Craft Patterns and Machine Embroidery – Laughing Moon
Mercantile
JoAnn Peterson, May 18, 2018
I became fascinated by machine embroidery many years ago,
probably at the very same moment I saw a machine in action. I learned to hand embroider when I was about
7 years old and have done some hand embroidery on and off throughout my
life. But watching a machine do in
minutes what could take me days was spellbinding. Having then been bitten by the bug I spent
hours looking at websites trying to find designs to purchase that looked
remotely Victorian, Regency, or Georgian.
I would have settled for 20th Century. But no.
I drew the conclusion that I would have to make my own. It was some 4 years ago now that I flew all
the way to Costa Rica to learn to digitize and make my own embroidery
designs. I went to a multi-day class
given by one of the gurus of digitizing, John Deer. Not John Deere, the tractor maker, but John
Deer who had been involved with machine embroidery since the days when only one
embroidery machine would fill an entire room.
At the class I discovered that while digitizing was relatively easy, the
person doing it could make all the difference.
After all, an embroidery machine is just a sewing machine on
steroids. It only does one thing. It may be able to do it forward, backward,
left, right, and upside down, but it is still just one thing. And, you don’t have to be a trained artist to
make designs. You only must know how to
copy, a dubious talent I have turned into a profession. Once I had learned to digitize, spent a
horrendous amount of money on the software and hardware necessary to do it, I
began with a project that had interested me for decades. My obsession was the embroidered boots made
by Francois Pinet in the late 1890s in France.
I began many years ago trying to reproduce them using ribbon embroidery
by hand. But the project
languished. So, my interpretation of
these boots this was the first project I wanted to do in machine
embroidery. The result is two different
sewing patterns for little boots. One
for the easier to do simple shapes that could be made as bags or
pincushions. The other for a
three-dimensional boot that would be much harder to make but would be a closer
representation of the original boots.
These little boots can be made without any embroidery of any kind. However, the machine embroidery is available
separately for all four sizes in the two patterns. I actually finished the patterns and
embroidery designs and sent them out to testing more than 2 years ago. But life intervened and I did not make them
available until now.
And before you can get out “But JoAnn, I don’t have an
embroidery machine!” I will say that I’m not buying it. It has been my experience that almost every
hamlet in America has a least one embroidery business who can do it for you for
a reasonable price.
It may seem that for Laughing Moon Mercantile this new
direction is a bit of a tangent. I don’t
think so. It’s been brewing for what
seems like forever. I have a few other
ideas and projects partly done that will continue in this vein; that is sewing
patterns with accompanying machine embroidery.
I will also continue to make standalone sewing patterns.
I hope you find the new patterns and embroidery to be lots of
fun to make. I had a great time doing
them. Thanks!
JoAnn
The photo is of the original boots, now in the Bata Shoe
Museum.
Following is my impression of these boots. Here's a photo of the 2 sizes of the little sachets and a photo of a large boot made into a pajama bag or Christmas Stocking in LMM 200 and embroidery design 300.
Here is the small 3D Opera Boot in LMM Craft pattern 201 using machine embroidery 301. This boot is more difficult to make than those in the pattern 200.
