Crafts
Chatree's Gift
Embroidered Punk Rock Totebag
For my first machine embroidered project, I made this totebag as a personalized gift for my friend Chatree. He and I have been friends for years. We first met when we started working as early employees (12 & 13) at Inkling - we started the same week. We share a love of design and life. Many of our conversations revolve around be doing what we love and being happy.
For Chatree's totebag, I made an illustration of a white Honda Odyssey - like the one Chatree drives - in Adobe illustrator. I imported the PNG file into the Bernina Embroidery Software to convert it to stitches. After quite a few adjustments, and tests, I uploaded it to my sewing machine to embroider.
- >Embroidery
- Patternmaking
- Sewing
- Construction
- Design
Hey ho, let's go!
I chose a medium-weight raw denim for the material. I used the wrong side of the fabric as the face. Since the design is very dense, I used a heavy-weight stabalizer for the backside to hold the stitches. After a few failures due to misalignment and stitches getting caught, I simplified the design. I updated the design to be less dense in the areas of the tires and windows. I also changed the number of thread colors from 9 to 5.
Because Chatree is such a rebel in his minivan, I wanted to add a punk rock vibe. Since I love the Ramones, I added the phrase from Bonzo Goes to Bitburg, "Hey ho, let's go!" over the minivan. On the reverse, I embroidered a persoanlized message to Chatree.
