Spring has sprung!

The last two weeks have been beautiful here in Tampa, Fl and my husband and I have been working in the yard.  We lost a few plants this winter when we had a freeze in January and so we had to replace a few.

As I was flipping through my Creative Machine Embroidery magazine the other day, I came across this garden tote project.  My garden tote is looking pretty shabby, so I thought I need to make a new one!

I also thought that the front pockets would be a perfect palette for a few DesignWorks projects.  So I am challenging you all to 'dust' off the DW software and tools and come play with me.

You can download the free pattern for the Garden Variety Tote here until April 30th.  If you would like to play along, then print off all of the pattern pieces and tape them together.  BEWARE - there are 16 pages.  Cut out the paper pattern pieces and set them aside.

You can pick up the magazine at your local JoAnn Fabrics or you can download a digital issue from the same link above.  The instructions to sew the tote are in the magazine.  I will go over a few steps but not all of them.

If you do not want to make a garden tote, of course you can make any project you would like.

Coming tomorrow...

Fabric requirements and  materials for the garden tote.

He has arrived!

The final appliqué is here for the Gingerbread Man!  I started again with the Gingerbread Paint file.

I then thought about HOW I wanted this design to stitch out.  Remember when we made the cookies, we made the dough first and then cut them out with the cookie cutter.   So the brown background is first!

So I changed the Fill to an Appliqué with an >Offset of -.03 and Cleaning >Laser Cut or Precut.

Then I changed the Outline to a Satin Stitch of between .06-.08. You decide!

I then added and Autoborder >To the inside of 1.0 and Running stitch for an added security measure. ( this is a change that I made this year)

This is last year's design.  This year I left the eyes and mouth with a Paint fill

I hope you give it a try!  Here is the Gingerbread App file.

TB Thursday

Welcome to Throwback Thursday!

One of my extensive lessons on this blog was how to use WELD and TRIM. Earlier this week I demonstrated how to use the TRIM function.  You can find the post here

Here is a quick tutorial to show you how to create "mouse ears"!  Draw 3 circles with the Shapes tool.

Hold the CRTL key down and draw a 2.5" circle. Add a black FILL and black Outline.

Duplicate the circle but change the size to 1.5". Duplicate the circle again. These two circles are the 'ears'!

Select All > Weld

 I changed the Height to 4.5 ( be sure proportional is checked)and rotated the hoop 90 degrees.

To create the "mouse hat" I drew an oval. Select the circle shapes tool and just drag you mouse to the right.  The size of the oval is approximately 2.5 wide. Position it over the hat until you see the shape you like in the Sequence Manager box.

Then Select All>Trim  Drag off the  oval and Delete it.

Now I can create a design for my grand daughter's T- shirt!  It will be a few years before she actually will go to DisneyWorld.....

Select the Cutwork tool in the Object Properties box.  Check Running Before and change it to 1.0 mm

Save your file as Mouse_CUT and send it to your USB stick.

Now select Appliqué in the Fill properties.  Select Satin Serial in the Outline properties. and change the Offset to -0.3 and the Outline in Tool Options 

to .11 

Now Save as Mouse_APP and send it to your USB stick.

I added her name using the Walt-o-graph font found on www.dafont.com

I hope you have enjoyed this TBT!

 

Welcome to A+ Monday!

Welcome to A+ Monday!

I am back from my vacation spending time with my new grand daughter!  What fun she is!  If you remember one of my recent posts here was creating a photo with photo paint in the DW software.  I wanted to share my finished baby quilt today and a few of the projects I made her.

Here is another quilt I made, Miss Wigglesworth bib and a pillow my DIL requested.

It was fun to finally be able to see the baby's room and all of the projects that I 'stitched' up for her!

Recently one of the FB Divas Mary Beck posted her Hedgehog quilt she made. The original pattern can be found here if you would like to purchase it.

Here is Mary's design in which she incorporated Cutworks, appliqué and paintworks.

Kudos to Mary for her creativity!

The DesignWorks software is truly a powerful software and can bring your sewing and embroidery to a new level!  Stick with me and I will help you unravel the mysteries of it all!

Painted Inspiration - Part II

Now it is time to add the feet!  The easiest method for this is to actually copy and paste the file into your saved file.  It is OK if the file is too large for your design because you can then resize it to fit in your design.

Change the color of the background of the file and then copy the design.

And paste it into the original file you have created. Be sure to re-size it to fit into the largest hoop that you have.

Then save it and export it to your stick.  Now it is time to get ready to paint!  I made my own canvas bag out of white canvas and cut the size of the bag 17" x 17".    I cut out of 2 1/2" corner out of the bottoms of the bag.

Then I started painting!  I used the purple marker from the Stained by Sharpie set for the wording.

Ready to paint? I hooped up Perfect Stick by Floriani.  It is the same stabilizer as Stabilstik but it does come in a large roll perfect for my Jumbo Hoop.  As you can tell by the quick video- it is an easy project to paint!

                                              

Here is my finished bag.

I found the perfect fabric for the inside of the bag at my local quilt shop.

If you would like to make your own painted canvas design, I created another saying with a butterfly design.

The Bernina_004 butterfly is found in your Paintworks folder in your Bernina DesignWorks folder.

I hope you give this lesson a try!

Painted Inspiration

I re-posting this lesson on my blog because #1 - it was a great lesson and #2- several FB Divas have requested it.

The original bag was created by Nancy W and I put the blog lesson together from the lessons in the Mastery Book.  

You will need two files to create this canvas bag.  They are the Spiral.cmx file and the Bernina feet file.

You can find the file for the spiral here.

You can find the file for the Bernina feet here.

If you need a refresher course on "Creating Text on a Path", watch this video from Bernina first.

          

After working through the wizard, the first step is to load the spiral.cmx into your DW software.

I used my largest hoop (Jumbo) and the the #93 foot.

Start typing your text using the "Text" icon. The font I used was Arial Rounded MT Bold.

Here is what I typed:

I hear my baby cryin'.  I watch her grow.  She will learn much more than I will ever know.  And I think to myself WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD!

Here is Nancy's verse below.

Then >Select ALL>Right click>Apply to Path

Here is what the text looks like on the path.

Select the "text" icon and the text and check the box Reverse Direction.

Refer to the video above for the text placement options as well as your online manual within the software.

You can pull the swirl out of the way and delete it or right click on the text >Clear path.

Part II -Adding the baby feet and painting the design.

F-U-N Friday

Halloween is my FAV-o-rite holiday, especially since I moved to Florida.  It is a sign that cooler weather is coming and I used to decorate my classroom BIG time. Now that I am retired I decorate my home and today's find is an easy project to create!

I was shopping yesterday at my local K-Mart and found this cute Boo pillow.  I thought this would be a quick and easy project using Photopaint ( yes, I am in a rut!)

If you read Tuesday's blog post here, I shared a link for a variety of Halloween fonts.  But I didn't see any of the fonts that I thought would work so I checked out www.dafont.com and found Jack Lantern BB font here.

I selected the largest hoop (Jumbo) with foot #93 and an orange Cotton 2 background.

Now I just have to paint it out  and it is done!  I hope I have time today to actually do that!

This is the cutest dingbat font ever for little kids 'stuff'!    Last year I made a store sample and this year my grand daughter can wear it!  It is called MTF Sweet Halloween Dings and you can find it here.

I typed in the letter "C" and this sweet little pumpkin face popped up.  Because the line is so thick, it has a double line.  So Select>Right click> Break apart.

AS you can see now, there are 7 layers created in this file.  So I created only one cutwork file using the background as the green stem and paint works for the face.

Here is my finished Pumpkin_APP.

Have a FFFW!  F-U-N First Fall Weekend!