Have you ever stepped into a photo booth with a friend and snapped four fun photos? And have you kept that little photo strip around for years?
Growing up I loved to look through the old photo albums of my parents and some of those photos became imbedded in my memory. Here is one of the photos that has always made me smile because these ladies look like they are having fun together.
My best guess is this photo is from the early 1940’s. For any family members reading this, I am sure you remember this photo also and can identify these lovely ladies. I do not have the original photo, but I had a copy and from that copy I took a photo of it with my cellphone. Talk about a photo of a photo……my photo is about 3 copies away from the original, I was a little concerned that I would lose the details of my final copy, but I persevered.
At the end of 2024 I purchased another new sewing machine, this machine is Babylock’s top-of-the-line sewing and embroidery machine, the Radiance. This machine is an amazing machine and has an incredible feature called Picture Play. This feature lets you import a photo into the machine and digitizes it into an embroidery design. If that idea does not blow your mind, it should, this is quite a feat. I push a button, and the machine determines the thread colors and stitches to recreate my photo into stitches. So just 94,591 stitches, 15 different thread colors that all look about the same color and 172 stitching minutes and I have transformed my old photo into a stitched created picture.
Here is the stitching in progress. It is a little nerve racking, will this turn out or should I abandon the project and start something else (maybe something a little less sentimental).
Here is the final result and I have to say I am impressed. Yes, I will admit I was a little skeptical! How can an embroidery/sewing machine digitize a photo image and make it look accurate? And how can a photo of a photo of a photo still keep all the detail, and keep in mind my photo is probably 8 decades old and probably cost $0.25 from a photo booth.
Both of these lovely ladies are watching from heaven. I sure hope they approve of me putting them in stitches!