High-Tech Quilting: Editing a Digitized Quilting Motif with Artista Embroidery Software

Bernina Artista v6 Embroidery Software

Well, I finished my last mastery class today for the Bernina Artista version 6 embroidery design software.  Today's class went over the quilt design program within the embroidery software.  I don't think it's as powerful as the Electric Quilt 7 software, but the Artista quilting program would be a good "test drive" to see if I like designing quilts on the computer.

The embroidery software is really cool, and does so much more than I'll ever use it for.  We really just got an overview of the software in the mastery classes.  Bernie printed out the 586 page PDF online help manual for me, and I know I'll be marking it up with notes and referring to it often.  The most immediate benefit I got out of taking these embroidery software classes right now was that I figured out how to delete half of a professionally digitized quilt motif so I can use it on the half blocks at the edges of Lars's Drunken Dragons quilt.

The design I selected for the center of the circles on this quilt is from from retired OESD Collection 788, Quilting Inspirations by Keryn Emmerson, and I've enlarged it to completely fill the width of my largest embroidery hoop.  Then I edited the design, deleting everything on the right half, one node at a time:

Deleting the unwanted portion of the design in my Artista software, one node at a time

This is what I ended up with:

Ta Da!  Half Design Completed

As you can see, the design has a heavy vertical line at what is now the right edge.  That's because the design consisted of closed objects that wanted to remain closed objects.  I went in and deleted lots of individual stitches, so now that heavy line is more like long jump stitches that I'll be able to trim as I go.  If everything is positioned correctly, the quilt binding should line right up at the edge of this design.

Sample Stitched in Invisible Nylon Monofilament

I saved the designs to a USB stick, plugged it into my sewing machine, and stitched out both versions, the full circle and the half circle.  (I used the ugliest fabric in my stash, John Deere Tractors from Lars's preschool tractor phase).  Both versions stitched out beautifully with the needle tension reduced to 1.5 for the monofilament nylon thread in the needle.  Here's the thing, though -- it was so disappointing to have the design stitch perfectly on my sample, and only be able to SEE it on the BACK! 

Same Sample, Back Side Showing 60 wt Cotton Bobbin Thread

I'm now considering using one of my pretty variegated quilting threads in the needle for the quilting inside the circles, staying with the 60 weight cotton Mettler embroidery thread in the bobbin that I've been using all along.  I'll have to stitch some more samples and play around with that before I start stitching this design on the quilt, one circle at a time.  The variegated threads come in 40 weight, which is a lot heavier than the 60 weight thread in my bobbin.  I could just use a pretty blue or orange solid thread in the needle instead, to reduce potential tension issues.  Since this portion of the quilting process is going to be completely computerized, there shouldn't be any "oopses" that need to be hidden with invisible thread.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, everyone!

Bernina Embroidery Software v6: Manual Digitizing Homework

Bernina Embroidery Software Homework Completed!

Ta da!  Behold, my completed manual digitizing homework for my Bernina Artista Embroidery Software v6 class!  We started with this palm tree artwork (seen below) in the background, and built the embroidery design one object at a time, with right-clicks and left-clicks and stitch angles, oh my!  This simple exercize took me several hours to complete, both inside and outside the classroom.  I have new appreciation for the talents and abilities of professional digitizers!

Palm Tree Artwork Used in this Exercize

I am not going to bother with stitching my wonky palm tree out on the machine.  Truth be told, I doubt I would ever go to all the trouble of creating an embroidery design completely from scratch.  The software manual is almost 600 pages long; it's pretty complicated stuff.  I mostly use my embroidery software for combining or editing professional designs, or for embroidering with lettering.  Still, it's good to go through all the classes because you never know where you might pick up a useful morsel of information.  For instance, on the Drunken Dragons quilt that I'm temporarily avoiding, I was planning to use my embroidery module to quilt fancy designs in the center of each pieced circle, but wasn't sure how to handle the half circles on the edges of the quilt.  I learned that I can open the professional quilting design in my embroidery software, convert the embroidery design to vectors, use the eraser tool to erase half of the quilting motif, and then reconvert it to embroidery and save as a new design to use on those half circles.  So that's one hurdle that I can deal with -- if only I can get the free motion quilting down so I can stitch in the ditch on the curved circular seamline!

I should send my kids to the classes and have them learn how to use the software.  They'd be scanning in pictures of Lego Ninjago warrios and filling them in with all kinds of funky stitch patterns!  Speaking of Lars and Anders, they have been busy performers lately.  They were in four performances of Beauty and the Beast Jr. at their school last week, and their piano recital was earlier this afternoon.  They will be performing on their recorder (Anders) and trombone (Lars) with their classes again on Tuesday evening for the school's annual Night of the Arts, and I understand they will each have artwork for sale prior to the concert.  Busy, busy boys!

One Designer Fearlessly Battles an Onslaught of Discontinued Fabrics & Trims

Ugh.  That's it; ugh!!  The Great Recession is wreaking havoc in the design industry.  It's not just a question of clients not wanting to buy anything -- even when you have clients wanting to place orders, you have to deal with an unprecedented epidemic of discontinued, unobtainable fabrics and trims.  Fabric and trim mills are going out of business all over the world, and no one wants to keep stock of anything but the most popular, most ordinary fabrics in their inventory so back orders and lead times are out of control.

If you missed my post back in August about how I'm having a discontinued fabric recreated through custom embroidery for a client's master bath project, you can read about it here.  Then in September, I showed you the first stitched sample of the custom embroidered motif on our drapery fabric here.  I selected a darker embroidery thread color in shinier rayon instead of polyester thread and asked the digitizer to make some changes in the way the computerized embroidery machine stitches out the design, and I just got the revised sample in yesterday's mail from the embroiderer.  Much better!

Discontinued fabric on top, two most recent samples of custom embroidery below

I'm very pleased with the way the design is looking now.  The puckering has been virtually eliminated, our thread color is an exact match to the chocolate brown velvet trim, and our new design has better thread coverage and more of a three-dimensional quality than the original design had.  It looks like a beautifully stitched custom monogram motif, exactly what I expected when I hired Richards Jarden of Embroidery Arts to digitize the design for me.  I'm going to give the embroiderer, Kadire Biberaj of European Design, the okay to proceed with embroidering the silk yardage with the revised design.

However, no sooner do I figure out how to get around this discontinued fabric crisis than a discontinued trim rears its ugly head and tries to sabotage another favorite design!  Remember the amazing game room project that I'm working on recreating for the same client, whose home is being rebuilt and remodeled in the wake of a summer house fire? 

Original Game Room Drapery Treatment, Pre-Disaster

We reordered the exact same fabrics and trims for this room back in late August, and the distinctive metallic wrapped bead trim from Kravet was supposed to be a current pattern, just backordered.  I need 45 yards of this stuff for the lead (inside vertical) edges of all the drapery panels in this room, as well as for the horizontal bottom edge of the little door valance. 

Fabricut black silk velvet for drapery panels, graphic woven cornice fabric from Lee Jofa

I waited and waited, and when I called to check on the backorder status I was told that this particular trim had been sourced from a trim mill in South Africa that had gone out of business.  Kravet was looking for another mill to supply the trim, and once they had approved samples from the new trim, my order could be produced and shipped.  Then last week I got the call of doom from Kravet informing me that they cannot find another trim mill with the capability to produce this trim, and it is discontinued.  Period.  Have a nice day.  May we suggest your grandmother's silk tassel fringe instead?

This was not an easy trim to substitute, and I spent days searching every source I could think of.  Then I stumbled across this Stroheim & Romann metallic wrapped bead trim that turns out to have come from the exact same South African trim mill as the original trim -- but Stroheim still has enough of this trim in stock for my project:

Now, how cool is that?!  No, we don't have the black and cream header anymore, but I like the larger, more elongated bronze wrapped beads even better than the squatty little beads on the original trim.  Also, since the replacement furniture that has been ordered for this room is even more contemporary than the original furnishings, eliminating the black and cream chevron tape will result in a cleaner, sleeker window treatment.  The new trim is going to be sewn in-seam this time instead of top applied to the edges of the drapery panels, so the header braid will be completely hidden in the seam allowance and nothing will show except the beads.  It will look something like this:

That red silk fabric is for several throw pillows that will be scattered on the big, black sectional for splashes of color.

Come on, Discontinued Dragon!  Bring it on!

...So, Perfectionism: Is it a Good Thing?

You may be wondering why I felt compelled to extoll the virtues of perfectionism earlier.  Even if you weren't wondering, I'm going to tell you anyway.  Remember my post about our stay at The Sanctuary resort on Kiawah Island a couple of weeks ago?  Well, what I didn't tell you is that I made them move us to another room after the first night because I noticed splatter marks on the walls around the toilet in the first room.  Gross, right?  Vomit, or... I don't even want to think about what else it could have been!  Soon after moving into the second hotel room, I was grossed out by the discovery of black mold between the marble tiles of the shower stall, and we asked the front desk to have it cleaned.  The black mold remained throughout our stay, as did a dirty tissue from a previous guest out on the balcony.  Now, does this tell you more about the hotel, or more about me?  Are my standards just too high?

One thing I can assure you of is that perfectionism comes in handy in the field of high-end design.  As I was reminded on my vacation, it does not feel good to be paying a lot of money for something and then have to complain about everything in order to get things done right.  That's why I finally looked the other way where the mold and dirty Kleenex were concerned -- I resigned myself to the fact that, no matter how much money I paid, no matter which room they put me in, the room would probably not be cleaned to my standards, and it's not like there was another 5-star hotel on the island that I could move to.  I had to make the best of things, but my memories of the trip are soured by the fact that I paid through the nose to stay in a dirty hotel room.  In my work, I obsess about the details in hopes that my clients will love everything the first time, without having to point out flaws and without having to feel bad about complaining in order to get what they want.

Remember the discontinued embroidered silk fabric that I'm having recreated by a custom embroiderer for my client who was the victim of a house fire?  I got a sample of the custom embroidery today, and I spent the better part of an hour agonizing over every little detail.  There it is, on the left in this photo, with a sample of the original fabric on the right.  Isn't it gorgeous?  The thread color definitely needs to be a darker shade of brown, but as I examined the samples side-by-side, and viewed the embroidery file in my computer software program, I found several nit-picky, minute revisions to request.  This fabric is going to be used for ceiling mounted swags that are going to be seen from across the room; no one is going to get this close to the embroidery once the window treatments are installed anyway.  Yet my client is investing a lot of money in these draperies, trusting me to deliver a couture quality product that begs to be admired up close.  There's no such thing as a perfect design, a perfect drapery, or even a perfect fabric, but the goal is always to leave as little room for improvement as possible. 

I have a feeling that my very talented digitizer, who does beautiful work that I am absolutely awestruck by, is probably whipping up a little Rebecca voodoo doll right about now after receiving my feedback on his design work.  Soon I am going to be experiencing mysterious, sharp pains inflicted by stick pins far, far away...  Still, I'd rather spend more time and energy getting the design right at this stage than have 16 yards of silk custom-embroidered and sewn into window treatments, only for my client to be disappointed by the quality on installation day.  Perfectionism: It's A Good Thing!

Refusing to Accept "Discontinued With No Stock Available:" Custom Embroidery to the Rescue!

I posted a few weeks ago about my client's house fire and showed you some photos of the destroyed home office and game room.  All of the upholstery and textiles (including my custom drapery designs) on the main level of the home were destroyed as well, including these embroidered silk Kingston swag valances in the master bathroom.  If you're on my mailing list, you'll probably recognize this room from one of my postcards:

This master bath ended up being one of my client's favorite rooms in her whole home.  This is what it looked like when I first saw the room in the summer of 2008:

Stark white painted cabinets, partially marble-tiled walls that blended into the builder-blah pinkish neutral paint color on the rest of the walls, and builder-grade light fixtures in a much more traditional style than what my client had in mind. 

My client had already purchased plantation shutters from someone else before she brought me in, and was auditioning various rug options in front of the tub area.

The client wanted something contemporary, something with an Asian feel, but very restful and not so contemporary that her traditionally-styled mahogany furniture in the master bedroom would look out of place.  The first thing we changed was the lighting, choosing a dramatic Asian-inspired lantern pendant and coordinating sconces from Fine Art Lamps' Singapore Moderne collection.  The window treatments came next.  I didn't want to drill into the marble tile on the wall above both windows, so I knew I wanted decorative ceiling hooks for these swag treatments.  When I couldn't find stock ceiling hooks with the right look for this project, I designed these geometric wrought iron ceiling hooks to coordinate with the light fixtures and had them custom-made for this client.

And then there was this fabulous embroidered silk fabric from Pindler & Pindler.  The little chocolate brown square embroidered medallions were the perfect complement to the client's silk oriental rug.  We trimmed the swags with this square veltet bead trim from Kravet and papered the non-marble portions of the walls with a chocolate brown grasscloth wallcovering.  The cabinetry was repainted and warmed up with a brown glaze as well.

The textured brown and gold damask wallpaper in the water closet was just a fun little hidden surprise that repeated some of what was going on in the master bedroom. 

So, fast forward to today.  The grasscloth wallcovering needs to be stripped and replaced, and the window treatments were most likely tossed into a dumpster because they were so badly damaged by smoke and soot.  It's sad, but at least with good insurance coverage everything can easily be replaced, right? 

WRONG!!  The embroidered silk fabric has been discontinued from the mill in our colorway, it was exclusive to Pindler & Pindler so I can't source it anywhere else, and there is no stock available.  I begged P&P to custom order another bolt for us from the mill, but the answer was no.  I was told that this fabric was still available in Hot Pinkish Red colorway (no!), Sickly Mint Green colorway (no!), or Weirdly Orange-Yellow Gold colorway (no!).  I searched the designer showrooms for hours, with the assistance of the showroom staff, and we could not find any acceptable substitute for this fabric.

Then, between sobs of desperation, for some reason I thought of my poor, neglected embroidery machine, waiting patiently for me in my studio beneath a dust cover while work and family life pull me in opposite directions.  I started looking critically at the sample of unobtainable fabric in my hand.  The embroidery motif was a simple satin stitched design, very similar to a traditional monogram motif.  The stitch density was pretty light.  It was a single-color design, about 3 1/2" square; I could digitize the motif myself with my Artista embroidery software, and stitch it out in the medium-sized embroidery hoop, marking the motif placement carefully, repositioning the hoop, stitching the motif out about 350 times...  Yes, for a short, crazed moment, I considered attempting to personally embroider evenly-spaced medallion motifs on 16 continuous yards of silk dupioni...  Then I came to my senses.  Princess Petunia's pettiskirt is still exactly as I left it the last time I blogged about it.  Yes, I could probably digitize the motif with my software, but I'm not exactly a professional digitizer, and the thought of rolling out all that fabric, marking it, embroidering it, and re-rolling it without any catastrophes is a bit overwhelming.  Or so the local commercial monogrammer told me when I asked whether she might like to tackle this job.  "You want me to do WHAT?" she stammered, backing away with a look of fear in her eyes...

However, I found a couple of terrific resources, and I am going to have this fabric recreated on plain silk taffeta by a custom embroiderer.  Richards Jarden of Embroidery Arts is custom-digitizing the embroidery motif in a commercial embroidery format for me, working from a scrap of the original fabric.  Then Kadire Biberaj of European Designs is going to custom-embroider the silk yardage in her workroom in Virginia before sending it off to my drapery workroom for construction of the window treatments.  Kadire specializes in custom embroidery for interior designers, and her monogrammed linens are in the current White House.  She once recreated 80 yards of a discontinued embroidered silk fabric for celebrity designer Barry Dixon, who proclaimed that Kadire's version of the fabric was of even higher quality than the original. 

I must admit, I love a challenge, and I enjoyed seeking out and finding these talented individuals.  I also get a certain satisfaction from fighting back against discontinued status instead of crawling away in defeat.  But the best part of all of this is knowing that my client, who has been through so much, and lost so many mementos, photos, irreplaceable antiques and artworks, will at least get to enjoy her beautiful bathroom again, with every detail exactly as it was before. 

Update: The Very Hungry Caterpillar Blanky Quilt, Part 2: Embroidered Monogram & Quilt Label

Since I last posted about this project, I finished assembling and attaching my border strips (and re-learned the importance of fitting the quilt edge to the border strip rather than vice-versa).  Because I happened to end up with a blue stripe on the main border fabric falling right next to the corner block, I switched to a yellow fabric scrap for the corner blocks instead. 

I didn't want to use a polyester batting because I hate the way polyester fibers migrate through the quilt top and "beard" over time, which would be especially visible on these bright colors, but I didn't want to be committed to quilting too densely, either, since I wanted the quilt/blanky to retain the drapability and squishiness of the Minky backing as much as possible.  My quilting plan is to set forth boldly with no plan, and quilt just enough to add interest and texture without making the quilt too stiff.  Remember the quilting is not going to go through the Minky backing at all.  So I bought a thin 100% cotton batting with scrim that the manufacturer said could be quilted up to 8-10" apart for this project.  I don't remember who the manufacturer was, but I bought this batting by the yard from Mary Jo's Cloth Store in Gastonia, North Carolina.  Since this is a fairly small quilt project, and because my mantra right now is Simplify!, I decided to try basting the quilt top to the batting with temporary spray adhesive.  I used 505 and sprayed the batting, as per the instructions on the can, and then layed the quilt top onto the sticky batting and struggled to get it smooth and square.  It's a good thing the kids were at school, because I found it necessary to use some very bad language throughout this process.  Never again!  This spray basting method was a royal pain in the butt, and my previously perfectly square quilt top was not so perfectly straight and square anymore when I decided enough was enough.  I should have basted with my curved safety pins like I usually do; it would have taken the same amount of time, with no chance of distorting my quilt top in the process. 

Once I had the batting stuck to the quilt top, I stitched in the ditch with my walking foot in all the border seams to help secure the layers of the quilt a little bit better before moving on to the embroidery stage.  Here's the completed pieced top, stuck to the batting, and quilted only in the ditches:

Remember that the wide outer border is going to be mostly covered up by my 2" wide satin binding.  I laid the satin binding down over the corner to get an idea of how the border will look when the project is completed:

The satin binding looks a lot darker in the photo than in real life; it's a beautifully vibrant purple, leaf green, and royal blue that complements the fabrics.

So then I spent several hours the next day planning the embroidery.  Originally I thought of a three-letter monogram, but then I couldn't find a monogram style that I liked well enough.  Everything was either too grown-up, too commonplace, or else had too much going on that would detract from the spirit of the Eric Carle illustrations.  Finally, I remembered the Buttons monogram style from Embroidery Arts.  Eureka!  I have used Embroidery Arts' monogram designs over and over again and have always been pleased with the design quality, but this Buttons style never appealed to me in the pale pastels it's shown in on their web site.  But, by changing the thread colors to match the "marbles" in my Hungry Caterpillar fabric, this monogram looks like it was a custom design to go with my fabric.  I combined the 2" initial "P" Buttons monogram with the baby's first and middle names in my Bernina Artista embroidery software, which automatically converts any True Type font on my computer into embroidery stitches.  The font I chose is called Mufferaw.  Here's the template of my customized design that I printed out from my embroidery software, along with the Isacord thread colors that I selected.  I like to cut out my design templates so I can preview it in different locations on my project.  Isn't it perfect how the "P" fits so nicely into the space under the caterpillar?

I wasn't really worried about how the narrow satin-stitched lettering would stitch out on my quilt, but the "P" is a pretty dense design so I decided to stitch out a sample.  Sometimes thread colors look different stitched out in a design than they do on the spool, so a sample stitchout would also give me an opportunity to make any necessary thread color adjustments before stitching on the actual project. 

For my sample, I sprayed a scrap of the same batting used in my project and stuck a piece of cotton quilting fabric on top.  I hooped the two layers in my large oval hoop along with a single layer of tearaway embroidery stabilizer, and then I basted along the outer edge of the hoop using the basting design file I downloaded from the Bernina web site.  As you can see, I got a big bulging pucker at the top of the "P" and a good bit of fabric distortion.  Notice how goofy the fabric grain looks around the center of the design.  I decided that the hoop basting wasn't doing much good with this design because the basting stitches were too far away from the outer edge of the design at the top and bottom, where the distortion was occurring.  I decided to proceed with embroidering my project, but I applied two layers of light fabric starch to the quilt top first and added a topping of Sulky Solvy in addition to the tearaway stabilizer for additional support and to ensure that my skinny little letters didn't sink into the fabric too much.

Now, what I struggle with most in machine embroidery, other than puckering, is getting my project in the hoop straight and taught, with the hoop perfectly centered on the spot where I want the embroidery design to stitch out.  I taped my little template cutout to my gridded hoop template to help with that, but I still struggled a bit before I was satisfied with my hooping.

Here's how the design stitched out on my project.  I'm really happy with the design, the thread colors, and the placement, and I'm mostly happy with the way the embroidery stitched out...

...But I do still have some puckering around the letter "P."  It's better than the sample, though, and I think I might be able to smooth it away with a combination of ironing and quilting.  Next time I want to embroider on a quilt top, I'm going to try a couple of new things: I could pin-baste the layers like I usually do, and then quilt a 2-4" grid over the area that will go in the embroidery hoop, using wash-away basting thread in the top and bobbin, to better secure the layers and hopefully prevent this distortion, and then the basting grid will just wash away when I wash the completed quilt.  If that doesn't work, I'll go back to embroidering the quilt top before the batting is added, using one or more layers of fusible Poly-Mesh and tearaway stabilizers on the bottom and the Sulky Solvy on the top.  One of these days, I'll come up with the magical method for pucker-free embroidered quilts!  In the meantime, one good thing about baby quilts is that you know they are going to get ratty and ragged the more they are loved, and the baby isn't going to be looking the quilt over with a magnifying glass and passing judgement on the quilter for every little flaw.  I try to keep that in mind to keep my perfectionist tendencies at bay.  The quilt label stitched out without a hitch, as I knew it would.  It's the same True Type font that I used in the monogram, just a smaller size, and I tried to put it an inconspicuous location on the front of the quilt, next to the outer border on the upper right side. 

I'm making progress!  The next step is to add texture and better secure the batting to the quilt top with some free-motion machine quilting.  I've had the BSR (Bernina Stitch Regulator) update for my Artista 200 machine for several years, but never had the time to play with it and get comfortable enough to use it on a project before.  I always want things to be PERFECT, and if I'm hand-quilting it may take a few years to finish a project but at least I am in complete control of every stitch that goes into the quilt and it comes out exactly the way I envisioned.  But I've been inspired recently by Wendy Sheperds's Ivory Spring blog and her BSR quilting projects featured in Bernina's Through the Needle publication, so I'm determined to get over my fears and take the plunge.  I know that the best tools in the world can't give me the instant ability to achieve exquisite, heirloom quality machine quilting like Wendy's, but having the best tools does give me a head start on the learning curve, and the only way to get better is to get started and just do it!  Wish me luck...

Quick & Easy Embroidered Teacher Gifts

It's getting to be that time of year again.  Now that we're back from Spring Break, it's full speed ahead to summer vacation.  If your kids are in preschool or elementary school, it's not too soon to start planning group gifts for those special classroom teachers.  Scrapbooks, photo albums, and group gift certificates are always nice, but I thought I'd share a quick but meaningful machine embroidered project that I came up with a few years ago for my son's preschool teachers.  All of the moms pitched in to buy two simple solid-color aprons.  The class had been working hard all year long on learning to print their names, so I got each child to write his or her name in marker on a white sheet of paper.  I scanned the signatures into my computer, cleaned up stray marks in Corel, and then used the Auto Digitize feature of my Bernina Artista embroidery software to convert each child's signature into a machine embroidery design.  Then I randomly stitched the children's embroidered signatures all over the aprons in different thread colors.  Ta da!

If I had this project to do over, I would have asked the mom who bought the aprons to get ones without pockets since I would have had to remove and reattach the pockets in order to embroider them and still have them be functional.  I was down to the wire, so I just embroidered around the pockets instead.  And if I was a little more comfortable with my digitizing software it would have been nice to angle the satin stitches around the curves of the letters for a more professional end result.  But the teachers loved their aprons and said they would wear them when they did craft projects with the kids, and the children enjoyed finding their signatures on each one and pointing them out.