Tis the Season for Machine Embroidery

"They" say that embroidery of all kinds is very hot in quilting right now. I enjoy hand embroidery and actually I'm working on a Magpie Quilters challenge right now that includes embroidery. I love working with all of the fabulously colored threads.

When I got my Bernina the embroidery machine came with it as a bonus. I didn't think I'd use it much, but what the heck I thought; give it a try. And I must say it's been fun. In this post I thought I'd share how it works.

First I hook up my embroidery machine to my Bernina and laptop. It looks something like this: Wait, wait, wait...that's not quite true. FIRST the fabric needs a good stabilizer. I use 505 with a tear away stabilizer. Also it's recommended (trust me here) to slow down the stitch speed; especially with metallic thread. And lastly, use a full bobbin. Running out of bobbin thread in the middle of a design isn't the end of the world, but it isn't really fun either. Okay, so now back to what I was saying...I hook up my embroidery machine to my Bernina and laptop. It looks something exactly like this:

Then I search through my designs for something interesting. In this case I bought an awesome CD set of Christmas motifs that include festive holiday shoes; something that every woman needs, am I right? 

In this photo you can see how it stitches out. There is a lot of stitching that goes on as a base for all of the pretty stitches you see later. It helps keep everything secure. All of the better designs should start with this type of stitch. You can see it sketched out here.

 

Once I'm happy with the design, I send it from my laptop to the embroidery machine.  Here I can manipulate where the design will be located. In this case I wanted it at the bottom of my fabric so you see it at the bottom of the hoop.

Once everything is ready to stitch, I'll see a display like the one below. The display tells  how many stitches the machine will make for the design and how long each color will take to stitch. Please note: while the program tells me how long it takes to stitch, it does not count how long it takes me to find the right thread and thread the machine.

The arrow shows what colors of thread the manufacturer of the design recommends. Once the program has completed all of the stitches of a particular color, the machine will stop which is my queue to select the next color and thread the machine.

Here's the stitched out design. Since the machine stitches one color at a time, there will be a lot of connecting threads that will need snipped. Little scissors with a curved blade are ideal for this.

Then you can integrate the design into something fabulous like these little make up bags I gave my friends at work. But I filled mine with chocolates so they loved the insides as much as the outside!

If you have the chance to get an embroidery machine, I'd recommend it. They are a lot of fun and there are more and more websites where you can download patterns to stitch out for a pretty reasonable price. Enjoy stitching!