Embroidery Workshop

As a part of learning new techniques, we had a workshop on hand embroidery last Tuesday. On that day we learnt about different industrial sewing machines and the digital fabric printing machine.

please ignore the collage. i stole it from my mums fb

When I was younger, I always liked sewing and watched a lot of 'DIY Clothes' tutorials on YouTube. I liked sewing so much that I had even made a baju kurung as a part of my 10th grade - Personal Project where I studied traditional Malay clothing.

It was my first time using a proper machine and I spent about 3 - 4 days working on it with the help of a family friend.

When I heard that we would be having an embroidery workshop I was honestly very excited because I enjoy making things with my hands. I had no idea that a manual embroidery machine existed as I always thought that they were machine controlled but then that doesn't really make sense because how on earth would people be able to do that without the technology we have today.

I also think that it's really cool how our campus now has a digital fabric printing machine and it was really cool how we got to see the process. When I was working on my major project during my Diploma, my project was based off of reusable packaging for food services such as Dah Makan. I had designed two patterns for my fabric and got them printed onto cotton. Which was a bad idea because the colours kind of bled. I didn't really have a choice though because I required cotton for my specific packaging as I was incorporating beeswax. Now that I've learnt that cotton does not work with this type of printing, I will definitely not make the same mistake again.

When we got to the actual embroidering part I thought we were going to do something like this. I think what we were doing was more of a fabric collage? I still had fun anyways. I was struggling to cut out my pieces in the beginning because I wasn't able to trace the pieces as the fabric was too thick. Then I realised that I could just cut up my pattern and use it as a template 🤦.

I based my piece off of a photo I saw on Tumblr which I thought looked cool with the different textures. I ended up doing one pair of legs instead of two because a) I didn't have much time. b) I was getting tired of trying to make my stitches the same length 😂. I wanted to add smaller beads onto the socks but there weren't any small enough that could fit through my needle.

PS. I don't have many pictures as I tend to forget to take photos of things when I'm doing/learning stuff.