Exploring character and decorative stitches on the XP1 Luminaire with Tim Cooper

One of the many new features of the Luminaire XP1 sewing and embroidery machine is the ability to adjust the size and aspect ratio (height versus width) of character and decorative stitches, allowing greater control and creative flexibility than ever before. As with many of the machines in the Brother range, there is also an onboard custom stitch creator, allowing you to create your very own stitch designs if what is provided isn’t quite what you need. On the XP1 there are also now even more character and decorative stitches that can be used 'in the hoop' on the embroidery side of the machine too, allowing even more creative fun.

In my experience, one of the most overlooked features of many machines in the Brother range – including the XP1 – is the ability to combine stitches to create your own pattern. On the XP1 (and other machines), you can combine different stitch patterns, mirror them, combine those of different lengths and also create stepped patterns. These can then be saved to the machine’s memory or to USB media to use any time you like.

There are 15 categories of character/decorative stitch patterns on the XP1:

Number Category
6                   Wide and various
7                   Wide botanical
8                   Wide motifs and messages
9                   Narrow and various
10              Narrow botanical
11                 Candlewicking
12                 Large satin
13                 Satin
14                 Cross stitches
15                 Combinable utility
D                   Disney
Alphabet      Gothic font
Alphabet      Handwriting font
Alphabet   Outline font
Alphabet   Cyrillic font

Select the category of stitch pattern you want to sew and then choose the stitch pattern you want. The pattern is then displayed on the screen. If you select a different pattern, it will then be shown on the screen.

You can use the width and length controls at the bottom of the screen to adjust the stitch pattern as you need. Note that not all character/decorative stitch patterns can be resized.

If you have previously been using a V5, V7 or XV machine, you will be used to building stitch patterns by simply selecting additional patterns that then build on to the pattern(s) already selected. On the XP1, pattern building is activated by pressing the '+' on the left of the screen:

Additional editing functions can be found in the edit menu, which is selected by pressing the pattern edit button at the top right of the screen:

At the bottom of this list of icons, there is the 'link' button. When this is highlighted, the width and length (aspect ratio) settings are locked, shown by the 'link' bracket over the width and length settings. This means that if you change either width or length, the other setting is changed proportionally so that the stitch pattern shape is not distorted.

If the 'link' icon is not highlighted, you can change the width and length settings independently:

One of my favourite creative features is the step pattern building using the satin stitch patterns. When you first select one of the stitch patterns from category 13 (satin stitches), it defaults to a medium size (size 3). In the edit menu, you can change the size between 1 and 5:

You can make some interesting patterns just by changing the size of the same pattern in the pattern builder. Taking to the next level, you can combine this with the step effect. Use the left and right arrow keys to step the stitch patterns:

You can also mirror individual (as well as the entire) stitch patterns to add additional variety.

To select the individual stitch pattern, use the up and down arrow keys under the '+' icon.

The icon under the up and down arrows selects the entire pattern, which allows you to change the overall width and length of the pattern.

The possibilities are almost endless, limited only by your imagination.

See you next time when we’ll look at using character/decorative stitch patterns in the embroidery hoop.

Tim