My 4-year-old granddaughter found a hole in her favourite trousers. She likes this garment so much because it is made from very soft needle cord. The trousers are well worn and weren’t new when she first had them but she didn’t want to give them up just yet.
She thought I might be able to patch the hole with a flower! I suggested she draw the sort of flower she would like and I would see what I could do. This is what she came up with:
Of course it is a pink flower because that is her favourite colour!
I have had Bernina Embroidery Software Designer Plus since V3. Now on V7 it is a sophisticated and powerful tool for creating your own designs and generally having fun!
I scanned the picture and opened it in the software. I shrank it to a suitable size in Artwork Canvas then moved to the Embroidery Canvas. Here the various elements were manually digitised. This is just like tracing and easy to do with clicks of the mouse.
I ignored the colours of the picture to start with and used a different colour for each element. I find it easier to keep track of everything this way. Even the pink petals were different colours to start with. I make great use of the Colour Film to select and reorder parts the way I want them to stitch out.
Some parts were grouped to keep them together once arranged. I always use the Slow Redraw facility to check how everything will stitch out and look for ways to minimise jump stitches.
It was quite tempting to make the embroidery design more sophisticated than the drawing but I tried to limit this. For example the leaves were left with a single fill rather than adding veins and playing with direction of stitch.
I did add Wave Fill to the petals to better distinguish them from each other. A stitched border helped to stabilise the design and made it easier to cut out the motif accurately after stitching.
The final patch was hand stitched to the trousers because I couldn’t be bothered to undo leg seams and embroider directly on the garment for such a small design.
This was a delightful and quick project. It was lovely to work with the freshness of a child’s drawing. Everyone admires the new feature on the trousers.
A similar idea could be useful for anyone starting to explore the software because the results do not need to be sophisticated and the ‘customer’ is easy to please.
I’m happy to say the trousers are being worn again but maybe not for long because my granddaughter is growing so tall. Maybe the younger sister will take them over!
I’m pleased you liked the idea, John. The patch may well end up in a quilt my daughter is planning from outgrown baby clothes! Thank you for the feedback.
Beautiful Ros – and she will be proud as punch that it is HER drawing on the trousers too!
Thanks, Hilary. It was fun to do for my little charmer!
Hi Ros,
How delightful! A wonderful way of pleasing a small child and preserving her artwork. I bet she thinks her granny is very clever (which she is). Hilary