What next – well I can tell you that I’m also working on feathers, bunnies and sugar skulls, most of which are now off the drawing board, forming an orderly queue whilst waiting to be digitised. I do love the process of taking a sketch and making it into something that everyone can enjoy!

Happy stitching.

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Designing tutus wasn’t something that I need to consider – my love of dance and designing just sort of presented them in my thinking. But it just shows that things we loved to do in our childhood kind of stay with us throughout our lives.

My love of dance, Sindy dolls, fashion, have all come together in these little tutus. I really have been having the most enjoyable time creating them. The colours and styles are limitless, and I’m sure there will be more to come. I have become a little addicted to doodling them.

Whilst I’m designing tutus, I am having the loveliest of nostalgic thoughts. I remember sitting under the kitchen table while my mum stitched tutus for me – and me, waiting for the remnants of fabric to drop to the floor, gathered them up with endless ideas of what to make out of them. These remnants would become tutus for Sindy, or ball gowns and other fashionable items of clothing. I was first allowed to use my mum’s very modern Singer Slantomatic when I was about the age of nine. I’ve stitched ever since.

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One morning we got chatting about machine embroidery and I showed her one of my designs on a shopping bag. She then started talking about guinea pigs and how interesting they are. She then suggested I embroider some guinea pigs.

Now I’ve never thought of guinea pigs as interesting. There’s not a lot to them really, and not a lot to sketch. But I thought ‘might as well give them a go’. I started of with Martha and then Maurice, and before I knew it there were four more guinea pigs, Milo, Petunia, Gertie and Primrose. I had fallen in love with guinea pigs, and it seemed I was becoming addicted to sketching them! They kind of come alive when I’m stitching them, and what’s more, they’re not at all boring. I found that each one had their own little character as they appeared, stitch by stitch.

Now then, my next task – hedgehogs!

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Sadly my Mac and Windows Parallel did not get on, and I had to give in and get a PC. But better to save my Mac from constantly having to fight off the demands of an operating system that refused to meet it at least half way. My Mac is now distressing, and sits in a corner calmly waiting for other interesting tasks.

2018 has got off to a flying start with guinea pigs, tutus, skulls and afternoon tea. Designs are flying off my screen quicker than the testers can test them. I’m going into the year with a head full of ideas, I just wish I could design and stitch as quick as the ideas appear in my thoughts.

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It was suggested to me that I use Windows Parallel on my Mac, in order to run the embroidery software. My precious Mac! How could I put Windows Parallel on my Mac! Could I? Should I? Did I have any choice?

Windows Parallel – I had no choice. My poor Mac – after spending its days in calm, uninterrupted, organised glory, it was suddenly hit with the very bossy, conflicting, take over bid of an operating system that tries to control your life!! My Mac and me, we were not happy …

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My doodling and sketching took on a new life and I realised I was beginning to create with machine embroidery in mind. It totally changed the way I looked at things, the way I used colour and outlines, and the way I saw everything around me. I saw my sketches on every item of clothing, every bag, cushion, bedspread – I could hardly contain my urge to sketch and stitch everything.

But then came the question of how? How do I get that sketch onto that sweatshirt? How does my sketch get converted to a computerised stitch out? What is digitising? Software – what software?

It was a long journey just finding out what goes into creating a machine embroidery pattern. The ‘finding out how’ took much longer than the ‘learning how’. I felt I was trying to crack the enigma code, or trying to join some secret society.

I asked lots of questions, I pestered people to tell me how to get in on this secret digitising world. I got nowhere fast.

In the end I decided to have someone digitise for me, just to see if my sketches were suitable for stitching out. To my great delight they were! And that was the start …

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