Friday, April 25, 2014

A new addition to the studio

When I was away at the quilt convention, I made a rather large purchase, which my hubby and I finally picked up yesterday.  It has necessitated quite a few changes to the arrangement of my room and also a few frustrating hair pulls as I put it to use.
OMG!  It's an embroidery machine!  I have wanted one of these for many years and this year, I decided that it was time, now, because the prices were getting ridiculous!  I managed to get a great price on this one at the show.
As I said, I have wanted one for ages, but not to make lots of stuff with commercial designs.  I wanted to be able to digitize my own work and sew it out and to make lace-of course.
The last day and a half, after getting it home, I have been on a steep learning curve and have finally got it doing commercial designs correctly.  I have made just about every mistake I could make and finally feel comfortable with it.
This was the first design I did, which was a tutorial that took me through all the steps, but it was just one colour and very simple, so although it was a useful exercise, I wanted something more complicated!
So, of course, I chose a leaf.  This was my first attempt.  I can't remember what the problem was, but the computer told me to stop and then I couldn't get it started at the same place!
This was my next attempt, getting a little further along, but after it threw up another error, I got it started, but at the wrong place!
Aha!  third time lucky! I finally worked out all the little problems!  This one still had a little tension problem at the start, but it was passable.
I now have three of these worked on different fabrics with different colours.  I have had these blocks lying around for a while and I thought this would be a great way to practice, and end up with a quilt as well!

So my new toy is up and running.  Now I have to tackle an even steeper learning curve of digitzing my own drawings and getting them to stitch out the way I want.  The great thing about this is that I can be doing two things at once.  As I am right now - blogging whilst the machine sews away next to me!

Happy Creating!