Brother Sewing UK

Before I start, I just want to say what a fabulous time I had at Quilt and Stitch Village in Uttoxeter From April 13-15 this year. It was great to meet so many friends old and new and to share with them some of the fabulous features of the Brother Innov-is XV /Dream Machine.  One feature I particularly like is colour shuffling. Quite often when I buy a design I am disappointed when the colours on the machine are not the same as the ones shown on the original design picture. You know what I mean. How often have you ended up with a design on your machine which is showing a horse with a green face or a fairy in an unlikely shade of purple? If you’re anything like me, even though you have hundreds of different spools of thread by different manufacturers, you don’t always have the exact shade recommended by the digitiser of the original design. It’s often quite difficult, especially with a complex design, to decide on the colours that you want to use. This is where colour shuf...

When I first heard about the scanning capabilities of the Brother XV /Dream Machine I could hardly believe it! Scanning in an image, converting it into an embroidery design and sewing it out - all without the use of external software? It HAD to be more complicated than that! But guess what!  It really isn’t! The first thing I did was to create an image of a scarf ring that my daughter gave me for Christmas. I photocopied it, scanned the line image into Design Centre, traced around the lines I wanted (and erased the ones I didn’t) until I had something I was happy with. I then layered up grey linen on top of beige linen and did a test stitch out. A little more tweaking, copying and pasting the design twice more and I had the front panel of a makeup bag. (Incidentally, I made the back panel in Design Centre too using one of the built-in quilt fills) Now I was ready to try making my own embroidered fabric! For this I needed a very clear black and white design which I found...

Yes I know I said I would be talking about other stuff at the end of my last blog but (as is usual for me) I have allowed myself to be sidetracked into more Brother XV/Dream Machine wonderfulness – hence this mini-blog. I’m talking about the feature on the machine that allows you to make appliqués – or indeed patches – at the press of a button. I’ve been into making Christmas decorations recently and thought how wonderful it would be if I could use some of the many, many Christmas designs I already have and make them into ornaments for the tree. Here's the first one still waiting for her hanging loop and some decorative beads. The design is from the wonderful fruBlomgren on Etsy. Please ignore the zigzag at the top, that’s where I pieced the stabiliser – yes I really am that mean... As you can see the satin stitch appliqué follows the line of the design which is pretty and effective, but then I thought how great it would be if I could put my designs into a simple circl...