Guest blog: Summer Meadows machine embroidered Tablecloth

The Graceful Embroidery designs for this tablecloth were chosen from the Summer Meadow sets 2 and 3. I also used the single flowers from set 1 to test out my colour choices. They were stitched with polyester thread from Marathon and Admelody.

Using my embroidery software, I printed templates of the designs and pinned them to the tablecloth after starching the fabric.

I chose to use a water-soluble stabilizer because the fabric was rather sheer and I didn’t want the stabilizer to show through the finished cloth. I began with Q-Green but I didn’t have enough so I carried on with Aqua Magic.

The stabilizer was hooped and then I stitched out the Outline Alignment Stitches.

The fabric was then floated over the hoop, lined up to the OAS on the stabilizer, pinned and basted down.

The edge of the tablecloth includes designs 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 2-12 and 2-13 from set 2 and 3-2, 3-4, 3-5, 3-7, 3-8 and 3-9 from set 3.

Each design is repeated on the other half of the tablecloth for a total of 24 designs. For the center of the cloth, I wanted an oval design to match the shape of the table.

I decided to use four repeats of design 3-3.

Two of them were complete and the other two were only the center portion of the design.

I think that my fabric was a bit light for the density of the designs.

Another time I would use an additional layer of stabilizer or more starch on the fabric to prevent the slight puckering around the flowers.

This is an amazing project and was entered into the 2021 competition for Graceful Embroidery Group Forum members. It won second place and the winner received $750 worth of rewards to spend at Graceful Embroidery. If you are interested in joining the Group and taking part in the annual machine embroidery competition, find out more here.

The Graceful Embroidery Group Forum

I hope you will be inspired.

Happy embroidering in 2022 from Hazel