Monday, May 23, 2011

Embroidery 2.5 : Thesis 0

I'm way into the idea of making e-reader sleeves these days. Switching over to an e-reader was a bit of a shift for me for several different reasons. One of the (admittedly more shallow) reasons is that I have a bit of a nostalgic attachment to paper books and their (often) wonderful covers. E-readers look, well, cold and digital to me. The obvious solution is a handmade sleeve, right? Embroidered sleeve? Heck yes!

I've done a couple non-embroidered sleeves using quilters cotton in fun prints, and I've got some more fabric coming in the mail. But there are already a lot of really great sleeves out there, and embroidery is a way to make something a little different.

My first try at an embroidered one is this hot air balloon, because, well it's what came to mind first. The flap doesn't lay as flat as I'd like it to and the design isn't as stellar as I wanted it to be though, so I decided to keep it for myself instead of listing it.

For my second try, I decided on a walrus.

I'm admittedly not schooled in embroidery. I don't know any fancy stitches, and I don't know how to transfer intricate patterns. So I just kind of did what I thought would work.

First of all, I made a stencil so that I can repeat the design if it's wildly successful.
Once I finished the embroidery, I photocopied it so that I can make a stencil of the word bubble, which wasn't part of the original design. Yay improv! Then I did a color copy of it on cardstock and it came out so well that I decided to make a postcard and send it to a friend of mine who doesn't have an e-reader, but will definitely appreciate the sexy walrus. Which got me thinking that I should use the scanner to make a digital file in case I want to make endless postcards and sell them in the future. I don't know how to work the scanner, so the process is on hold.

In the meantime, I decided to make a little something for another friend of mine, who has a birthday coming up. I ran out of yellow floss though and I can't find anymore like it! Do I just finish with another shade of yellow? That could look really stupid, but if I wait for the right floss to come along, I could be waiting forever. What do I do?

Oh yeah, and I discovered Picnik, a free and easy to use photo editing site. The exposure auto-fix button is the best I've come across (though in all honesty, I haven't really looked around that much).

Anyone else using free photo editing sites that are worth trying?

3 comments:

  1. i love your embroidery!
    i just found out that you can upload photos to flickr, then edit in picnik. pretty awesome! i love free online software! i've been using google docs for stuff and i love it. i wonder if i could do the derby programs on picnik?! or at least the player and ref photos/headshots

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  2. solution to no more yellow: put a hat on her. a little black top hat with a flower.

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  3. I love the top hat idea--it's perfect!

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