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Workshop at Bernina
Jan. 17th, 2014 09:24 amMy colleague Kim had been invited to a workshop at Bernina, because RTL4 would be filming for their "Forever Young" (Altijd Jong) television show. The sewing machine shop in Veghel asked her to bring a young, 20-30yrs old friend who knew how to work with sewing machines. And I could come along!
After half a day's work we drove to Breda, where we were the first to arrive. The Bernina Creative Center was nice: a workshop space with a number of embroidery-ready machines, a large cafeteria space where we could get a cup of coffee and a display area with the latest sewing machine-computer hybrid.
When the ladies were ready, we walked through the presentation and what we would be doing, so we'd be well-instructed by the time the camera crew would get there. They had no idea what the idea would be as far as the filming was concerned, so they thought it best to have us prepared.
The crew arrived, with a very skinny lady who was supposed to be well-known (well, I didn't know her... but I haven't had a tv in 8 years) and they told us to just be background cattle (to say it bluntly). We would do the workshop in the background, while they did their filming.
So I ignored the stupid camera crew and just did my thing.
We would be making a lingerie bag -- a tunnel with two openings, and a single line of stitching down the middle, to store underwear in on holiday. Clean underwear on one side, used underwear on the other.
First we embroidered our initials on one half of the bag. The monograms were all set up, so we just had to start the machine and go! It was quite interesting to see the things Kim did with her machine - she has an embroidery extension to her machine, so she's used to working with embroidery machines. I was sat at a giant-ass Quilter's Edition that also happily buzzed on, despite giving several warnings about things that weren't wrong at all.
Secondly, we would use a special foot to draw with the sewing machine. Seamstresses can be a little negative about fabric markers -- why would you draw on fabric when you can work with other techniques like appliqué and bobbinwork? -- but this was actually quite nice.
The design was already loaded, and I don't exactly know how to make, load or edit these designs -- but that was not the purpose of the workshop after all. The special foot (#93) allowed for an edding fabric marker to be placed on the sewing machine. Instead of moving the needle up and down, the needle was removed and the "head" would press down on the foot so the marker would touch the fabric. Then the embroidery module just moved the fabric around.
I can see you could use the same vector images as with embroidery, but you'd need to override the machine's tendency to just keep sewing and press the marker into the fabric instead. Using an embroidery design to draw on fabric did not work (I tried).
As a final step, we'd do the 'crystalwork' on top of the drawn design to emphasize it. Sweeping hot fix rhinestones into a template, then applying sticky plastic to the template to lift the rhinestones and place them on the fabric. The plastic was heat-resistant, so you just apply a hot iron and wait for a bit to cool down before removing the plastic and you're done!
It was just so much fun to do, and we forgot all about the stupid camera crew. The Bernina people were running around, trying to help them where they could, but had they known the crew would want a finished product at the end of the shoot, they would have prepared it. Now one woman was frantically working her way through the workshop just so the presentor could say "I made this alllll myself...with a little help from Bernina." to the camera. (Liar, liar.)
We had a great day though, mostly because we could just ignore the camera's and work on our little creative lingerie bag project. So much fun!
After half a day's work we drove to Breda, where we were the first to arrive. The Bernina Creative Center was nice: a workshop space with a number of embroidery-ready machines, a large cafeteria space where we could get a cup of coffee and a display area with the latest sewing machine-computer hybrid.
When the ladies were ready, we walked through the presentation and what we would be doing, so we'd be well-instructed by the time the camera crew would get there. They had no idea what the idea would be as far as the filming was concerned, so they thought it best to have us prepared.
The crew arrived, with a very skinny lady who was supposed to be well-known (well, I didn't know her... but I haven't had a tv in 8 years) and they told us to just be background cattle (to say it bluntly). We would do the workshop in the background, while they did their filming.
So I ignored the stupid camera crew and just did my thing.
We would be making a lingerie bag -- a tunnel with two openings, and a single line of stitching down the middle, to store underwear in on holiday. Clean underwear on one side, used underwear on the other.
First we embroidered our initials on one half of the bag. The monograms were all set up, so we just had to start the machine and go! It was quite interesting to see the things Kim did with her machine - she has an embroidery extension to her machine, so she's used to working with embroidery machines. I was sat at a giant-ass Quilter's Edition that also happily buzzed on, despite giving several warnings about things that weren't wrong at all.
Secondly, we would use a special foot to draw with the sewing machine. Seamstresses can be a little negative about fabric markers -- why would you draw on fabric when you can work with other techniques like appliqué and bobbinwork? -- but this was actually quite nice.
The design was already loaded, and I don't exactly know how to make, load or edit these designs -- but that was not the purpose of the workshop after all. The special foot (#93) allowed for an edding fabric marker to be placed on the sewing machine. Instead of moving the needle up and down, the needle was removed and the "head" would press down on the foot so the marker would touch the fabric. Then the embroidery module just moved the fabric around.
I can see you could use the same vector images as with embroidery, but you'd need to override the machine's tendency to just keep sewing and press the marker into the fabric instead. Using an embroidery design to draw on fabric did not work (I tried).
As a final step, we'd do the 'crystalwork' on top of the drawn design to emphasize it. Sweeping hot fix rhinestones into a template, then applying sticky plastic to the template to lift the rhinestones and place them on the fabric. The plastic was heat-resistant, so you just apply a hot iron and wait for a bit to cool down before removing the plastic and you're done!
It was just so much fun to do, and we forgot all about the stupid camera crew. The Bernina people were running around, trying to help them where they could, but had they known the crew would want a finished product at the end of the shoot, they would have prepared it. Now one woman was frantically working her way through the workshop just so the presentor could say "I made this alllll myself...with a little help from Bernina." to the camera. (Liar, liar.)
We had a great day though, mostly because we could just ignore the camera's and work on our little creative lingerie bag project. So much fun!
