Book Reviews: Help With Machine Embroidery

Embroidery Machine Essentials: How to Stabilize, Hoop andStitch Decorative Designs, by Jeanine Twigg, is the best general overview that I've found for new machine embroiderers.  In Chapter 2: Embroidery Products and Chapter 3: The Embroidery Process, Twigg does a good job of introducing newbies to the mechanics of machine embroidery, including proper hooping technique, an overview of different types of stabilizers and their appropriate use for embroidery, and recommended placement of embroidery on common items such as shirts, towels, and linens.  The troubleshooting guide in Appendix I is useful as well, and Twigg does address the most challenging aspects of machine embroidery for most beginners, with clear explanations.  However, this book was published in 2001 and the entire first chapter covering equipment choices is hopelessly outdated.  Floppy disks and proprietary design cards have been dinosaurs for a long time, and because technology changes so quickly, it really should have been left out of the book entirely.  The projects featured in the last part of the book are, for the most part, unbelievably ugly and make you wonder why anyone would bother learning machine embroidery in the first place.  For that reason, the CD containing the embroidery designs featured in these projects is not much of a bonus, in my opinion.

I almost passed on Machine Embroidery on Difficult Materialsby Deborah Jones based on the title.  After all, I was having trouble embroidering on "ordinary" fabrics, so I had no desire to drive myself crazy trying to embroider on “difficult” fabrics like leather or vinyl.  However, this book turned out to be a far more valuable reference than I expected.  A better title would have been Successful Machine Embroidery on Every Fabric: Strategies for Hooping, Stabilizing, Editing and Troubleshooting from Professional Embroiderers.   Jones does an outstanding job of explaining how machine embroidery works with all fabrics, and how the fabric, stabilizers, needle, thread, and hooping method all affect the success or failure of the completed embroidery design.  What's more, Jones gives specific recommendations for altering embroidery designs within embroidery software in order to correct problems and achieve the best results for whatever material you're working with.  Not only does she recommend reducing/increasing your tension, stitch density or stitch length, but she also gives a range of specific values to try for each fabric, greatly reducing the process of trial-and-error.  For me, this is the most valuable information in the book.  I know HOW to use my embroidery software to change pull compensation, density of a fill stitch, stitch angles, etc. from my software mastery classes, but before reading this book I would look at an ugly sample stitch-out of a design and have no idea which values I should change to correct the problems.  The book also comes with a CD that contains multiple versions of designs that have been modified for different fabrics, so that you can open the designs in your embroidery software and compare the standard version to the adapted version. 

My copy of Machine Embroidery on Difficult Materials has been heavily highlighted, and it's my new go-to reference before starting any kind of embroidery project.  I recommend it wholeheartedly to novice to intermediate machine embroiderers. Readers who do not own embroidery software may feel discouraged that they are unable to try all of the author's suggestions, but many will decide to purchase embroidery software for the first time based on the software applications described in this book.

So, after conducting all of this research, I now know of several things I could have done differently to yield better results with my recent Too Cool for School Carpool Tag project: 

1. First and foremost, I was not using my Mega Hoop properly.  The Mega Hoop has two screws on opposite corners, and I was only loosening and tightening the one in the top left corner -- the one closest to the "R" that was puckering most severely.  I should have loosened and tightened BOTH screws to achieve the correct tension for my fabric.
2. The Mega Hoop also has four little wishbone-shaped clips that I had forgotten about and neglected to use.  These clips help to further secure the fabric in the oversize hoop, to minimize distortion and puckering.
3. I was not hooping correctly.  I was just barely loosening the hoop tension enough so that I could hoop my fabric with a great deal of effort (stretching my fabric in the process, no doubt!) and then I was tightening that screw again before I attached the hoop to the machine.  I should have loosened the outer hoop more and adjusted the tension to where the fabric could be hooped snug and taut, then popped the outer hoop off and re-hooped so the tension would be evenly distributed across the hoop rather than concentrated at the screw point -- and no more touching the screw once the fabric was back in the hoop and ready for stitching!
4. The final lesson I've learned is to stop being so stingy with stabilizers.  In general, you probably need more stabilizer for most projects than you think you do, and sometimes you need a combination of interfacing AND stabilizer to properly support embroidery stitches on a given fabric.  If I was doing the carpool tag over, I probably would have fused Polymesh cutaway stabilizer to my fabric as well as floating a layer of crisp tearaway stabilizer beneath the hoop.  Why?  Because it's very likely that the dense, closely-spaced stitches around my applique letters perforated my tearaway stabilizer so that it stopped providing support even before the design had finished stitching.  A lightweight cutaway like Polymesh would not have added bulk, but would have ensured integrity of the stabilizer throughout the stitching process. 

Armed with all of my new embroidery knowledge and resources, I will feel a lot more confident going into my next embroidery project!




Not Perfect, but Good Enough -- Moving On!

Considering everything that I did wrong, I think my carpool tag embroidery design came out pretty good, don't you?  I'm not going to start over a third time; I think I've learned what I set out to learn and this is "good enough" for this little project.  I'll attempt to quilt out the rippling that remains, but first I have to decide whether to add borders, and if so, how elaborate to make them.

In Which Otto, My Rottweiler, Teaches Machine-Embroidered Applique on the Bernina 750QE



Otto Supervises Embroidery on the Bernina 750QE

So my Rottweiler has been doing a bit of embroidery with my new Bernina 750QE...  :-)  Otto was fascinated by the noises and movement of the embroidery module.  It was very cute.

 

I came up with an Inaugural Project to help me get to know the new sewbaby.  It's going to be a mini quilt, smaller than a place mat, with our last name appliqued in large capital letters. It's the I'm Too Cool for School Carpool Tag to replace the boring, laminated name tags that were distributed to us by the school.  After I do the machine-embroidered applique I'll add some borders, layer it with batting and backing so I can test out the BSR function with some free-motion quilting (maybe can incorporate one of the 2012 Free-Motion Quilting Challenges that I still need to complete).  Finally, I'll test out the dual feed feature when I attach the binding.  By the time it's finished, I should be pretty comfortable with my new sewing machine.

Applique 4 Alphabet from Embroidery Arts

I selected the Applique 4 monogram font from Embroidery Arts, and I combined the letters in my Artista Designer Embroidery Software, sizing the letters to completely fill the Mega Hoop (which I have owned for at least 7 years and have never taken out of the box!) and using the vertical alignment tool to fine-tune the spacing. 

Disclaimer: I am not what you'd call a frequent machine embroiderer.  In the past, my embroidery module has only come out every 6 months or so, for quilting "in the hoop" or a monogrammed baby blanket gift.  The actual embroidery process is very easy -- all you have to do is thread the machine, press the start button, and then clip the thread and rethread with the next color when prompted by your machine.  The tricky part of machine embroidery is getting your fabric into the hoop properly so that it is taught, but not stretched, correctly stabilized to support the density of your chosen embroidery design, and positioned in your hoop so that your design can stitch out exactly where you want it to go. 

See that pesky puckering?

I hooped my solid black, quilting weight cotton fabric with one layer of lightweight tearaway stabilizer, and noticed puckering around the very first letter as the design began to sew out.  Grr!  The puckering didn't look too severe, and I figured I could probably steam it out with the iron later, so I kept going.  I floated an additional layer of the tearaway stabilizer under the hoop for the last 3 letters of our name, and that almost completely eliminated the issue.  Yay!

Completed design.  Additional stabilizer was used with the "MPF" to eliminate puckering.  Not bad, right?

...Except, NOT yay.  It turns out that inadequate stabilizing was only part of the problem.  I must have stretched the snot out of my fabric when I hooped it, because once the embroidery was complete and I removed the hoop, the fabric relaxed and even MORE puckering appeared!  I was able to steam most of it away around the letters that had the additional layer of stabilizer, but the first two letters look pretty bad. 

Stretched In the Hoop -- See all those awful wrinkly puckers now that the hoop is removed?!

Could I "quilt this out?"  Maybe -- but the point of this whole project was supposed to be a learning exercise, so I'm decided to start over.  I'm not wild about how severe the lettering looks against the black background, anyway.  Puckers aside, I'm just not loving the combination of fabrics, thread color and font style.  I chose those fabrics based on the need for the name to be visible and legible from a distance, viewed through the windshield of my car -- but I think it ended up looking like a neon sign at night.  I didn't realize how heavy that satin-stitched edge was going to be.  The letters looked really cute in that fabric when I cut them out:

Pre-Cut Applique Letters, Prior to Stitching

So the next day, I tried again.  This time, I hooped my fabric along with TWO layers of OESD Clean and Tear tearaway stabilizer, and tried to be more careful about stretching.  I chose a red Eiffel Tower print for the background and a black and white stripe for the lettering.  This particular alphabet was inspired by the Art Nouveau artistic style that was very influential in Paris around the time when the Eiffel Tower was conceived and constructed for the 1889 and 1900 World Fairs, so it felt appropriate to pair them together. 

Second Attempt with 2 layers of OESD Clean & Tear

Still not perfect, but much better, don't you think?  I was really careful to keep my towers straight.  Also, I should mention that I printed out full-size templates of each applique letter from my embroidery software, then traced them (upside down!) to Wonder Under fusible web.  I cut each letter out as a rough square, fused that piece to a scrap of striped fabric -- carefully aligning the stripes -- and THEN carefully cut out each letter with a small, sharp scissors prior to starting the machine embroidered applique.  I took some photos of this process with the original applique fabric:

Lettering Traced BACKWARDS onto Fusible Web, then Fused to WS of Applique Fabric

That way, after the machine has sewn the placement line, I carefully remove the hoop from my machine, place it on my ironing board, positioned my pre-cut letter inside the stitched outline, and fuse it in place with my mini iron.  Once the letter has been fused in place precisely where it belongs, I reattach the hoop and the machine is ready to do the tackdown, underlay, and satin stitches with no additional fabric trimming required. 

The directions for machine embroidered applique designs usually call for putting an oversized scrap of fabric down over that placement line and trimming the excess fabric away in between the tackdown stitch and the satin stitch, but I think it would be a nightmare to try to cut these letters after they were already stitched down in the hoop.

See, I still have a bit of a wave at the edge of this piece, but it's much better than the first attempt and I think I can work with it.  I really, REALLY love the way the fabrics and font style work together.

Mega Hoop has TWO screws, not just one!

I should mention at this point that, when I was packing away my Mega Hoop, I noticed that it has TWO adjustment screws -- the one at the top left that I had been loosening and tightening to hoop my fabric (near the R), and ANOTHER adjustment screw at the lower right corner that I hadn't even noticed.  Did I mention that I've never used this hoop before?  Now I'm thinking that, if I had loosened BOTH screws the way I was supposed to, it would have been much easier to get the fabric into the hoop smooth and taut WITHOUT stretching it.  Note to self: the Mega Hoop has TWO SCREWS!

So, to sum things up: today I learned (again!) that I probably need more stabilizer for embroidery than I think I do, especially when I'm working with light weight fabrics and heavy satin-stitched designs.  I also learned that I need to loosen the outer hoop more (with BOTH screws) before I cram the inner hoop, fabric, and stabilizer into it so the fabric isn't stretched and distorted in the hooping process.  In fact, since I'm planning to quilt this piece anyway, I probably should have layered a thin cotton quilt batting between the fabric and stabilizers prior to hooping it -- the batting would have provided even more support for my embroidery design.

Next time I show you my Too Cool For School Carpool Tag, I'll probably be adding borders of some sort.  I haven't decided what I want them to look like yet.