Embroider your quilts with maximum effect with the Brother VR By Sarah Payne

Fig 1 - Brother VR single needle embroidery
and free motion embroidery machine

If you are lucky enough to have a big, framed embroidery machine such as the Brother VR, embellishing a quilt can be a great way to make the most of the all the machine's built-in designs.

The Brother VR is a single-needle embroidery machine with free-arm embroidery and free-motion sewing capability, and comes with 305 built in embroidery designs! This is the perfect machine to embroider quilt patterns because the extra-large hoop allows you to work with designs up to 200mm x 200mm.

The VR easily converts into a free-motion quilting machine, however the built-in embroidery capabilities create amazing quilting designs with no effort or expertise at all!

There is a whole section in the Embroidery Design Guild showing the built-in quilting designs on the VR that are just crying out made the star of a quilting project.

Figures 2 and 3 below show just a couple of the designs available for quilting, from a simple design taking 3 minutes, to more complex designs taking 8 minutes. Each design has a legend next to the image suggesting colours and telling you the size and the time it takes to embroider the design making choosing a breeze. Some of the built-in designs have applique elements to them meaning even more design opportunities for your quilts. An easy way to tell if your design uses applique is to look for the scissor symbol (figure 4). If you haven’t tried applique with an embroidery machine there are full instructions in the manual – so what are you waiting for?

There are plenty of designs to play with! Simply select the one you are interested to see it on screen, and then press the Set button to start working on it! See figure 5.

Fig 2 - Designs with applique elements

Fig 3 - Quilting designs, from simple to intricate

Fig 4 - Symbols for cutting line etc on an applique

Fig 5 - Select the design you'd like and press Set to start working

Place your quilt sandwich into the correct size frame and embroider away!

                                                                           

Setting coloured embroidery to monochrome

Fig 6 - Select your design and press Embroidery 

You may decide that you want to take one of the coloured designs and work it in a single colour. Instead of pressing Go each time the machine asks you to re-thread, you can set the machine to monochrome. To do that, set your design and click Embroidery button (figure 6). 

Now click on the Thread icon to switch between colour embroidery and monochrome (figure 7). 

Fig 7 - Press the thread icon to switch between colour and monochrome.

Fig 8 All of the threads are now greyed out.

The colours on the screen will become greyed out (figure 8), and the machine will not stop between colours (though it will pause!) 

Tada- a single colour design without the hassle!

Figures 9, 10 and 11 are a couple of the designs that I embroidered onto a wadded quilt sandwich with my Brother VR. 

Fig 9

Fig 10

Fig 11

Figure 12 Finished blocks in my table runner

I then used a Quilt As You Go method to put them together into a table runner.

Tips for embroidering on a quilt

There are two ways to machine embroider onto a quilt – either as a piece of fabric before it is pieced, or onto a finished quilt.

There is no reason why you shouldn’t embroider onto a piece of fabric before you add it to your quilt. If you decide you don’t like it, you can discard the piece of fabric (or save for another project) and try again! Simply ensure that you start with a larger piece of fabric than you require, which you can then trim to the finished design square once you have completed your embroidery.

When embroidering onto fabric, you must always stabilise it. Machine embroidery designs need to be stabilised to avoid the design puckering or wrinkling. This happens because the size and direction of the stitching can stretch the fabric as it is stitched. To avoid this, we add further structure to our fabric with a stabiliser. Pick a stabiliser that is appropriate to your project. If it is a finished quilt, the wadding and backing behave as a stabiliser and so no extra layers are needed. If I am embroidering blocks I prefer to use a tear-away or wash-away stabiliser because I don’t want to add any extra bulk to the finished quilt.

If you are embellishing a completed quilt, make sure that you either baste the layers together, or stitch in the ditch around the blocks before you embroider. This can prevent the quilt layers slipping as you add more quilted designs.

Pick a design sized appropriate to your block. If you quilt too close to the edge of your block, then any wobbles become more obvious. I prefer to aim for a design ½ to one inch smaller than my block to ensure the best results.

If you are working on a quilt top that you have already put together and have added wadding, you may be concerned about seeing the back of the embroidered design on the finished quilt. If this is the case, I add a fine piece of muslin as a backing to prevent the wadding from getting caught in the machine, and then add a new backing once the embroidered quilt is completed. Some extra machine quilting to attach the layers together will hide the ‘workings’ of your embroidery.

Once you start introducing quilted embellishments into your projects using the Brother VR, your imagination is the only limit!