Phase 3: Prep Work

I took this week off of work because my birthday is this weekend and I like to celebrate in style (i.e., do no work for an entire week). It's amazing how much embroidery I can accomplish when I'm not working 40+ hours a week. 😂 

Anyway, I had finished the framing up process on Hiogi, but I still wasn't ready to start the actual stitching. I had some final prep work to do. First, I needed to check that my framing up was straight, and then I needed to add the final elements of the pattern.

Because this pattern involves the fuzzy effect technique, which is stitched along the weft lines, it's apparently important that the weft lines be as straight as possible. I have a hard time following a weft line with my eyes, so I took my tutor's advice and basted a line of thread along one of the valleys in the weft:

The thread is a bit hard to see in this photo because it's the same color as the fabric, and the picture is at a slight angle, so it doesn't look very straight. But I laid a ruler perpendicular to my frame to test the basted line's straightness, and it seemed pretty even with the ruler:

At any rate, I decided it looked straight enough for my purposes. 😂 Now it was time to turn my attention to the pattern.

As mentioned in a previous post, JE patterns do not include all the lines when the pattern is transferred to the fabric. They say this is to avoid distortion once the fabric is stretched and taut, but this makes no rational sense based on the pattern lines they do transfer and those they don't. They transfer some curved lines but not others, transfer some straight lines but skip others, and sometimes transfer entire circles but not semi-circles. Who knows why this is? 🤷 It's just something I've decided to accept. And it means I have to transfer any lines they don't transfer.

Sooo, first up was the upper, rounded edge of the fan. I photocopied the pattern and pinned it on the fabric, trying to get the design on the upper edge covered while getting it centered on the piece:

I struggled with this step but decided to give it a go and begin the Japanese running stitch along the edge of the paper. Japanese running stitch is basically basting, but most of the thread shows on top of the fabric. The stitches on the underside are very tiny. Here you can see a few of the stitches:

As you may already be able to tell from my placement of the paper on the fabric two photos up, the pattern line didn't turn out right:

The thread is hard to see, but if you look closely, you can see that the gap between the fan lines and the thread is much wider on the right than the left. At this point, I had a better idea of how to place the paper, though, so I tried it again:

This looks much more evenly placed along the right and left sides to me. And, in fact, when I finished stitching it, it was much more even:

The running stitch is flush at the top and gradually widens down both the left and right sides, but the gap is pretty equal. I felt much better about this attempt, so I moved on to stitching in the second side of the cords.

As you can see in the photo above, only one side of each cord is transferred, except in a couple of small segments on the righthand cords. I measured those and found they were right between 7 and 8mm apart, so I took my handy triangle and measured that same distance to determine where to place the other side of the cords that had only one line:

Here's one set of cords finished:

I think that looks pretty great. Once I had done both sides, that completed my prep work for Hiogi. Here it is with all the missing lines stitched in:

Again, this photo isn't very good. I really have a hard time getting white to show up on white in photos. There's probably a technique that makes it more visible, but I'm not a photographer, so it's hit or miss for me. But in person, I think it looks pretty good.

There is, however, one little issue with my pattern transfer. I used pins with colored heads to pin the paper to the fabric. There was paper between the pin heads and the fabric, and I've used these pins hundreds of times before and never had them leave a mark on fabric even when pinned right against it. But alas, such was not the case this time. In three or four different spots, the pinheads somehow left dark little marks like this:

I tried water, mild detergent, diluted white vinegar, and diluted hydrogen peroxide. None of these things harmed the fabric, but none of them removed the dots either. 😢 Most of the dots are in places that will be covered anyway, but not this one. Sigh.

I will ask my tutor if she knows of any tricks. But if, as I fear, this is permanent, I will just stitch a few scattered Japanese knots around the piece and call it a design variation. 😂