Behind The Pattern

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Hello!

The sun is shining from a blue sky and you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s spring. But of course it’s not, it’s cold out there. There was frost on the grass and the roof tops when I walked Blake just before sunrise. It was beautiful, but so cold!

If only I could curl up under a bunch of blankets like Blake is as I type this. :-)

But today is not a blanket day for me, I’m working on a project I have put on the back burner for far too long.

In 2020 I did a project where I stitched fifty ‘folk florals dots’ and I started making the pattern for the collection over a year ago and then I guess life and other projects happened and I never got round to it. But now I’m back to working on it. And right here, right now, I’m going to give myself a deadline to finish it by February 1st. Feel free to ask me how it’s going at the beginning of Feb! :-D

Part of the reason I have been putting it off is of course that drawing it for use in a pattern is really tedious. I have to take a picture of each ‘floral’ (thankfully that was already done), and then change the size of the photos so they are not too large to add to the vector drawing program.

Then I have to draw each little motif in the vector program. Sometimes it can be done quite quickly, 10 minutes or so. Other times it can take a lot longer. Half an hour, or more even if it is a really fiddly motif. Because it’s not just drawing them. I have to think about how the drawing will work as a pattern plus how each section will be coloured. For example, if a line is split in two and stitched in two different colours, then the line has to be drawn in two sections. And then of course I have to add the colours to the motifs.

As there are 50 of them the time really adds up! And I have to take breaks because it’s not healthy to sit and work on computer like that for hours and hours.

Once all the drawing is done, it has to be exported for use in the publishing program and I need to take proper photos, edit the photos. Then everything will be put together in the pattern file along with any text necessary.

Making embroidery patterns is 30% happy stitching time and 70% tedious working on the computer time. ;-)

Well, I guess I should get back to drawing my motifs. I may have to bribe myself with a choc chip cookie first. :-D

I hope you have an excellent weekend.

x Carina

P.S In case you were wondering, I did manage to remove the thread colour bleed from my temperature embroidery! Phew!

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On The Blog

Speaking of temperature embroidery: I’m also doing a temperature embroidery for 2022.

I posted a tutorial for the Rhodes stitch.