Embroidered Towel--2nd Finish for Finish A Long (FAL) 4th Quarter 2017

Stitching the motif

Goal number 23 on my FAL list for this 4th quarter was to embroider a towel for Miss J. You can review my list here.

Her older sister has had her own embroidered towel for some time. I've been waiting to embroider one for J because J doesn't have a favorite color.  She says she likes all the rainbow colors.

When I'm working on a project that involves a Grand, I try to do as much prep work as I can ahead. In this case, I used my embroidery software to create the design. I printed the pdf of the design so that J would know what we were stitching and then I saved the design to a USB stick.  I hooped a layer of water soluable stabilizer, floated the towel and had a second layer of water soluable stabilizer on the towel face.  It was stitch ready.

We can multitask

When J arrived, she plugged in the USB stick--yes she knows what a USB stick is and where it plugs in to the machine. She won't be four until late next month! Then she liked watching for her design and yes, she can "click" on the design to activate it too!

It was now time for her to choose her thread. If I were choosing the thread, I'd line up the colors I was thinking about and then look at the effect lighter or darker shades had together before making my final selection.

When I asked J what two colors she wanted to choose, she immediately responded that she wanted purple and green. I opened the thread container. She looked in the box and just as quickly as she had responded to the color options, she chose a purple and a green thread. She didn't spend a minute with her selection!

Finished towel design

I picked out a shade lighter and darker of each of her selections and asked if she wanted a different purple or green. Oh, the "look" she responded with was priceless. She was telling me, she already made this decision and was ready for the next step. She reminded me of a saying my dad would utter as we were headed out the door. . ."Get it in gear, we're wasting daylight!" Usually, he would have said this before the sun had risen so I wondered how we could be wasting daylight if there was no daylight! At any rate, her actions and her comments sure reminded me of her auntie. Those two could be clones!

Next, J pushed the green start button on the machine and we were stitching the project. She LOVED watching the letters of her name stitch and kept saying that is my name. She didn't miss a stitch. When the machine moved to the green motif stitches, J started losing interest. We also had a number of thread breakages which made the process longer. To keep her entertained, I invited her to pick out a book to read. She brought me a chapter book which I thought would have been better entertainment for a school age child; but, she seemed to like the story!

Modeling the finished towel

When the stitching finished, her day with us was ending. So I rinsed the towel to remove the stabilizer and dried it for her return. When J saw her towel hanging in the bathroom, she was excited. I asked her if she wanted to try it out which meant would she like to take a bath? Her reply was to strip off her clothes on the spot! (I took that action to be a resounding YES!)

Once out of the bath, I wrapped the towel around her and she wanted her picture taken. When I showed her the photo, she gleefully said, "Gran, it FITS!"  Her response and then not wanting to take the towel OFF just warmed my heart through and through!

The rest of the day, she "needed" to wash her hands often and ALWAYS used "her" towel to dry her hands. I'd surmise that she likes/loves her towel!

I still need some help to better position the towel so that the design is more square. This was a terrific project to help me get reacquainted to the embroidery portion of my machine since it has been a long time since I've embroidered!