Hi there! 👋
I am back to blogging after an unexpected hiatus. What can I say? It was a very busy and very fun holiday season.
I spent a lot of my free time playing with my Singer Futura XL-400, a sewing and embroidery machine. I don’t use it much for sewing as I still have my very first sewing machine (a basic Singer) that I love and cherish soooo much.
The first embroidery projects I tried were in early 2017 and were not the best. I didn’t know much about stabilizers and stitch density and all the other exciting embroidery info. I started with monogramming some shirts in my closest and moved on to sweatshirts, towels, and blankets.
After I was comfortable with several types of monogramming, I wanted to make some cute and snarky kitchen towels. I found these designs online and just HAD to try my hand (err, machine) at them!
These gray and white towels are from the brand Pantry and I picked them up at TJMaxx. They’re 100% cotton, which made me think they would stitch nicely and would also be good towels since natural fibers are great at absorbing water. (I had previously tried towels from my local Dollar Tree that were partially synthetic material and thus terrible towels.)
The thing about these towels, though, is that the nap (little loops) makes the designs look a bit fuzzy.
Here are some close-ups:
“I’m sorry for what I said when I was hungry.”
“Give me some sugah.”
“Stupid dishes.”
“Bakers gonna bake.”
“It’s getting hot in here.”
“Oh crepe.”
“They see me rollin’, they hatin’.”
“Whip it good.”
I loved how they turned out, but what I’ve learned is that the thin lines and delicate artwork on these designs would look best on white fabric without a nap.
For my next batch, I will be using 100% cotton flour sack tea towels. I found these towels from Utopia Towels on Amazon; they cost just a little bit more than the Pantry towels (which are more like bar mops) I used but I’m sure the embroidery will pop more on the flour sacks. So stay tuned for ombré towels 2.0 🙂
What are your tips and tricks for machine embroidery? I’d love for you to share your ideas in the comments!
