Towels for Azsia - a home dec project - first finish of 2026!

Azsia is a special young lady heading off to college this week.

Azsia and her mother lived in the apartment above ours. These two delightful ladies brought a lot of joy to us while we were sheltering in place during the pandemic. Since I was working from home, I was able to take Azsia to school every day (she was in the 9th grade at the time), and it was fun talking with a teenager during the early morning drives.

Fast forward to 2025--she graduated from high school, and was accepted into (at last count) 26 different colleges and universities. She chose one in North Carolina, but deferred going until this month. I took her to work one day the week before Thanksgiving and asked her what she still needed for her dorm room, and she said, "Everything." I asked her what her favorite color was, and it's purple (me, too!). I mentioned towels and she said, "Oh, Mrs. Shari, not purple towels. The colors of my dorm are red, cheetah and black."

Challenge accepted!

A few days later, my friend Vicki and I went to Hobby Lobby and I found a cheetah print and a read-as-solid hot red. We then headed to Walmart and I picked up four black towels. Got home, washed all the fabrics and the towels, and set them aside as Thanksgiving was upon us.

A week before Christmas I started working on the digitizing of Azsia's name to make an SVG file to cut the fabric with my ScanNCut, and the applique stitches to anchor down the fabric. The plan was to iron down the fabric onto the cheetah cloth and have the embroidery machine stitch down the applique with a satin stitch, then hem the cheetah cloth and attach it as a band to the towel. Easy peasy, right? Well, I mentioned in a previous post that I had forgotten how to export the outlines from Embrilliance to make the SVG file. The day everyone left after Christmas, I watched a couple of videos and the technique returned to the brain waves. I was off and running, and it was only December 28.

I did a test cut of some muslin for Azsia's name, and found an old fat quarter to attach it to for testing the stitch-out. I had starched the fat quarter, loaded the fabric into the magnetic hoop, inserted the hoop into the machine and started stitching the placement stitch. I noticed that the stitch looked a bit off. I had tearaway stabilizer on the bottom. The needle had just been used on a small quilt label a week or two earlier and I thought it didn't need changing. After the placement stitch ran for all the letters, I adhered the name to the fabric and reloaded the hoop into the machine. I had set it up for a zigzag stitch instead of satin just for speed's sake, and the stitch looked sloppy and I could see the bobbin thread coming to the top. Reran the stitching after re-threading the machine and changing the bobbin; still had bobbin thread coming to the top with a sloppy stitch. It looked beautiful on the bottom.  

I decided to stop for the day.

I changed the needle the next day, and I changed the stabilizer from a tearaway to a lightweight mesh with tear away underneath the mesh. I have noticed that the lightweight mesh seems to give superior results and I should have done this right out of the gate. The first run of the design with the intended fabrics went well, and I called it for the night.

This photo was taken after changing
to the Schmetz embroidery needle.

The next day, I started up the machine and ran into the loosey-goosey placement stitches—again, I re-threaded the machine, removed and re-inserted the bobbin—same result. I had an idea about the needle. It’s an Organ chrome 11/75 for use with glued substrates. I changed it to a Schmetz embroidery needle and no more problems until I had a bird’s nest in the third stitch-out. I recently purchased Dime’s bird nest tool kit and used it to clean it out quickly, reloaded the hoop and had no more issues. 

In the middle of all of this, I got sick. We had four dogs in the house over Christmas, and I came down with what I thought was a bad hay fever attack like I always do when my sister's dogs are here for more than a couple of days...but I actually had a low-grade fever. This slowed me down a bit, but I managed to work on the towels a little each day. 

And on New Year's Eve, I completed the stitch-outs of Azsia's name on the cheetah fabric. I knew New Year's Day would be quiet at home because I didn't want our kids around me in case I was contagious, and I managed to get one towel completed by the time I said I was done for the day and where are my black-eyed peas?

And on Friday, January 2, I finished all of the towels the day before the deadline - January 3. 

Woohoo! I cannot tell you how happy I was to see a pile on a chair in the fabric room reduced by the removal of those towels! Made me feel better about my plans for the year. 

And now I’m off to tidy up the studios and prep for the next project from my 2026 list. In the meantime, go make!