I guess it’s obvious that I love Brothers.

My most recent purchase was the Brother ScannCut, and a few weeks before I purchased the Brother Designio DZ820E… When it comes to embroidery, you can’t seem to go wrong with Brother. They make some amazing Embroidery machines and their regular “sewing machines” aren’t so bad either. That’s saying a lot coming from a person who was sold on Singer machines for several years. However, I’m open minded and have come to appreciate many of the machines used to make fabric that are made by brother. Whether it is sewing, embroidery or serging, in this house they all are Brother. I still love the sewing machine I learned on, an early 1960 Singer. It’s heavy, stable, and handles anything I toss at it as long as it’s limited to a few stitches. 😉

My mother had asked me to dress up one of her plain white skirts. Not surprisingly, she requested that I embroider flowers on the skirt. She loves flowers.  Initially, she wanted the flowers placed near the bottom, but I told her it might appear better if they were embroidered onto the pockets.

The machine embroidery was done on my Brother Designio DZ820E. It’s an upgrade from my old embroidery machine the Brother SE400. I’ve had this machine for almost a month and am really pleased with it thus far. To make it less of a headache, I used a seam ripper to remove the pockets. I hooped the pocket and started embroidering.

This above flower simulates a watercolor painting. While stitching, I didn’t like it as much, but once it was finished I liked how it looked.  It was a simple stitch out, only consisting of 9,609 stitches.

This was a long stitch out, it took over four hours to complete. It consists of 31,158 stitches. The hardest part for me, is choosing the embroidery thread.

I’ll have to take a picture of how this looks on my mother’s skirt. It really looks nice! Later today, I most likely will be doing some applique with my Brother ScanNCut machine. My Brother ScanNCut is supposed to arrive later today!

You want to know something? Posting some of my “embroidered masterpieces” on Facebook has generated interest and a few inquiries have turned into some custom orders at my price. I don’t undersell myself. Not bad, right? Part of the satisfaction of knowing a trade skill and doing a good job with it, is realizing that there’s always a way to make money if you’re working for someone else. In the past, I used my trade skills for years to take care of myself. Of course, marketing your abilities is important. You can be extremely skilled and fail if you stink at marketing.

Because of the recent flurry in custom orders, I purchased the Brother ScanNCut. It should arrive tomorrow. I’ve been looking at cutting machines for a few years, but held off because the technology, in my honest opinion, was quite clunky. That’s why I never got on board with the higher end Cricut (or similar) machines. No, I don’t want to be chained to a computer, no I don’t want to have to purchase cartridges.

Brother ScanNCut had me interested since I can scan what I want and cut. I love that since it means I won’t be dependent on dies and it also means that I really won’t be giving my applique scissors and extended workout since the Brother Scan N Cut will cut a variety of materials including cloth! Check out the above video, to see some of the possibilities. Youtube also plenty of other videos showing Brother ScanNCut fabric projects.

One of the first projects I’ll be making with Brother Scan N Cut, is Disney Frozen appliques.

Here’s a design of the latest item I machine embroidered with my Brother Designio Series DZ820E. It’s not the actual item that I made. This evening, my daughter saw the Disney movie, Frozen at a youth event at our Lutheran church. The event started at 6:00 p.m.

About an hour before the event, my daughter stumbled upon the embroidery image that I’ve shown below and said, “Mom, I like bears and this one is listening to music, how cool is that?” “Do you think you can make it in time?” “We’ll see.”

I hooped the tee shirt and set up my machine embroidery machine. I finished the shirt at about 5:45. Talk about close! I clipped the jump stitches, removed the water soluble stabilizer from the front of the shirt. Some I could pick away with my nails and others I used an eraser to remove. I also cut the tear away stabilizer from the back. Once that was finished, we were on our way to church. I do believe she was there at 6:00. I did not stay, since I needed to clean up my crafting mess. You know… excess fabric, notions, etc.

My daughter had a wonderful time at the movie. She’s seen it several times but she was there with her friends so that made the experience even more memorable.

I’ll have to post a picture of the actual shirt. The shirt color is pink, and the bear was stitched in a vivid blue. In hindsight, I would have placed the design a bit higher towards the neck. My daughter loved it, just how it was made.

As you gain experience with machine embroidery, the process might appear “easy” to an outsider, observing machine embroidery, but those who think that are wrong. It does take a degree of skill, patience, knowing what type of fabric to use, threads, stabilizer, etc. Those all have an impact when it comes to creating an amazing machine embroidered item.

The bear is from Urban Threads and is called Rockin’ Bear.

Resources

Urban Threads: Rockin’ Bear