Embroidery--Taking a photo to stitches

The photo

Last September, I attended an informational class on the V-8 Embroidery Software. It was terrific that Thea Jirak, owner of Quilting Delights, brought Claudia Dinnell in to provide an overview of the new software.

Thea schedules Claudia for workshops at Quilting Delights several times a year; however, this was the first time that I had the pleasure of attending a class she taught. She is a motivating instructor. She shares tips and short cuts. I'm glad I attended!

I want to be comfortable with the embroidery software! The problem is that I don't spend time applying the lesson to the software after the class. Sometimes, the project doesn't interest me. Sometimes, I have to buy a pattern to make the project and sometimes, I'm up against a deadline so I don't make the time to practice!

Goal number five on my annual list is to improve my embroidery skills. Last month, I actually embroidered a letter on a project. This month, I decided to try the January software lesson which was to turn a photo into a stitch out!

First try

One tip listed about choosing a photo was to use a photo that didn't have a defined background. Another tip was to limit the subject matter. I chose a photo I had taken of the daffodils in our yard.

It wasn't a difficult project to make the adjustments using the embroidery software. Because the stitching is dense, the maximum dimension recommended to be stitched is about six inches.

This is about an eight inch wide by 10 inch long project. That is why you see four blocks. I was surprised at all the different colors and even though I printed the print preview, the thread colors in the stitch out didn't match up to the photo on the screen at the end.

I'm new at embroidery so the probability that I was the cause of the error is probably 100 percent! Although, there were parts of the stitch out I liked, there were other parts not so much.

After adding more stitches

I decided to add more thread. After all there are more than 140,000 stitches in the project so I didn't see a problem adding more stitches!

I liked the results better. I stitched this on a piece of felt using two layers of cut away stabilizer. The preview stated it would use 663 feet of bobbin thread! The preview listed how much of each thread it would use as well which is a nice feature.

It took about six hours for the machine to stitch the design. The run time suggested in the print preview was about three hours and 15 minutes!

I don't see myself converting other photos to stitches. Other than framing the work, I don't know how to utilize this piece of art. Although, I'm wondering if this piece could be incorporated into a tote bag somehow. Hmm. . .that could be a project for next quarter.