I love all types of hand work; I have been knitting for over 45 years. I picked up cross-stitching many years ago as well. I bought a Designer 1 in 1999 and just love the capabilities. I have tried digitizing and have done a few simple things. My problem is that I just want to do it, not take the time to learn. Then after I retired, I started quilting. I think I have now found THE thing. I do a lot of embroidering on quilt blocks and make the quilt. I also use the embroidery to machine quilt a small item.

Bricore, you really need to take it slow and easy at the beginning. But don't give up; the possibilities are endless.

I embroider by hand...though someday I'd like to get into machine embroidery.

I embroider by hand and love it! I have been doing this for over 30 years. I also like to embroider quilt blocks then sew them together and outline the blocks with "crazy quilt stitches". I am making a crazy quilt for my brother that is a copy of a 1922 quilt made by a housewife in Florida. There is a lot of hand embroidery on it. She sketched animals from on and around her farm, embroidered them on scraps of velvet and heavy cottons all in odd shapes then outlined each piece with crazy quilt stitches after she had sewn them all together. I have never seen a more beautiful quilt! I have never tried machine quilting but maybe some day when I get a new machine I will try it.

LeeAnna - your quilts sound lovely! Crazy quilting is a great way of mixing embroidery and quilting - and you can mix it further by embroidering your squares and then stitching them together to make a quilt.

I've done hand embroidery since I was a child. Mostly these days I embroider on baby shirts, denim jackets and jeans. I'm very interested in machine embroidery but have no idea where to start learning about techniques, machines, and everything else. I'd like to use my own original line drawings and free coloring pages to create digitized images for machine embroidery. Any suggestions or advice most welcome! Thanks in advance!

There are two ways to do machine embroidery - to use either a digitized pattern (which you can either do yourself using a digitizing program, or get commercially done) or freestyle.

Freestyle allows you to use your machine skills & imagination so much more.

To freestyle machine stitch, transfer your pattern to the fabric in the same way you would for hand embroidery, and then, like you would with hand embroidery, plan your colours and stitches.

If you have a specialised embroidery machine, there are a number of stitches you can use, but you may want to start with deciding on stitch length for your stitching.

You can also get specialised metallic threads that you can use through your embroidery machine, as well as normal threads.

I hope that this helps - perhaps Fritsau (our Machine Embroidery Guru) can give you more information - especially on digitising?

Hi,

Glad to join this forum. I am a grandmother to six and have been doing machine embroidery for about ten years now. Started downloading free designs and ended up with so many I couldn't find which ones I needed when I wanted to sew something. The result was the Embroidery Deduper Software. You can find more about it at our website and also see some of the many projects I completed for family and friends. Love doing the Baby gifts!

Hugs,
Pat
www.gransworkroom.com

I have a designer #1 and the original embroidery program that came with it. I, too, have found digitizing a little overwhelming but have done a few things with it. I download a lot of freebies and purchase particular ones I want. When I first got my machine (1999), my granddaughters were little and I made them lots of things with embroidery. I also have made a lot of gifts with it. I am into quilting big time and I use the embroidery on blocks a lot; it makes lovely quilts. (For hand work, instead of hand embroidery, I do hand applique) I love my machine and the quality it does and am so happy I bought it.

I've been away from embroidery for way too long. This winter is going to be my time to get back to it. I have all my supplies to do hand embroidery. No machine, though I really think they are so cool.

Pat, welcome to the forum, hope that you enjoy your stay!
Rosie