embroidery attachment...

Hello lovely readers. I hope that everyone has had a nice week. I have been staying really busy in order to better distract myself from diet induced hunger, and some of that busy work has turned out quite nicely!

A few days ago I was at Ikea looking for fabric for an apron project (more on that later) and I stumbled across these lovely kitchen towels.


I have long put off embroidering kitchen towels, something I have deemed a home decor essential... to be done some rainy day when I run out of things to do (as if I could) but these appealed to me enough to jump their way to the top of the to-do list.


So I pulled out my trusty embroidery attachment and plugged it into my machine. Here is how it went down. There were two towels and I wanted to do each of them exactly the same, so that involved some measuring. In order to get both the same, I started by embroidering a practice piece first so that I could know exactly where in the embroidery frame the embroidery would end up.


I was aiming for the bottom right corner, which is where the lovely checked towel border forms a corner. I positioned the machine as far lower right as it would go, and then did my practice run.


 Once the embroidery was finished, I measured exactly how far from each frame edge the top left of the "D" in Depew ended up and made a note of it. And just in case I lost that note (happens more often than you would think) I made a quick basting stitch along the border of my practice run. I can save this for later and maybe it will work with another project.


I decided that I wanted the embroidery on my towels to be 2" from the border on each edge so I did some measuring and marked in a blue basting stitch where I needed the "D" to start.


Getting the towel exactly in the right spot in the embroidery frame was ridiculous and frustrating but I eventually got it in place.


Once I hit "start" on my machine, the needle automatically repositioned itself to the starting point, and hovered quite obediently right over my little blue basting stitch. Needless to say, I was quite pleased with myself.


 Once finished I clipped my threads I repeated the entire process with the second towel. Naturally it went much more smoothly the second time around.


After several ironing's I still couldn't quite get rid of the embroidery frame crease on the towel, but I'm sure that a good washing will do the trick.


Voila, my lovely custom kitchen towels that are so white and crisp I can't bring myself to actually wipe my hands on them, thus completely defeating the purpose.

My husband had a great laugh about this and after two days of me walking about the kitchen with wet hands, both towels ended up looking too fancy to touch in my nice black and white guest bathroom. We'll let our friends deal with the towels that scream "don't touch me!" and make a game of seeing how many people leave the guest bath with wet hands.

It's a Depew thing.


P.S. I have been curious for a while now. How does the blog width and picture size work for you? Is it too wide or just right? Do you have to scroll over to read content? Are the pictures too big? I have a very wide screen monitor so it looks normal to me but I know that's not the case everywhere. I just want to make sure that the blog is as easy to read as possible. I would really appreciate your feedback!

10 comments:

  1. Neat towels! I'm planning to upgrade my machine when I get my tax return in a couple of months. Not sure if funds will stretch to a machine that can do embroidery but this sure is a cool idea :-D

    The pic format is fine for me too - my screen is big and I like blogs with bigger pics!

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  2. Awesome towels! Your so lucky you have an embroidery machine that does that in a jiffy!

    P.S. The pictures look great on my computer. The bigger the picture, the better in my opinion.

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  3. I have a 15" laptop screen and the blog shows up perfectly, no scrolling needed.
    Love the embroidery on your towels.

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  4. Screen size is fine for me - I have a wide screen, also. I love your new kitchen towels, and I know exactly what you mean about not wanting to mess them up. Best to let someone else spill a stain-inducing cosmetic or foodstuff on them for you, so that you can: a. hold a grudge against them for "ruining" your lovely towel and b. bring them into regular circulation towel duty in your kitchen. (post script: I am teasing about holding a grudge. There are far more important things on which to use your grudges -- don't waste them on kitchen towels.)

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  5. My dear Mrs. Depew, Your blog looks just beautiful on the screen of my computer as well as on the screen of my iPad (version1.0). Keep up the good work!

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  6. I can sooo identify with that. I made a set of funky crisp T - towels for the kitchen and get an old stained checked one out if I actually need to dry anything!

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  7. You've inspired me to get out my embroidery attachment and use it to. This is a great idea - very cute.

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  8. Hi Anna - I'm just now starting to catch up on reading blogs as the whole "moving" thing has gotten in the way. Anyway, your is the first that I am checking. I love your embroidered towels - and totally understand about not wanting to ruin them. My completely ridiculous suggestion would be to make two sets - one that you don't mind getting all mucky and another set that you set out when you want your kitchen to look nice (like for entertaining). Otherwise I am just like you and would find myself wiping my hands on my clothes rather than my super cute towels (if I had super cute towels).

    On the note about the blog width, I have a small laptop and can read your blog just fine. I have to scroll a bit to see everything on your right sidebar - but I don't really care about that since I focus more on the blog content. And the pictures are just right, I'm not a fan of the teeny tiny blog photos that some people post - so bigger is better than too small, but again yours are just right :)

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  9. Haha poor guests with wet hands! Blog size and pictures always come up perfectly on my computer; I always enjoy reading about your exploits :)

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