Custom Dive Flag

I received a request from a friend to make a dive flag for the Wake Island Scuba Club.  This isn't something they could send out locally because Wake Island is a tiny sandbar in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and a long way from anywhere.  The idea was to use embroidery and/or applique to create the design.

Here is the original design.  The essential elements are apparently the red and white "divers down" flag, the outline of the island and the shark.  This design does have details that would be hard to capture with applique or embroidery, so some modification for the new medium is required.  There's also the question of exactly what items would be best executed with embroidery vs. applique.

I started with a JPG map of Wake Island.

I was able to bring this image into my Floriani Total Control embroidery design software as a background and then digitize the outline of the island.  (Actually, there are 3 islands here.)  I was able to do the same with the shark, picking out the eyes, mouth and gills as essential details to retain.

Here's the final design.  There's some big areas to be covered in both black and grey, so I decided to do these as applique and leave the shark details and lettering as embroidery.  The island and shark have to be worked as one piece, so the maximum size of the design is set by what will fit in my Bernina Jumbo Hoop.  The shark is superimposed on the island, so the island must be appliqued first, with the shark on top.  To maximize the size of the design, the lettering is done separately from the applique, after rehooping the fabric.

The first task was to create the flag itself.   The flag and all the applique are made from heavy weight flag nylon.  Some of this was obtained locally and some of it was sourced from Sailrite, an internet retailer of anything and everything related to both boats and fabric.  Sailrite also had the special flag tape and nice grommets for finishing the flag.

There's no standard dimension for dive flags.  After some research, I found that common aspect ratios for flags include 3:2 and 5:3.   I chose to use 5:3 although on further consideration 3:2 might have been better.  With the size of the applique design set by the jumbo hoop, I elected for a 30"x18" finished size for the flag.

I used paper to create patterns for the flag.  I wanted the white stripe to be nice and visible, so it's 6" wide.  The cutting mat marked in 1" squares sure made the job of creating the pattern a lot easier.

Here's the finished flag.  The seams for the white stripe are all flat-felled seams and the three edges are hemmed.  The left edge is bound with flag tape and set with brass washer grommets.  This finish isn't strictly necessary since this is going to be a wall decoration rather than flown as a flag, but it's a good finishing touch.

With the flag complete, it's time to move on to the ornamentation.

The applique design is printed at 100% scale and then cut out.  The paper pieces are applied to the black nylon with temporary fabric adhesive.  Then the pieces are cut from the fabric.

The machine is busy appliqueing the outline of the island.  It's a very complex shape, much more suited to machine applique than hand guided applique.  Once the island is down, the shark is appliqued on top, and then the eyes, mouth and gills of the shark are embroidered.

I used just a simple tear away stabilizer for this project.  The fabric is dimensionally stable, so a sticky stabilizer is not required.  There needs to be no stabilizer remaining on the back of the flag, so the simple design a tear-away met that requirement nicely.  The top and bottom lettering was done with two different hoopings of the fabric.

This project has already been sent off to Wake Island.  My projects are certainly getting world wide exposure!

Come back next Saturday for an all new project that's also related to water.