Adventure in simple multi-hoop embroidery!

I don't really have much of a chance to do machine embroidery. My sister who also works at the store part time has really hogged the embroidery machines since the beginning and hey who am I kidding I have all my time filled with quilting! But while my mom was away a lady came in and wanted to get a little embroidery made up for a group to which she belongs.

I marked the fabric with guide lines to keep my designs centred.

I then hooped just the stablizer. I always have a hard time keeping the stablizer and fabric centred in the hoop. I hoped to make a crease in the stablizer to keep it in place while I positioned the fabric. It sort of worked.

After that I hooped the fabric loosely in the hoop and used the grid template to line up the correct position of the fabric. That took a few tries to get right but after it was lined up I tightened the hoop and was set to embroider.

A close-up of the machine in action. After the first word was centered and stitched I followed the marking lines I had drawn and hooped again for the other words. It was a little fly by the seat in the multi-hoop department because I was relying on my markings and not markings made by the machine to line up the designs but I was very happy with the result.

I used the Bernina V.7 software and played with the text features. You can arc the text a few different ways and they font it self can be manipulated in many ways. At first I found digitizing designs, even something as simple as text, to be too intimidating. But I am now learning the ins and outs and I am loving it. Its has really got my design wheels turning! 

Post again soon!

Brother Fashionista NQ3500D Review

Hi Everyone. So I may or may not have said before that at my mom's quilt shop JoyQuilts we are a Brother Dealer. Brother had a new line come out that we haven't seen before and they let us borrow one for a week to check out the features of the new line.

One of the things I love about Brother is that it is accessible and user friendly for the novice to the experienced quilter. Every machine from Brother that I have had the chance to check out has an amazing user manual and well label pictograph icons making it easy to reference and remember each function.

Plus if you are a Disney fan Brother has exclusive 35 Disney Designs built-in.

 Included with the machine two embroidery hoops 5 x 7 inches and 6 x 10 inches and 138 non-Disney Designs . This machine also has 360 degree sewing  sideways motion stitches

The above hoop is 6 by 10 inches! It has lots of room to stitch your designs.

The is the 5 by 7 inch hoop. Great for making those all important quilt labels. 

 The seasons were built-in designs Fall and Summer were in there too!

I did a little basic sewing, experimented with sideways motion stitches, and a few embroidery designs. I loved the ease of use. I found winding a bobbin and threading to be a breeze and the needle threader works faster than you can snap your fingers.

 The above is a decorative stitch I designed right on the machine. This is a neat feature from Brother.

These two pics are the sideways motion stitches built in to the machine. Add decorative stitches to you quilt sashing or any other project you have on the go!

I really feel if you are a novice you can get great results for your sewing or embroidery. If you haven't started embroidery and are looking to get into the embroidery world this would be a good place to start. Fashionista NQ3500D

Post again soon.
Adrian


p.s. These are my opinions. I have not been paid for this review I just wanted to share the fun I had this week trying out this machine!

Brother Scan N Cut and Why I love it!

If you have never heard of the Brother Scan N Cut you will now! I love this thing! It is a multi-medium stand alone cutting system. One thing about me is that I hate hand sewing, well that's not really true Hand Sewing Hates Me! Applique, Embroidery, English Paper Piecing, and Binding are techniques I wish I could explore fully and increase my skills but Carpal Tunnel and my general klutziness has made holding small needles painful at times! When we started being a Brother Sewing Machine Dealer at my mom's quilt shop, JoyQuilts Website,  it was just as they were introducing the Brother Scan N Cut. I fell in love with this machine. Years before I wanted to be a scrapbooker, but never made it past getting supplies. I looked at other cutting machines over that time couldn't justify the price of the machine and the shapes for cutting. With this awesome thing it has a built in scanner and can cut whatever size, shape, or pattern I can scan!

We started a Scan N Cut Club at the store about 6 months ago to get the ladies who purchased them using it! Most still had them in the box and what little cutting they had done with it was problematic. They didn't know what settings to use or anything. There are so many great blogs or youtube channels for tutorials on the amazing things this machine can do!

We have cut several different mediums and made several projects with our Scan N Cut but my favorite so far has been our block of the month. The machine has 114 pieced blocks and 60 applique blocks. One of the things I also love about this is that it will draw on your 1/4 seam allowance, keeps me accurate. To make our block of the month with our Scan N Cut I chose 4 blocks that were in the machine. I changed the size of the blocks off set them and used lots of negative space and intense quilting.

This is a mini quilt. It finished at 24 inches on all sides. I used the solids from Kona. They were from the QuiltCon 2015 Charity Quilt Challenge Fabrics. 

This was the first block we made for this Quilt and the inspiration for the quilts name! We made four of these blocks and they were placed in the corners.

 Block 2 was a little more complicated because I changed a few of the colour choices from the what the Scan N Cut suggested.

We are cutting this block out this month on our Friday Club Night. The tiny pieces have some of the ladies so NO NO NO. But I reminded them that the seams are drawn on and the machine is cutting them not us!

Our Fourth block will be cut in July and we will also be cutting the extra white to off set the blocks in the right order. I really love how the sharp contrast of the background white shows the piecing.

I darkened this photo using Pic Monkey to highlight the quilting. I haven't really used photo editing software before this week. I wanted this photo to show the intense quilting I used on this Mini Quilt. I pieced this project with aurifil 50wt white thread, Kona Cotton Fabric, Hobbs 80/20 batting, and quilted with Mettler Polysheen colour 15, my Bernina 770 with the BSR!

So if you haven't tried the Brother Scan N Cut try it out! Post again soon!