Color and stitch play

 Hello, everyone.

Since the phone is still being difficult when I try to upload a photo into a blog post, I am reverting back to the (more clumsy) method of emailing myself the pictures from the phone.

I was challenged to make something new recently by DD2. The format is "coasters." I am digitizing this myself, so there are of course a lot of iterations in the design:

First attempt:

I tried out the batting here, and the design, and also now know that this purple stripe is too busy for the design.

A later attempt:

Stash usage is happening, as y'all can see. I changed the lettering font of the words and did some work on refining the crown. (This one has been finished off into a future patch pocket on something. Interior purse pocket? Mixer cover decorative pocket? We'll see.)

After this, a wadder which has been tossed into the trash--you cannot do "backtrack" a bunch of times on the same spot, especially not when the stitch is already emphasized. Fortunately the needle didn't break. Unfortunately, I had to change it because it seemed to have gotten bent while the thread was breaking repeatedly in very nearly the same spot. 

After this, I figured out how to get rid of the extra "backtrack" commands and cut the little ornaments on the top down to one each. 

This next one has had the stabilizer trimmed and is ready to turn right side out:

This is still a rough draft, so when trimming I left the tuck-in flaps to make another future pocket. The stabilizer is black polymesh cutaway from OESD. In the event, I plan to use White and Natural thin all-cotton batting, with or without an additional stabilizer. But the Polymesh was on hand and the background fabric is on the dark side, so I used that on the repeat tests.

Probably when the coasters are ready to deliver, with ribbon and all, I'll shoot a picture of the set and post it. There may still be more repeats, though I sincerely hope not. I've been watching the Youtube videos by John Deer about fixing designs and also studying the online help of my Hatch embroidery software. Little by little, it gets better!