These bookmarks would be perfect to give with a favorite book or even a blank journal and pen as I have done above. I made 27 of these to give to my children's teachers.
To complete this project you will probably need embroidery software or the ability to manipulate designs on your embroidery machine. You can use any design that has a finishing edge/outline or row of stitching that will connect the front embroidered piece to the back vinyl. This needs to be the last part of the design stitched, hence why you may need software.
Supplies:
Marine Vinyl
Embroidery Thread
Embroidery Stabilizer
Elastic (I used 3/8" but you can use whatever best suits your design)
I digitized the shield and stitched it out several times until I was completely happy with the quality of the design. I found the first version I digitized had so many starts and stops it was a nightmare to stitch. Then the second one didn't have the same pretty stitch pattern with the deep red background. The third one had a nice background, but wasn't dense enough. So in this case 4th try was the charm. I made sure to separate out the final black shield stitching and moved it to the last stitch path, since it would be responsible for attaching the elastic and finishing the edge of the bookmark. You can see the last stitch row in the picture below.
When embroidering on the vinyl hoop your stabilizer, I used a lightweight tearaway, and add a basting stitch to keep the vinyl from shifting during embroidery.
If you are wanting to sew more than one design at a time see below. If you are only sewing one
stitch out your design stopping before last step that is the outline or border. Skip the next few steps until the ***My embroidery machine (Bernina 790+) has a lot of built in features, so I decided to combine 4 Griffin shields on my actual machine and not through my software. I added the 4 designs and spread them out in my large oval hoop. To make it so that the machine stitched out all four at the same time and not finished one with all of the thread changes and then moved onto the second with all of the thread changes again, I had to combine like colors. If your design uses like colors in two places that you need to be kept separately (maybe one that is a final detail) you can lie to the machine and tell them they are different colors. For this design I told the machine the griffin outline is black and the shield finishing line was gray, but I just used the black thread again. That way when it combined all of the separate griffins into one long embroidery run it didn't sew all of the shield outlines at the beginning. (I will make a YouTube video that explains this step better since it is so complicated).
You can see that the machine is going to sew all four Griffin outlines and then move onto the next color. That is the ideal way to make multiple items in the same hoop. If I hadn't done this I would have had 12 thread changes. By combining them I only have 3.
Ready for the first thread change.
Again you can see it is going to stitch all four red shields before moving on to the final black outline.
***After completing all but the final outline of the design (the stitches that close the back of the vinyl and attach the elastic) you remove your hoop from your machine. Be very careful not to bump the embroidery module arm. Turn the hoop over and add the elastic bands. I used 3/8" Dritz elastic from Joann's Fabric, but you can get creative. To determine the length of elastic needed I wrapped the elastic around a book (about 1/2 way through the book) and stretched it a bit. (Do stretch out the elastic a couple times to get it relaxed before determining the length you want to cut or else after it is stretched the first time it will be longer.)
I used 505 basting spray to place the elastic on the back of each embroidered shield.
Cut pieces of vinyl to cover the back of each embroidered design. Make sure the pieces are large enough to cover the last row of stitching that is not yet sewn, but not too large where they will be caught in another design's stitches. I was going to just place a large piece of vinyl over the back, but when I started thinking about keeping the elastic from being stitched wrong or getting covered in basting spray, I opted for the smaller pieces.
So, you can't embroider the mess above, because you need the elastic out of the way. I carefully routed all of the elastic towards the edges and pinned it to the vinyl where needed. I learned the hard way to go overboard on pinning (more than shown here) because when I turned this over in the end the outline had caught the elastic and I had to pull out my seam ripper. I did fix the outline by getting to that section of stitches again, but who wants to do that? Plus the elastic had been stitched over and it looks a bit ratty. I'm calling that one a "second" and keeping it for myself. When each design takes 20 minutes of sewing time, why rush pinning the elastic out of the way?
Return the hoop to the machine and let it sew the final outline.
Finally carefully trim around each design making sure not to cut the elastic as you trim. Smaller scissors are easier to manage trimming close to the elastic. Pop it on a book and you are ready to read.
Happy Sewing!
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