International Love of Cross Stitch and Hints for Perfect Stitching Result!

Why Cross Stitch? With the Olympics going on in China, it seems that some of the members of the Chinese teams share our love of this wonderful craft. Please go to the following webpage to see a fascinating article about how internationally loved, Cross Stitch can be! See Article…  ... [More]

Oh, Brother, are my brown eyes green!

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Redwork - A Super-Simple Beginner's Project

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Olympic Rings, Cartoons, Questions and Paris!

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LaRueSews - Things to Consider Before You Begin Quilting

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Shopping Up A Storm

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Hello All You Happy Stitchers !

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. . . and a good time was had by all!

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Welcome to the AnnTheGran Community!

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An Addiction to Embroidered Greeting Cards

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Learning by Teaching, Teaching by Learning

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Quilters and Machine Embroiderers - Their Common Threads

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Time flies, whether you're having fun or not.

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Recent Changes and New Features - The Magic Bookshelf Under Construction

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Of course I like green but what’s this KIWI craze really all about?

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Grandchildren, gotta love 'em!

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Hand Cross Stitch leads to Machine Embroidery Cross Stitch

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Time to Get Comfortable - Making the Magic Bookshelf Your Own

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Does size matter? Well, that all depends.

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When you need really BIG letters

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What's in a name (tag)?

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Fathers and Dads and Daddies and Grandpas and Poppies, oh my!

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GETTING ORGANIZED...or one can at least hope!

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Sun in Florida - Shade in Holland (quick and easy project)

Sun in Florida - Shade in Holland (quick and easy project)

Only a couple of weeks to go before I meet you all at the Community Circle Event in Orlando Florida. I will meet you all, right? You just have to come: in two days you will learn more than you could learn in two years on your own. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then lecture demos are worth a thousand books!

I can hardly wait to fly to sunny Florida. And waiting for that sun here in the grey, misty and snowy Holland, I thought up a quick and easy project: a lamp shade.

Instead of blogging away here, I will just let the photos do most of the talking for this "craft" project:


Rose and pattern piece in Pre-Design Studio

Start in Pre-Design Studio and draw a flower, swirls, spirals, border scalops, anything you like.
Resize so it will fit the hoop you are going to use (I used my clamp hoop 100x180 mm - 4x7 inch).
I made two drawings, one including the pattern piece of the lamp shade and another one with just the rose to embroider.


Choose menu File > Convert to Stitches, use the settings shown below:

Rose only - convert to stitches

Save the resulting DST on a USB thumb drive and insert it into your embroidery machine.

If you have the clamp hoop, just put the coverboard sheet between top and bottom hoop and close the hoop. For other hoops: cut the plastic material in exactly the shape of the inner hoop and just lay it inside that inner hoop.

Embroider the DST design: no top or bobbin thread. Use a needle size 100/16. IMPORTANT: hold the start button of your machine to stitch the design at a real low speed of 1 stitch per second. That way you get perfect holes:

Hold start button and sew at low speed

Print the design from Pre-Design Studio, and use as a pattern to cut the plastic shade pieces:

use the print out to cut the pattern pieces

Punch holes in the sides:

Punch holes in the sides

Sew the pieces together (yes, by hand) with a big decorative chain stitch:

Sew pieces together

A little extra light, to brighten the days until we're in Florida

Shade in Holland

Done! I'm all set to start making notes for the next project in my little Moleskine notebook.

On to the next project

 

See you soon!

 

Loes

 

P.S. with all these crazy projects I am making these days, I hope you do know that Pre-Design Studio is meant to create artwork for embroidery digitizing software, don't you?

In my next blog I will make a mini tutorial how to use my Pre-Design Studio and Brother's PE-Design Lite together - the two programs are a match made in heaven. Together with Pre-Design Studio, PE-Design Lite can do things it normally can't. I will show this in detail in Florida as well. 

 

Comments (4) -

This project is great!  I cannot wait to hear more about digitizing.


You are so right about in person demonstratons, they will teach us so much.  I cannot wait to meet you in Florida.


Pat


Hi Pat,


I am looking forward to meeting you too! My first goal is to make everyone at the Community Circle happy with their digitizing software with lots of exciting ideas. My second goal is to turn you into a digitizer Smile


Loes


Oh one important thing I forgot to add (thanks Kathleen for pointing that out to me):


as the coverboard is made of PVC it's a good idea to use a low wattage bulb to be sure it doesn't get too hot. Also be sure that the bulb is not touching the shade.


Loes


Wonderful project - thank you!


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