Is anyone here into sewing machine embroidery.

[Virginian]

I have a Janome 10K. I use the machine more for embroidery than for sewing.

[Bjornsdotter]

1. I've done small amounts

....but not really that much. My machine is older (Husqvarna 1100), maybe about 15 years old and it was just the beginning of the embroidery machines. I've used it mostly to embroider collars and cuffs, but haven't done any of that in at least 10 years.

What kinds of things to you embroider with yours?

Cheers

[Virginian]

2. I embroider many many things.

I can download designs from the internet. And there are lots of locations that sell designs and most have a few freebies so you can see if you like the quality of their work.

I like to do Free Standing Lace designs. I hoop a strong piece of water soluble stabilizer without any fabric. Start the machine and let it stitch out the snowflake or lace. Then I just wash away the stabilizer and have the finished product.

Right now I am working on Martha Pullen's gift of the month from last August. A beautiful set of silk booties in white on white.
http://www.marthapullen.com/GOTM/2006/aug06gift.html

I have bought a few designs from this site: http://www.advanced-embroidery-designs.com/index.html

and lots of designs from http://www.emblibrary.com/

There are two websites that sell embroidery blanks: http://www.embroiderthis.com/, and http://www.allaboutblanks.com/
I try to take a linen hand towel as a hostess gift when I am invited somewhere. A complete set of bath towels with the last name makes a nice wedding present. Last year for Valentine's Day, I made my husband's "card" out of red satin with white letters. I have also done cuff initials on my husband's shirts.

We have a club of ladies who bought our machines from the same dealer. We meet in the store. In learning new techniques, we create a charity project, usually a quilt that gets raffled off and the proceeds go to the charity. We pick a few different charities each year. Last year we contributed embellished fleece blankets to Fischer House. I appliqued fleece stars on mine. This year, we are making walker bags with patriotic embroidery on the pockets. These bags provide pockets for the Vets to carry things on their walkers. We DO support our troops, and we DO support our Vets.

[Nite Owl]

4. Those booties are

beautiful. All of is! I never could conquer the sewing machine, just totally frustrating to me.

Are you giving those booties to a new baby or just making them for a future gift? They really are an heirloom.

[Virginian]

5. I've made the prototype practice sample.

Edited for punctuation:
My cousin's granddaughter was born in October. I have so busy with other things that I just got started on the booties. (I spend too much time on DU.) I realized that the size 0 probably isn't going to fit anyway. Now that I have done it once, the second pair won't take so long. I'll make her the size 2. The prototype can be for show and tell at our sewing meeting in two weeks.

I don't really make clothes. I do embellish them. I found some black athletic shorts on sale for $4. (Mens with pockets) I had yard of fabric in a novelty print on black background.
I cut the legs off the shorts until they had about a 1 or 2 inch inseam.
Then I cut the yard* of the novelty print into two half yard strips the full width of the fabric.
Hemmed one side of each strip.
On the other raw edge, I measured how full I wanted the legs of the coulotts, folded it in half to determine where it would meet the outside seam, made a notch.
Measured thirds on either side of first notch giving me sixths.
Started gathering. The first and last sixth had very little gathering, most of the fullness was towards the outside seam notch.
It measured a little larger than the leg openings of the athletic shorts because I knew the knit would stretch a little.
I started sewing the ruffled raw edge to the cut edge of each leg starting at the inseam making sure the notch lined up with the outside seam.
When I got back to the inseam, I sewed the two selvege edges together.
I did that on both legs.

I found an embroidery pattern in my sewing machine that went with the novelty print and stitched it onto a t-shirt of a co-ordinating color.

Voila, coulotts and shirt co-ordinates. Good enough to wear while running errands.
For a little extra pizzaz, go to www.designbydawn.com and get some small hot fix crystals to accent neckline or emphasize design.

*Back track to the length of the fabric. I had taken some to make a band for a hat and a scrunchy for my hair and a neck cooler so maybe I ended up with the ruffled legs being about 13 or 14 inches hemmed.

[eleny]

3. My machine has a lot of built in designs

But I can't download designs. It's a Janome Q or something like that.

I really enjoy using the built in patterns. Sometimes I wish I'd gotten a machine with more advanced embroidery features. But I got this one because I was primarily interested in the freeform embroidery feature.

I'd love to see the snowflake work you described. It sounds like fun!

Btw, do you ever have problems with making bobbins in your Janome? I love the machine but my bobbins can sometimes come out kind of loose. They start out tightly wound but then get loose near the end of the winding process. Maybe your machine creates bobbins in a more advanced way but I thought to ask.

[Virginian]

7. The snowflakes have come from several websites.

This is the one I made this year. I love the lace on this website, but some of it can be expensive:



I haven't had a problem with the Bobbins. A lot of times I will buy the pre-wound ones for embroidery. You get a choice of black or white. I wish bobbins came in colors, so I could put cotton on one color, poly in a different color, rayon in a different one and regular sewing thread in another color.

[Stargazer09]

6. I have a Brother 400 D

I use it exclusively for machine embroidery, but I haven't used it very much lately. I've made a few blankets for my friends' babies, using the Disney expansion cards, and I'm using it to embroider my children's names on Christmas stockings. Right now, the machine is hidden behind a bunch of stuff I'm getting ready to send away, so I won't be using it anytime soon.

I also have Brother's PE-Design software, so I can make my own designs (in theory, at least--I haven't attempted that yet).