Personalizing Gwen's Quilt Back Using My Embroidery Machine - Needlework Monday

Sunday night comes around and I'm trying to figure out what to do for my Needlework Monday post. Well, no progress has been made on Gwen's Quilt and I didn't do any other sewing this week, so it was time to do the next step to finish Gwen's quilt back. I'm happy to have the motivation that Needlework Monday brings...even if it is late on Sunday night!

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I drag out my handy embroidery machine that we purchased years ago off of eBay. It weighs a ton, but it does a great job. It's the Disney version, although I only really use it for the letters and shapes. I don't really like to change the thread and the Disney ones use a lot of colors!

For this quilt, I want to do a simple heart with her name and mine. Should be easy enough, one color, simple design. These are the pieces I'll need: stabilizer for the back of the fabric, the embroidery hoop to hook in the machine and the thread. I wanted it to stand out, so I chose turquoise.

This is what the monitor looks like when starting. You can choose any number of designs and match them all up together. It takes a little while to learn how to use it at the start. Mine has been in storage for a few years, but I quickly figured it out again!

For each part of the design, you can move it all around the screen, change the array of it (make it slanted or curved), and change the size. It is pretty easy to use. It tells you how large the final product will be.

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Once the design is chosen, it's ready to go! Snap the hoop in place with the fabric and stabilizer on and you're ready to go! (I know that it looks like I'm sewing in a cave. We had some of the lights on and I could see just fine! The phone didn't like taking pics though!)

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Once you put the needle down and push the green button to start, the machine does all the work. It starts out doing different layers of the design and I'm always interested in how it does it at times. For instance, it will start at the end of the letter "m" even if that doesn't make sense. Here it is starting the heart and putting leaves on.

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As it goes, the monitor keeps you updated on which letter is being sewn as well as how much time is left for the design. If the thread breaks (which mine did twice - once making a huge mess of the letter "G"), you just back up the design to where you want it to start again. (4 of 9 minutes left below at that point.)

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Since it had been a few years since I had used the machine, I had to take a little longer to remind myself how to do some of the stuff. It should have taken 9 minutes from start to finish, but the big mess the broken thread made added some extra time (and the fact that I couldn't find my seam ripper and had to use tiny scissors and try not to cut the fabric). So from taking the machine out to putting it away was about an hour and a half. Not too terrible and I'm happy how it turned out!

_{#NeedleworkMonday by @crosheille}