My New and Improved Ranger Hood

I started my Craftsy class on embroidering large designs with a small hoop size. The first lesson was about making small motifs, cutting them out, and gluing or stitching them onto an object. Talk about an eye opener. The first lesson and that particular idea was brand new to me. Therefore, based solely on the first lesson, I'm going to officially recommend Big Embroidery with a Small Hoop by Lisa Shaw. 

The example project for lesson one was a bright pink purse with neon flowers. Which I would only make if my niece or youngest cousin begged me because they couldn't live without it.

But fear not, I was able to utilize the technique quite handedly to work on my Dagorhir garb. Now, Ms. Shaw recommend using organza or tulle for this and wash-away stabilizer, none of which I had on hand. Silly me, those scraps from my wedding were one of the things I put in the donate box about six months ago. Not to be stopped by such trivial matters, I dug into the specialty fabrics bin and came up with some pale gold fabric.

After uploading my motif (yay, another first!) and setting up my hoop with regular stabilizer, I let it stitch away, only to have the thread break about 3/4 of the way through. I rethreaded it and set Kaylee back to stitching. She did pretty good, except now I have a gap from where the thread broke.

By the way, did I mention that it is nice that it lets me know when the thread breaks? Amazing.

It turns out that my embroidery machine has a stitch by stitch advance, so all I had to do was fast forward to the gap and just stitch that section. It did not turn out quite as nice as if it had worked the first time but it really is barely noticeable.

After fixing that problem, I made a few more elm leaves.

After cutting them out and laying them on the border of my hood, I decided they were far too bright and made a few on the dark green that the hood is made from and tried a few arrangements.

Interesting, but a little subtle.

I like the random arrangement better but something is missing.

Hmm, not bad, but looks too organized.

Bingo! Now I've got something going. I think I would like about 2 green ones for every gold one. According to my calculations, I need exactly LOTS more to put a border on my hood. My little embroidery machine will be working overtime for a while to make all of them.

The nice thing is that I can tell it to stitch and work on something else as long as I remember to drop back in every few minutes and start the next one.

Oh and by the way, I had to take the hood off the capelet. Again. I sewed it on backwards. Sigh. I'm going to finish the border before I put it back together.