Farkle

A couple of years ago I saw these ribbon dice by Koplow Games at GenCon Indy--the Best Four Days of Gaming. I bought a pink set of six for my friend Kara who walked in a Breast Cancer 3 Day. Last year after I was laid off, I decided to create Farkle games for nephews and nieces as a Christmas present. I have a friend whose mother used to own a game store and still has an account with one of the game distributors. He was able to get me a good deal on a bunch of blue and pink ribbon dice. I bought about a yard of black velvet and some black cording. I found a copy of the rules on-line and printed up some copies. It took me a while to create the ribbon design that I was happy with. I was working with the version 4 software and really did not know what I was doing. You can see a print sample of the ribbon in a previous post. The hardest part was getting the border that I wanted. I actually had to draw the entire thing. With version 6 and with the knowledge I now have, it would be much easier. It is hard to see in the small picture, but the stitches are horizontal and I really wanted them to go with the contour of the ribbon. At the time I did not know how to do it, but now I know how to use one of the digitizing tools to create the design with the stitches going in the direction I want. I think I embroidered ten of each color--I ran out of blue at one point and searched all over Sumter (South Carolina--where my parents and my sister live) and had to use a slightly different shade on the remaining blue bags. Unfortunately, they did not get to all the intended recipients and I still have several--I feel bad because I don't know who got them and who didn't. I gave one set to my friend Andi last year when she walked in the Breast Cancer 3 Day with Kara. Farkle is a fast paced dice game that I find many people like--it is great to play around a table as everyone socializes. Farkle comes in many different flavors and can be found most anywhere including Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart and Toys R Us. If you buy a Farkle set, look for one by Legendary Games since they are a local Kansas company. Here are a couple of links to some of the Farkle sets at Amazon.com.

Shopping Bags

At Thanksgiving, my sister Tammy--the namesake for the blog--wanted to give all the females a "gag gift"--which was just something inexpensive. I am not sure where she came up with the idea, but she took some inexpensive reusable shopping bags from TJ Maxx and embroidered the person's first initial on it. It was doing these bags that she became so enamored with the Curlz MT font. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of the original bags and I was thinking my sister might post some of the pictures, but alas she is busy with grades and such--and maybe a little technically challenged.

Anyhow I decided to do a couple of bags myself for some people. We found some bags at Bed, Bath and Beyond that were fairly inexpensive--and I had a gift card that I had gotten using my Discover Card cash back rewards.

The first I did was for my friend Rebecca. I chose the teal blue thread, because I thought it would stand out nicely. In the end, I am not as excited about the color choice, but I am real happy with the size. The letter is about 6 inches tall total which stands out well on the bag which is fairly big itself. The bags are about 16 inches by 20 inches (and about 7 inches wide). Last year's bags evidently had the logo on the bottom of the bag. This year's bags' have the log in the bottom right hand corner.

The second bag was for Rebecca's Aunt Cynthia. Last year, when Roland and Rebecca came over to open gifts and decorate a gingerbread house, they brought Aunt Cynthia who was visiting from Michigan. I was happy so she decided to come over and I gave her a copy of the Pink Ribbon Farkle I had put together for my nephews and nieces (which is a separate blog post to come in the future). I decided I would pre-emptively make sure I had a gift in case she decided to come along the year. I really liked this bag, but I wish I would have positioned the "C" a little higher so that it was above the bird instead of through its head. I also love the variegated purple thread. The other thing I did was use a satin special stitch instead of the Satin because I was afraid the stitches would snag. I didn't think about it when I did Rebecca's bag and when I noticed how big the stitches were, I decided to change the next one.

Since I wasn't sure if I was going to see Cynthia at my house or at Roland and Rebecca's when I go up there to help make pierogies, I decided to also make a bag for Rebecca's mother Dianne since she will be there to make pierogies. I decided to use a variegate brown/gold on the bag. I would have preferred to have less brown and a little more shades of gold, but I still like it. I don't know if any of the women will like them, but I am not that concerned as I know a few secrets about women--they love to spin when they dance, when they complain they don't want a solution they just want someone to listen and agree, and women love stuff with their initials on it. Don't ask me why these things are true, but my experience says they are--many, many sisters and over 11 years of ballroom dance lessons.

I was concerned about embroidering on the bags as I thought the design would weaken the material. But the bags are really tough and there are some kind of fiber strands woven under the plastic coating that hold really well. I think this is a really cool idea and I wish I would have made more for some friends. I may make some more if I go home for Christmas.

Scarves

Last year my sister made a bunch of scarves for everyone using a strip of fleece and embroidering their initials on the end--actually, I embroidered an awful lot of scarves for my sister. Anyhow, I got to do my own and I decided to do something a little different. My sister did not have the Version 6.0 upgrade yet, so I did this with version 4.0 of the software--it would have been much easier with the new software. It also might have been easier if I had a better understanding of the program. I decided to use my initials in lower case and then encased them in a circle. Using the remove overlap feature, I cut out the initials and then deleted the initials leaving the area blank. I wanted an outline around the circle and the letters, so I duplicated the circle with the initials cutout and changed it from a fill to an outline. The first one did not outline the initials because they were on the inside of the circle. If I hadn't deleted the initials I could have selected each initial and changed it to an outline, but instead I took a much more difficult route--I enlarged and positioned the initials so that each letter just barely broke the circle. I t is probably difficult to see, but by doing this, the outline went into each initial. If you look hard enough you might be able to see where the "f" breaks on the lower left, the "j" breaks at the bottom, and the "k" breaks on the bottom right. I added my favorite fancy fill--rustic ice--and decided to embroider using a green tone so that it would be less obvious and more "artistic". OK, that part didn't work out so well, but I still like it.

This year I decided I would make some scarves for some friends and their kids. For their oldest daughter I used my sister's new favorite font--Curlz MT. I added a ladybug that I copied from another design. It had flowers and other stuff, but I just wanted a ladybug. When she was born I helped them paint the baby room (for the fourth time I think--it was a guest room, their oldest son's room, their second's room, and then their daughter). The walls were painted pink with random white squares that were about 1 foot square. We painted flowers in most of the squares, but my friend Roland painted a ladybug in one of the more prominent. He then call her bug when she was a little baby. I thought the adding of the ladybug would make her Mom and Dad sentimental. I am not so excited about my choice of gray for the spots and the outline. On a black scarf I wasn't sure what to do, but you can still see it is a ladybug.

For the youngest I once again used Curlz MT and added a butterfly. Again I copied it from another design--I think it actually had a little bear and several butterflies. For some reason Roland still calls her bug as a pet name. The picture is a little washed out, but the color is a dark lilac that really stands out on the black scarf.

For my friend's wife I added all the initials--again using the Curlz MT font. I also used a variegated thread which I think makes the initials really cool. The monogramming function in the DesignerPlus Version 6.0 worked really well, but left the middle initial a little smaller than I liked. I was able to select the middle initial and make it bigger while maintaining the overall monogram. This feature was not nearly as robust in Version 4.0 and is even available in EditorPlus V6.0.

For the boys I wanted to also add something to the initial. My friends live in Platte City which is just north of Kansas City. Since it is a small town all the teams for the different schools have the same mascot, which is a pirate. I found a picture of the pirate and did my best to develop an outline of the pirate to add to the initial. The colors of the school are black and orange, so I decided to use orange thread for the pirate. Looking at the picture I am a little disappointed as the design looks so much better in real life.

For the younger son, I used the same pirate outline as an embellishment to the initial. Also, I used a block university font, which I think fits a young man very well. Since I was afraid the long threads might get snagged, I used the Satin Special fill. The Satin fill would have tried to make one long stitch across the letter, Satin Special breaks it up into smaller stitches with the stitch points interwoven to reduce the line pattern. You still get a little bit of a pattern, but again, in real life it is not as pronounced as it looks in the picture.

The last scarf was for Roland. I used an Old English font and put all three initials. For Rebecca I used her last initial in the center and made it bigger which is a very popular style. For Roland I left this initials all the same size and put them first, middle, last order. The initials turned out a little smaller than I wanted, but for a man I figured it would be OK. I now think I should have made the font a little simpler and rotated the design by 90 degrees. I may try that next time I do a scarf.

We also made a scarf for my older sister's granddaughter Noel, but alas we forgot to take a picture. It was very cute and we used the Secret Garden font that comes with the software--all the capital letters are a three color design with little flowers. All the other fonts used were TrueType fonts that were imported into the software. Unfortunately, the EditorPlus software does not allow you to import the TrueType fonts.

To finish off the scarves my sister sews a line at each end and cuts a fringe up to the sewn line. She confessed this year that she sews the line to give her students something to do in her sewing classes.

Cat is out of the Bag

Over Thanksgiving I broke down and told Tammy about the blog. We were doing so much sewing and she was talking about loading the pictures to Facebook so that people could see what she was doing. I don't remember the exact conversation, but I should her the blog and she got kind of excited. I have now set her up so that she can post to the blog herself if she would like. She also evidently told my Mom who in turn told my sister Patti, who I think told some additional relatives. This blog had no visitors for the past several months and today there were a lot of hits on the site. My Google Analytics code is messed up so I don't know the exact number of hits, but my estimated earnings from Google AdSense went up a couple of bucks. So while I write like I am talking to the faceless masses, it is really only my family who has actually read any of it at all.

Photosnap

So after a long break here are a couple of pictures of the actual sew out of designs below. The first is my nephew in his R2-D2 costume where I used the photosnap feature. I didn't have the fabric secured as tightly in the hoop as I had thought and so there are some gathers. Also it is a pretty lightweight test fabric and I was using a medium weight tear-away stabilizer. I think it would have been better with a heavier cut-away stabilizer. I am still learning about the appropriate use of stabilizer.


The second is another version of my nephew with a decorative circular border. The cloth had gotten really loose at this point and I just let it go since it was a test. I still like the possibilities with this function, I just need to figure out how to use it in a practical setting. The hardest part is getting the picture to fewest colors possible and to whiteout the background. The DesignerPlus version 6.0 software comes with a light version of CorelDraw, what it doesn't come with is a user manual. Bernina has some good training videos and support material for their software, but there is pretty much nothing for CorelDraw. I haven't gone out to the Corel site to see what I can find there, yet.

Samples

I decided to post a few things I have digitized over the years. Unfortunately, I don't have all the actual embroidered items, instead these are pictures exported from DesignerPlus. These were mostly designed in DesignerPlus 4.0.

The vacuum cleaner was a picture I found on the web of an Electrolux vacuum. Dad originally worked in an Electrolux store after retiring from the military. When Electrolux closed, he opened his own repair shop. I used the autodigitzer feature and I had difficulty reducing the number of colors to something manageable. The vacuum is recognizable, but does not have the detail I was looking for, but it sewed out nicely. Tammy and I gave him the apron for Christmas and he seemed to like. I haven't been to his shop since, so I don't know if he is actually wearing it or not.

This was done using the photosnap feature in version 6.0. I think photosnap is available in 4.0, but I am not sure because I never used it. The feature was demonstrated at a Bernina class I took and I just had to try it out. It is actually a picture of my nephew wearing his R2D2 costume. I used functions in the light version of CorelDraw that comes with the software to erase the background. It was not easy to do because I had to trace around what I wanted to keep. You can still see some of the background around him. I didn't erase it all because it was just a test and not important enough to take the time to make it exact. I had also a tool to put an oval border around it instead of square. I personally like it better as an oval, but I can't seem to find the file.

This last one for now is what I call the game sampler. A friend of mine wold like dice bags for his dice sets for Runebound, Arkham Horror, and Descent. The seven images in circles are for Runebound and they represent terrain: mountains, forest, river, hills, road, desert, and swamp. I was able to use the blackwork run feature on some of them to keep from having lots of jump stitches. I believe the swamp (tan) is the only one with jump stitches and the desert (yellow) is the only one with a fill--most of them are outlines. The idea is to have each of the dice bags have one of the terrain symbols on it.

The red star in the center is an elder sign from Arkham Horror. I actually embroidered this on a black velvet bag for my friend to use as the "monster cup". My sister sewed the bag together for me. I was thinking of putting the elder sign in different colors on the bags for Arkham Horror. We actually made two bags because while I was embroidering the first, there was something in the way of the embroidery arm and it could not go up far enough on the left. It probably would not have been a problem if the bobbin thread had not broken and we had to back up on the design. When I noticed it, my sister said to back it up to before the issue and let it double embroider and it will be fine. Unfortunately, I could see the double point at the end of the star, so I embroidered a new one.

The last image is that of a meeple from the game Carcasonne. I wanted bags for each color of meeples I had and tried to make bags using this blue velveteen remnant my sister had. I tried different fills on each bag. Unfortunately, the cloth was stretchy and my sister had a hard time sewing the bags. It didn't help that I wanted to make them small bags. Some day I may post pictures of the bags themselves, but for now you can see a single meeple with a step fill.

Welcome

So, I am not really Tammy Jo. She is my sister and teaches Family and Consumer Sciences in a rural high school. She left her machine and software with me to figure it out and then show her how to use it. When she bought the machine she got a copy of Designer Plus 4 and when I visited her I often played with the software. Usually it was Christmas and I was helping finish up presents. She decided to buy the upgrade to version 6 when it came out and I have had the software since.

I am starting this blog to share with others and maybe get some feedback. Maybe eventually Tammy will actually post herself--right now she doesn't even know this blog exists.