Y'know, I have to admit I feel like a bit of a charlatan. I spout stuff and sound like I know what I'm talking about, but most of the time I really don't know what I'm doing, I've just done a lot of thinking and observing. Which really isn't the same thing as honest to G-d experience, as anyone who has been alive for more than a few years can tell you. So here I am about to tell you all about how to embroider a piece of vintage pleather to appliqué onto the book cover, and I really don't know my bum from my thumb. But as is often the case, I forged on ahead and everything worked out despite my ignorance. So here we go... look ma! No hands!
The first step is to get a clear piece of pleather off the golf club cover. This is one area I do know something about... demolition. Since pleather real estate is scarce it pays to be careful in the deconstruction, and I opted to slit the threads with a seam ripper rather than just trying to hack out a piece that would work using scissors. I started by carefully separating out the cotton knit lining from the exterior, and then I moved on to separating the front of the golf club cover from the back along the piped seam lines. This gave me the maximum width possible out of the piece I had to use.
A few days prior I had messed around with my drawing in photoshop. I filled in the center of the pomegranate with black and drew in the seeds in white where I wanted them. I knew that the drawing was far more detailed than what would be reasonably possible with machine embroidery, but I decided to err on the side of too much detail so I would know what my intention was when I had the piece under the machine separate and disoriented from the full image. I also discovered at that point, to my chagrin, that white fabric pencil will NOT mark pleather. At all. I was saved by the fact that the transfer paper marks it beautifully. That stuff's invaluable! I printed out the design again with the new center section and cut out just what I needed for transferring so that I could make sure it fit on the piece of pleather. I transferred the image to the pleather, including the outline I needed to cut along, using a regular pencil to trace over the image which was placed on top of the transfer paper (pigment side down). I got a surprisingly detailed result.
Now for the moment of truth. I took my marked up pleather down to the sewing machine, and set it up to embroider on pleather: switched to top-stitch thread (regular thread in the bobbin), a leather needle and an open-toe straight stitch foot.
Sewing through the pleather was surprisingly easy. I wound up hand walking the machine the entire time, but it was a small project and it didn't take long. My husband commented that it looked tedious, but I explained that hand walking on a machine is still a lot less work and a lot faster than hand sewing, because you use the strength of the machine's metal and gears to push the needle through the pleather and you don't get tired that way. I did not back stitch to knot the stitches, I left the threads loose and took a conventional needle and pulled the top stitch thread to the back after I was done. I then square knotted it with the bobbin thread and trimmed it off. The open toe foot was essential - I initially tried a regular machine foot and did not have sufficient visibility to do what I wanted with the embroidery. You can see what I mean with the following photo.
Finally it was time to cut out the piece of pleather and appliqué it on. I cut it out along the outline, erased the white marks with a damp paper towel, and made a few tiny adjustments to the perimeter. When I was satisfied with the shape I flipped it over, sprayed the back with Sulky temporary spray adhesive and placed it in position on the cover. Then it was back to the sewing machine to straight stitch the pleather into place.
I swear, it totally appears that I know what I'm doing. And it's all a big lie. :-)
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