What is up Robin here, welcome to another edition of Threadheads.
This week, we are on Austin Texas and we are going to visit some really cool local DIY shops and get a very special interview with an Austin craft mafia member.
Yeeha!
My name is Jenny Heart, I am an embroidery artist and designer and I am the founder of Sublime Stitching. My mother actually has been diagnosed with breast cancer and I was staying at home with her and I had just had all of this time in my hand, so I went “Oh! She can teach me how to embroider and all of the supplies are here so I am going to start” and so then the first thing that I did was a portrait of her and I got addicted. Then, we have moved on to doing rock stars and pin ups and I thought there are other people in my age and younger who by large in considering this as a creative outlet because the resources are not there.
I started supplying stitching and on my first customer, I started designing all the things that I wish for out there that I can find like really simple instructions. I said this is an embroidered hoop, this is how you put fabric on embroider hoop. This is how you thread a needle. Everything just assumes that mothers are still teaching their daughters or their sons and that is just not really the case anymore.
Here is the starting point and here are the tools now. So I am going to show a really simple way to get started on embroidery. You can take an iron on transfer pattern in this case roller derby with a hot iron with the steam off. I am going to preheat the fabric because warm fabric will take the ink more easily and I am going to lay the pattern down. I am going to pass but you really want to be very careful that you do not shift the pattern. Yes, you can reuse this pattern with some special ink or do multiple imprints. There we go.
If you do not have an iron on transfer paper, you can get carbon transfer paper. You just lay it against fabric and you can write your name, you can try some design from a clip art book. If you do not have carbon transfer paper, you can just draw on fabric, you could free hand with a pencil or with maybe some really hard artist charcoal and just switch on to that. You do not have to use an embroidery hoop but an embroidery hoop makes it a lot easier to hold your fabric and I will stretch it out and when you pull your fabric tight kind of like a drum head and I have a needle and it is just a basic sharp needle, there is nothing fancy it is not a special needle which usually comes in the pack with the short needles that is in the middle.
Then this is cotton embroidery floss with six strands. You can separate this strands away for finer detail or you can work with all six which is what I do because I want to put so many stitches.
And, this is a little bit longer but like around on your elbow or past try not to bend. You are going to come up from behind the hoop along your pattern line. Now, I am going to show you my favorite stitch which is a split stitch, you are going to be going back down and you can make your stitches as long or as short as you want because this is about the length of the greater price and then for this stitch I am going to come up in the middle of the last stitch I just made which is why it is called the split stitch because you are splitting it and then you just continue along your pattern line. And if you are finished you can take your needle put it up against the fabric where you want the knot, now pull it and it will tighten up against your fabric right there. So, thread bangers giving away one of my ultimate embroidery kits just check the blog for full details.
Hi! My name is Luke Payment; I am a ninth grade social studies teacher for Torrance California. I think my students are desperate to make some sort of fashion statement but they are horribly misguided, just last week they showed out wearing their underwear outside of their clothes. They look completely inappropriate. Threadheads you got to help us out.
Do not let your school become a fashion horror story. Submit your videos on YouTube be on a running for a DIY fashion make over. Go to threadbanger.com for more details.
Austin got a cool Indy scene with a bunch of little Austin little stores. Head down the congress add and check out some of the small boutiques like Blackmail, Creatures, and Hovercraft which have this painting of George Bush stepping on an Iraqi babies head which made for interesting to court.
This stores were all great but we found the DIY make up over at a Heart and Labor. Our ads will be featuring tons of local designers from Austin. We walked out with a bunch of cool times like this Pulp Fiction in Florence wallet and a couple of funny t-shirts for some friends.
For more, check out heartsandlabor.com.
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