Necessity is the mother of invention, & here I was wanting to do a little bird applique on a corduroy jumper I plan to wear for our family’s Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. I guess “necessity” is stretching it, because I could have just drawn what I wanted, but I really like to see things first & I generally do not trust my artistic skills.
This would have been a non-issue, except my printer isn’t working. It isn’t broken or anything. It’s just out of color ink, so of course this means it won’t print black & white either. But maybe I’ve ranted about that before. (I’m open to suggestions for budget conscious all-in-one printers that won’t bleed me dry over ink. I’m very partial to upgrading to a wireless printer, too.)
I decided on this too late to get to the library to print, but when I went the other day their printer was broken. It has been broken for a month, but the lady filling in for the librarian assured me someone was coming to fix it. I’m sure.
So I came up with the idea of using my laptop as a lightbox & just tracing off the design. Genius! I doubt I’m the first person to have ever thought of this, but no one told me about it.
First, here is the image I found:
source: SweetPeasPlace.com
It’s adorable, comes in three sizes, & totally worth the $2.50 if you use a digital embroidery machine (I don’t). Continue reading →