Retro Style Embroidery

This morning I swung by Joann's and I'll be darned if they didn't have that weaving book I looked for for 2 hours last time I went. I wasn't even looking for it and there it was. And I didn't have my 40% off coupon on me. I could have screamed! But I explained it to the cashier and she gave me the discount. I felt so happy about that I went in and bought another book too. The other one is on retro embroidery. Granted I can't use any of the transfers in the book because of copyright issues, it does give me a record of that 'style' as a stepping off point for my own design work. And I will tell you why I do it. I want to make an owl embroidery in the 70's style for my Hooters shop, so I went to google and typed in retro owl. I saw the same owl transfer on numerous projects, some for sale, some not. Not only is that copyright infringement in most cases (unless they got the design from Dover or something), but do you really want yours looking like everyone else's that used that transfer? Sometimes the transfer faced left and sometimes right but it was the same owl on the same branch with the same leaves. With so much resource material, there is no reason not to just draw your own, transfer it to the fabric and go from there. If you don't think you can draw, grab the nearest kid under 8 and ask them to draw you an owl or two. Kids have a great eye for line art and are not so hung up on each drawing being perfect. While you are at it, ask them to draw you a robot, a horse, or a mermaid. Anyway, the embroidery book I got covers the 30's through the 70's. This will be fun.