Embroidered Jean Jacket

17 Jul Embroidered Jean Jacket

I’ve been practicing my embroidery. After trying out two designs on muslin with no purpose other than to serve as practice examples, I went in to ‘Just Do It‘ mode.

I grabbed a very old denim jacket out of a closet and began to explore with the Pfaff embroidery designs which came with my machine. My plan was to sew whatever struck my fancy….

and little by little I covered the back of the jacket.

Had I googled ‘Embroidered Denim Jackets‘ I might have actually planned my design…….. but then that wouldn’t really be practicing, and my practice sessions were quite fun.

Pfaff’s Creative 4.5 Embroidery and Sewing Machine makes machine embroidery simple for beginners like me. In a nutshell……

1. Select the design
2. Attach the hoop
3. Thread the machine and push go.

Here’s the details…………

The Pfaff Embroidery Collection book is a catalogue of all of the embroidery designs loaded into the machine.

Each design’s size is listed along with color coordinating threads should one wish to duplicate the colors. I went for more of a fantasy design and did my own thing. Below is an example of a design I used twice on the jacket. Beside the illustration you can see the mirrored image in my own color selection in the photo.

 

Once the touch screen is activated all of the editing icons are visible, allowing you to resize, duplicate, move  and add  multiple designs to the screen.

In my second session with Ilse, I learned how to apply Pfaff’s “Precise Positioning” feature to each design. The feature allows you to place a design on an exact spot on your fabric. I began the jacket experiment before fine tuning the Precise Positioning feature, but understood it very well by the time I finished.

I saved the front of the jacket to embellish last, and I selected the image below to place on each side, which was mirrored for balance.

Placement was key, but I easily positioned the design so the two sides were perfectly even.

I might describe the back of the jacket as delightfully haphazard with off-center dragonflies and gigantic butterflies, but oh well……. it’s colorful, cheerful, and I learned along the way.

I also used this opportunity to experiment with stabilizers. I tried cut-away, tear-away and water soluble stabilizers. My preferred stabilizer for this project was the tear-away which was a good weight for the heavy fabric and easier to remove than the cut-away.

A few design details: (LOL)

• The large agapanthus was my first embroidery application on the jacket and I was delighted it ended right in the center!
• I’m loving the ‘Endless Fluer Monique’ design (two outer flowers)
• The dragonflies are embroidered in groups of 5.
• The 47 small flowers are individual designs. Though I could place several on the screen, the machine stitches one at a time, and I changed the thread for each flower and each center. Same with the leaves.
• The red/purple upper right butterfly is the first design I strategically placed with the Precise Positioning.
• By the time I finished the back I knew what to do with the front 😉

Many thanks to Coats and Clark for the fantastic embroidery thread! They sewed beautifully without a single snag. I love the quality of thread and beautiful colors.

In closing I can only think of Picasso’s quote ~
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

Reaching a comfort level is always a good feeling….. as long as we don’t become too comfortable 😉

Until soon!