So I bought a package of three white bibs and decided to use the spaceship material that I had used for the pacifier clip. The image in the book was a heart but instead of doing that, I used the first letter of my son's name: L. I figured that although I should practice doing curves, the straight lines of the L would be a good first project and then I'll try something else for the other two bibs.
So I started following the instructions. Well, almost. I got a step ahead of myself and cut out the letter before I had adhered it to the fusible webbing. It seems that the suggestion (both in the book as well as the webbing instructions) is to place the material on the webbing first and then cut. I not only cut the material, I also cut the webbing before joining them. Lining then up then was a bit of a chore but I got it. Next time, however, I will put them together and then cut.
Then I made another error. Apparently the webbing I got is sticky and doesn't need to be ironed onto the material. In the book it says to iron it to get it to stick. Well, my webbing apparently didn't have the protective paper on the side that is supposed to go onto the project (the bib), so when I ironed the material and webbing guess what it did? It stuck to my ironing board! Oops! Okay, big lesson learned there. I was able to get it off my ironing board with only a little residue sticking to it (will be something to always remind myself to read through the instructions of the product I'm using before moving forward) and it it onto the bib. Whew! First big step complete.
The next step was to add a stabilizer to the back (since the bib is a knit material). Something else I learned. Apparently the stabilizer that I got was not one that adhered to the material. I did try to iron it and it stayed long enough for me to get it under the sewing machine and I think it did its job, but I'll make sure to be more careful about what I buy in the future. It was just all a bit confusing in the store as there were so many different types and I wasn't sure which one to get.
So finally it was time to work with the machine. I had used a practice piece of fabric to get the stitch length and width right for my zigzag stitch to make it into a satin stitch. I had to try a couple of different settings and even played with the tension knob a bit. It still didn't look quite perfect but it was looking okay so I decided to go ahead and do the sewing on the bib itself.
The book said to make a few stitches beyond the edge before turning, so that's what I did. And here's where I learned another lesson. It makes a big difference if the needle is on the right or left when you start sewing again as to where the zigzag gets placed. At the top right of the L, I started the needle on the wrong size and the stitches were way off from the material. Oops. I only stitched one zig and one zag before noticing so I cut the thread, repositioned, and started again, ripping out the two wrong stitches at the end. I'm sure there was a more polished way of fixing that mistake but what I did seems to have worked.
I finally got back around to where I started. All finished. I'm not entirely happy with the corners as you can clearly see the stitches beneath. I'm not sure if I need to work on the stitch settings to fix this or perhaps not stitch so far over the edge in the future. I'll have to experiment to figure it out. But for now, my son now has a new bib!
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