Quilting and embroidery how do you combine them? I bought a new machine about a year ago with the intent on using the embroidery options it came with in my quilting projects. However I have yet to do that.
At first I was intimidated by the idea of using embroidery. I love watching the machines stitch out designs every time I visit a shop. But the idea of doing this myself was scary.
Figuring out what design to use, and what stabilizers to use, and then the threads…….do I have the right colors?? And let’s not forget about what am I going to embroider? Should I just do squares and how big? Or should I add designs to ready made items like clothing, towels or bags?
This is where I got stuck. The funny thing is my daughter (all of 19 yrs old) has been using my machine more than me!! She has made patches, (which you may have read about previously on this blog and more recently she decided to add designs to her tee-shirts. In fact this weekend she sold one of her shirts for $30.00 at a show! (Which she paid $6.00 for originally).
So today I want to figure out how I can incorporate my embroidery with my quilting projects. I need your help to do that. I am asking for your ideas here. If you own an embroidery machine can you please share you ideas with me?
- What are your favorite items to embroider?
- What designs do you prefer to use?
- Do you use embroidery in quilting? and if so how?
- Are you familiar with applique in the hoop? and if so, do you like it?
- Any tips on stabilizers you care to share?
- How big do you cut your squares if you want to embroider them first?
Oh the questions could go on forever if I continue to think about this. Please leave me your comments and answer any of these questions you like, or add your own suggestions/tips. Help me get past fear and move to creating with embroidery so I can stop feeling guilty about buying this expensive machine and not using it to its potential.
Chris ~ you are so funny. I can’t believe you haven’t been using that machine. I LOVE my embroidery machine. I have quite a few comments that I can make but right this second, I honestly do not have time. We just returned last night from a quick two day emergency trip out of state and I’m playing catch up with hundreds (and hundreds and yes, hundreds more) of emails. I NEED to get those handled before I can even think of answering your questions. I’m sorry.
I will try just a couple of your points quickly:
Yes, I have done machine applique in the hoop (ITH) but I find many times, depending on the digitizer who has created the design, they can take much more time following their design than to just make the same thing without the use of their digitized ITH design.
Yes, I have done a few embroidered quilts; the first, a wall hanging quilt which was also a calendar but it was not small, closer to the size of a baby quilt but just a little smaller than that. The directions gave the size to cut the squares but I don’t recall now what the size/s were. I then amended that wall quilt to create my own lap/crib sized quilt by adding rows and columns. For those I cut the squares I was going to embroider larger than they were going to be in the quilt making sure they would have enough fabric to hoop. Stabilizer used for something you will be using in a quilt is a no-show mesh type since that usually won’t show through the fabric, especially if it’s a white block. I have also used a cut away which I felt was still too stiff around the design, then I used wash away stabilizer and liked that better so if I recall, I used the WSS on most of my blocks.
The majority of my machine embrodiering has been for the first three years, almost exclusively FSL stuff. I LOVE FSL (free standing lace) because it’s beautiful and people are just amazed at how those items are created by thread and nothing more. I would say about 85% of those FSL things I’ve done were Christmas ornaments and then bookmarks. Then I had a grandchild coming so my attention turned to tons of baby stuff with embroidery so the sets of gifts were matched like bib, burp cloths, receiving blankets which were made as a 40″ square rather than the normal sized receiving blankets. The larger blankets were VERY much loved and requested of me to make more for my son’s fiance to give to her own friends who were having thier own children as gifts because they all kept trying to take hers. They loved them much more in that larger size because they were perfect to use for the baby and for a coverup while breastfeeding. Anyway, I did embroidery on all of those things mentioned so they matched. They were all made using flannel and then some burp cloths also were made using the prefold diapers with decorations of fabric and also machine embroidery. Turns out almost all of them loved the flannel burp cloths best. I had used a double layer of flannel on them.
Hope that gave you some help for your questions. I guess I decided to just answer now while I was here rather than to try to remember to come back. LOL Kinda like you are supposed to do when you touch a piece of paper on your desk – handle it once then toss, answer, or file rather than to put it off to the side to deal with it later.
But, I hope I helped a little.
By: VickiT on May 28, 2011
at 4:20 pm
Hi Chris
I write a bit about this in my blog. At the moment most of the people reading my blog are quilters so I do not write to much about embroidery. I have completed two embroidered quilts for the National quilt Festival that will hang in the show from 1-7 July. After it will be displayed there I plan to blog in detail about the digitizing to piece, embroider and quilt the blocks in the hoop. I will also blog about the other quilt where I used other digitizers’ patterns.
I took some classes in digitizing with our local Bernina shop- Hanlie Snyman the owner, is a brilliant teacher. I also subscribed to classes on the internet at Sewpride- School of digitizing where Jackie taught via webinar’s. This is really helpful to be able to digitize one’s own appliqué (Here Joanne Winn and her classes on Quilt University get me going). Many appliqué designs that one buy, have satin stitch on the edge. This really move all the focus there. When you digitize yourself you can space the satin stitch a bit more so that it does not make a ridge- or use stemstitch or combine it with a pattern-as per Joanne Winn (Canadagoose designs).
It is quite a steep learning curve and after three years and nearly 2 millionstitches on my Bernina 830- I still have a lot to learn, so I find this very exciting.
By: Marié on May 28, 2011
at 10:40 pm
Vicki, and Marie,
Thank you both for your suggestions and encouragement. I know it is just a matter of getting in there and having to play around with it, just like I did when I learned how to quilt. But for some reason, this is much harder for me to explore.
There is the wasted material, thread and stabilizer if I don’t get it right the first time, and not something that is easily ripped out like a seam can be done when making a quilt. LOL
By: Chris Dahl on May 29, 2011
at 4:55 am