Firehouse

I’ve started another project, but this one is proving to be a bit more time-consuming than I’d anticipated. I’ve done a few little free-standing embroidered appliqué projects, but this one is much more involved.

To give a bit of background information, one of our grandsons is a firefighter, so when I saw the OESD Freestanding Firehouse a while back, I thought it might be a perfect gift for him. My husband insisted that the firehouse had to be red, of course, rather than the white pictured on the website. Anyway, I gathered my materials and promptly became sidetracked with other projects. Of course. 😉 However, I decided that I’d better get going, so I started yesterday. Oh my!

I made the first three hoopings (one of them actually made two smaller pieces), and that amounted to about 114,000 stitches and several hours of “supervising” and cutting and trimming! Yikes! This is going to take some time! I made two more pieces today (they’re drying now), adding about 120,000 more stitches — not to mention lots more cutting (windows, etc.) and trimming. There are sixteen designs in total, so you can probably see why I’m sort of open-mouthed at the stitch count. LOL! In fact, I have a huge cone — 5000m — of the thread I’m using, and I thought that would be plenty. But I’ve already gone through four bobbins, keeping in mind that my lovely Bernina 790Plus has a huge bobbin, so I’ve gone ahead and ordered another cone, since my current one is looking decidedly skinny at this point.

All that aside, I think this is going to be a beautiful piece when it’s done, and I can only hope that our grandson likes it. Pictured are the pieces from yesterday; today’s pieces are still drying, so photos aren’t yet possible.