Embroidery:- The Old & The New
Embroidery:- The Old & The New
Back in 1982 I was looking for work, when my boyfriend at the time (now 24yrs married) when he mentioned an embroidery place he used to send work to was looking for a person to do artwork for, as the old guy they had working there wanted to retire.
I went down to the embroidery business (in Sydney, Australia) & asked what they required me to do. I was pretty good at drawing as I have 2 commercial artists (now retired) as parents, so I
applied for the position & got the job straight away. I had never seen embroidery done on a machine before & was intrigued by what the girls were producing. They were doing embroidery the old fashioned way, where you placed a stencil of a design onto the intended piece to be embroidered. This is where I came in, I’d make the designs by first drawing it onto a waterproofed paper, and then pin prick little holes around the lines I’d drawn. When finished the artwork would then go to the stenciling area & be marked on the fabric, ready to embroider. The girls would place the fabric in a hoop & move the hoop around the needle area, while pushing with their right knee on a lever to make the satin stitch wide & narrow.
As I got better at producing the stencils, it took less time for me to finish my work. I then started to help with the marking up of the garments & after they had been embroidered I would help trim the threads & backing.
I watch the girls quite often & got to finally ask if I could have a go on the machines. The boss was fine with me trying it out, so off I went down the embroidery track. I did script lettering when & was asked to leave due to cut backs (& I was pregnant), so when I saw an ad in the paper for an embroidery machine that I could use…I spent the $400 on it!!!
I played around with the machine & got pretty good at it, I was writing names in script on everything when my husband’s car club asked if I could make them a banner…. That was my very first paying job. I ran a hobby business from home as I had 2 babies to look after as well. Embroidery became a large passion to me as well as sewing & doing alterations for people… Word of mouth got me a good little local business over time.
We moved house & area about 7 years ago; I found I couldn’t do as much embroidery as I had arthritis in both hands & elbow. Hubby said I had to slow down & give a lot of the work away, as it wasn’t doing much for my hands, etc.
Just recently hubby bought us a computerised embroidery machine to maybe earn a bit of extra money & I could play still. He always wanted to help me when I was doing embroidery the old way, but he couldn’t get the hang of the machine. Now, because he knows a fair amount about computers he is helping a lot. He used to be a nurse but got a bad back from it, now he feels useful again. Funny thing about it is our first paying job on the computerized machine is doing embroidery on another car club’s shirts this time… what goes around, comes around!! As they say.
Hubby plays with the embroidery & digitising, while I do the same as well as wondering around all these great sites looking at all the embroidery patterns & grabbing some here & there. I also now play with quilting, so incorporate all into one.
By Regina
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