Embroidered Tesselations Part 3

With my success with the 260mm x 360 mm hoop and my mathematical art project, I was ready to move on to the 350mm x 360 mm Husqvarna majestic hoop.   The challenge with this hoop is that the machine can only embroider half of it at a time.  To get the other half, the hoop must be turned 180 degrees and attached to the machine at a different point on the hoop.  Effectively, each design must be split into two halves and those halves must be aligned very precisely.  My previous experiments with the hoop resulted in alignment problems so bad I had to re hoop the fabric.  That wasn't going to be acceptable with my complicated and dense design.

I started by creating a design in the larger size.  This involved quite a bit of rework of the smaller design.  New details could be added and everything had to be more precise.

The next problem was splitting and alignment.  I decided to start with something simple -- the outer circle of my design.

It took more than a few tries just to get a circle where the two halves matched.  I learned that representing a complicated design as just some run stitches was helpful.  You find out that you messed up so much quicker.

Finally, I got to the point where I could stitch the outlines of the fish and make everything match.

This was to be the real deal.  I bought some special new thread that I thought would be better.  I was having some issues on the boundaries between the two halves, but things really came apart where I started using the green thread.  The color change went from being every 2-3" to a longer interval.  I started getting stripes in the fills.  This is NOT the effect I was looking for.  I gave up on this one.  Fortunately, I had enough of the old thread to make another design.

I used the Floriani Heat and Sta stabilizer again, since it worked well with the smaller design.   I also used the Floriani Medium weight tear away to make sure the design stayed really stable.  The bigger the design gets, the more slight stretching in the fabric can cause problems.  I also alternated embroidering on different sides.  That meant a lot of reorienting the hoop.  It took parts of three days, but the design was finished!

It's a long path from this image:

Come back next week for a completely different project!