To make Sealife Magnets,
etc. you will need:

A Zig-Zag Sewing Machine
with Computer Embroidery capabilities.
We used New Home Card #104

Machine Needle:
Embroidery and Metallic size 90/14

Sulky Threads:
Sulky 40 wt. Rayon colors for Embroidery
Design chosen and additional Sulky Rayons,
Metallics and Sliver Metallic for Sea Grasses,
plus Sulky Bobbin Thread.

Sulky Stabilizers:
Sulky Heat-Away™
Sulky Super Solvy™
and Sulky Sticky™

Fabrics:
Brown Felt Squares
Black Ultra Suede Squares
Fleece for padded seaweed

Magnets by the Sheet

Extra-Fine, Permanent-Ink Marker

6" German Hardwood Embroidery Hoop

Fabric Glue - E-6000

Iron and Teflon Pressing Sheet

Dark Brown Felt

Copy these Sea Grass Shapes or draw your own.

1. Embroider Sealife Designs

Place a piece of Sulky Sticky in your machine's embroidery hoop and score it with a pin to remove the release paper. Finger press a square of Felt onto the stabilizer. Follow machine instructions for computer embroidery. Remove the stabilizer and trim felt up to the embroidery.

2. Make your own "Thread Fabric Lace"

Secure an 8" square of Heat-Away in a 6" embroidery hoop. Set your machine for "free-motion" embroidery:

• Lower or cover feed dogs
• Remove Presser Foot
• Reduce Top Tension

Thread your machine with a variegated or multi-colored Sulky Rayon in the needle and bobbin. Using a straight stitch, make free-motion circles or "e" shapes or, for a faster work-up, use an open satin stitch at a wide width. Have fun with this and add some Sulky 30 wt. Rayon and Sliver Metallic. The idea is to have an open lacy effect, not a solid fill-in.

3. Satin Stitch around the outer edge of the Sea Grass design line.

With a marker either free-hand draw your own grass design or trace our design onto the Thread Lace. Use the same thread in the bobbin and needle (I used Sulky Rayon #1035 - Dark Burgundy), and a small width to satin stitch over the design lines. Disintegrate and remove the Heat-Away by pressing the wrong side with a dry, hot iron. Cut out the Sea Grass along the design lines and sandwich it between 2 layers of Solvy or Super Solvy. Press it for several seconds with a dry iron at a cotton setting. If your iron does not have a non-stick sole plate, use a teflon pressing sheet. Heavily stitch over the satin stitch again using a little wider width. Remove the Solvy and you have "Thread Lace" Sea Grass. See the next page for more ideas.

4. Make Padded Fabric Sea Grass

Sandwich cotton batting between two layers of a blue-green fabric with each right side out. Set machine for regular sewing. Choose a honey-comb stitch. Thread top with Sulky Sliver Metallic Opalescent #8040 and a color matching the fabric in the bobbin. Run rows of stitching next to one another, just touching.

Set up for "free-motion". Hoop the stitched work and select a small width to satin stitch a Sea Grass shape using a Sulky Rayon in the top and bobbin to match the fabric. Finish as in #3, trimming away fabric, sandwiching design between Solvy, satin stitching with a wider zig-zag, and removing the Solvy.

5. Assemble the Magnet

Cut Black Ultra Suede into a square the size desired for the motif. Finger press to a sticky-back magnet sheet. Cut the magnet sheet to the size of the Ultra Suede. Using E-6000 glue or a hot glue gun, glue your Sea Grass to the Ultra Suede. Then, glue the embroidered Fish or Shell over the Sea Grass.

Instead of gluing to a magnet base, glue Ultra Suede to a template of cardboard, plastic, or Fimo™ Clay. Then glue a pin-back onto it.

To make a vest cincher, do not add the Ultra Suede square, instead, just tack-stitch your Sea Life motif and Sea Grass to a Vest Cincher, then make an embroidered vest to match!

Try adding your embroidered Sea Life to a half-folded pin-woven square and use it as a lapel wrap-style pin. Add some hanging twisted yarns and Sulky Threads behind the Sea Grass for an even more designer-art look.

Let your imagination take over...you may find the "mind play" result very interesting!