Embroider-Along Pt 1 - Getting to Know Your Embroidery Machine, Tips and Hints

[Music] hi everybody hey it's Becky from power tools with thread I'm lopping off the top of my head here sorry but it's gonna be kind of tough to get me in the video and the embroidery machine in the video so this is part one of I don't know how many parts for our embroidery along that we're gonna do I gave y'all some homework first of all if you're new to my channel hi welcome my blog is HTTP power tools with thread comm and I will link it below the video here we are doing an embroidery 101 so this is gonna be just a few minutes a day we'll go through probably the rest of this week it is Sunday July 6th or 7th or whatever so it's the first Sunday in July maybe maybe I need to know what day it is so this video series is going to be for those of you that have embroidery machines you've had it for years you might still have it in the box or at least you got it out of the box and you're terrified of it or you're just intimidated by it and you really don't know what to do and you don't want to mess anything up and these things can be pretty intimidating I mean it's a big machine or maybe even not a big machine my very first one was the brother of PE 770 and I didn't know a thing about embroidery when I got it I asked my husband for it for Christmas one year and he got it for me that's a great machine to start with by the way if you're thinking about getting an embroidery machine the brother pe 770 is very very good it has a 5 by 7 hoop a size is the largest it can go and of course you can do 4 by 4 designs in there as well but the the thing about embroidery machines so there's there's two different kinds of embroidery machines basically okay regardless of the brand alright you have brother you have baby lock you have singer you have faff you have Bernina I mean just about everybody who makes a sewing machine makes an embroidery machine why because the embroidery machine machine is just a sewing machine it just uses a different arm that moves the hoop but still it's a single needle or a multi needle okay so you can pay twenty thousand dollars for a single needle machine and if that but it's got lots of computerized stuff in it that you can do that's very cool and or you can pay as little as a you know a couple of hundred dollars usually the higher you go in the price of the Machine the more features computerized features that it has and also the larger hoop you can get do not be afraid to buy I bought my first machine on Amazon well my husband got it for me on Amazon the brother PE 717 I bought the baby lock elegante - so the PE 770 is just an embroidery machine okay there are embroidery machines that's all they do alright then you have machines like this this is the brother Quattro in Novus 6000 D I bought it on Craigslist and I also bought my baby lock elegante - off of Craigslist you know there you can go to the stores and they'll sell you whatever you know you can go to sewing machine stores that will sell you the machine in and it may come with classes and that's great if you're comfortable with that that's a great idea there's so much stuff out there on YouTube though um I don't know it's completely up to you how you comfortable you feel but I have never been to a professional class on using my embroidery machine ID I normally you know I just dive in headfirst but I I think the biggest thing is like I said get it out of the box look at it figure it out if I I can remove this embroidery arm right here it has a button where I can know where it is it's right here somewhere it has a button I can undo and pop this off and it doubles as a sewing machine so when you get your user manual and it's this big look how big this is look how big that is but you know what if you go into it and break it down more than half of it is sewing so don't let the size of the manual fool you if you get one okay my brother pe 770 manual was a little skinny thing there's only a couple of things that you need to know about how to work an embroidery machine turn it on right how to put the hoop on and what to do when the thread breaks that's really the big well of coercing how to thread it but those are really the only things you need to really seriously know about an embroidery machine and it doesn't matter whether you spend $500 or $5,000 or $20,000 on a machine they all basically operate the same it's just the the ones on the higher end of the scale have more bells and whistles and you know they they've got they take bigger hoops now I did not know this little tidbit when I got my PE 770 by the way if you have one of those and you're not sure how to use it there's a gentleman out on the his name is Vince our Curie he's very very good he goes from unboxing that thing and explaining every little thing about it he has several videos on he has a couple of those machines as a matter of fact and he does embroidery all the time he's an older gentleman up on the north east coast and that's how I learned about the machine was from him so you know go out and take a look and and see even if you don't have a brother go look at it you know he has a simple single needle machine and he'll explains that he explains a lot about hooping and stabilizers and all those kind of things to this video today I'm just talking about getting familiar with the machine okay Oh what I meant to say the the largest hoop size that your machine can take is the largest design that your machine can see in the computer than it has in its brain okay so like when I bought the PE 770 it holds a 5 by 7 hoop and that's pretty standard throughout the industry 4 by 4 you've got some little one by ones 2 but 4 by 4 is if you go to Walmart and buy an embroidery machine they have 4 by 4 hoops there okay so you could the the machine can always read down in size it can't read outside of its largest hoop limit so I got these I got these this really cool embroidery thing it was the cat's meow by lunchbox quilts and I wanted to make it for my mom and I I put I you know I bought the CDR it came with a little stick right a USB stick you know saved it popped it into the Machine the 770 couldn't see half the patterns on the stick because the brother PE 770 did not see larger than a 5x7 these cats are pretty big and so I had to do some finagling to figure out how to resize machine embroidery designs there's a really good post on my blog about how to do that as well if you go to my blog and in the search box type in resize embroidery designs there's a real good post on there with some free software that you can play with anyway let me get back to the machine so again this is just a basic sewing machine all of these buttons look identical to my brother PC 420 so a machine down there there are the identical buttons you know there's my foot up and down my scissor cut my needle up down my reverse that go in the needle threader it's all same it's pretty cool so when you turn it on you definitely here's where you know things come in and I'll tell you okay on on Craigslist I think this was 3500 all right it sings to you it's is very nice and it has a lot of features but it the carriage of the embroidery unit will move keep your hands away etc from the carriage okay there it goes so when a screen when your screen first comes up its gonna give you some options of what you can do with it cancel it's gonna give you some options of what you can do with it and if it is a multi-use machine the first one's probably gonna be sewing okay so then the next one is embroidery and then this is on mine this is on my Quatro embroidery edit and Disney so embroidery is where you want to go to do machine designs that you're going to put in on the stick you know like if you bought it from the internet and you've moved it over and then embroidery Edit is where you can go in and maybe add some words to it if you want to that design or do something that's I don't fiddle with that I do most of my embroidery editing in in brilliance on the laptop I don't I generally don't do it on the machine cuz it's just too hard to sit here and it's not big enough for me anyway so sorry I'm bored this this is from urban threads I like to party and by party I mean stay home in my PJs in quilt so this big design right here would not work on a smaller machine and if you are gonna go buy a machine try it because of the cost of them I you know think outside of the box a little bit if you get good at it and you want to make stuff all the time maybe you wanted to make you know you want to do a set of baby bibs you got a newborn coming you a grant you know anyway um maybe you want to do t-shirts for your grandchildren or you want to do something you know my husband said hey put me a fish on my fishing shirt okay that that's great and you can do that with a single needle machine that takes umpteen colors or not but I use the PE 770 my five by seven for probably about three years and then I sold it which was a mistake because I shouldn't sell my machines but anyway and then I instantly upgrade it to something that was going to give me like a 10 by 12 hoop or something bigger than just that five by seven because a lot of that really neat designs like I've got some beautiful pillows that I've done that are down at the coast that have fish on them and seashells and seahorses and all that and they're big designs okay I wouldn't be able to use those if I had a smaller machine so if you're thinking about buying one get the most machine that you can afford okay but maybe you want to save a little bit longer also there's a lot of places I know synchrony Bank does a lot of financing with the sewing shops and you can get those machines at 0% and that's free money guys you know and five years later it's paid for like things so yeah three years however long it's an option that you can do okay so enough about that um your machine should have come with their ground in your books it should have come with something that says a quick reference guide quick startup guide all that kind of stuff your quick reference guide first of all this one it looks like it's real big it's in six languages okay if there's not that much to these things guys there's really not there's nothing to be afraid of so you know the first thing is it talks about is winding the bobbin this bobbin it winds identical to the same to the machines I have down the row here because it's a brother and they all wind the same so you know get in there take a look at a guy well it's the same thing now I don't wind my own embroidery bobbins rarely do I do that like I've maybe done it once in all the years I've been embroidering I use I'll put a link to these below I use this is a hundred and forty-four pre-round bobbins for brother from for embroidery machine Brother embroidered size egg whatever I get them like this twenty bucks maybe if that I can't remember probably make a liar out of me I bought a couple of black ones - I bought some black alright because like when I do this probably has black on the back of it because the shirts black alright and then I use um I use a really soft iron-on mesh - there's the fancy one it's called tender touch I buy the same thing at Walmart off the bolt and just honor that on the back of the embroidery so it's not itchy on my skin some of the things you're gonna want when you do your embroidery okay you're gonna want bobbins pre-ground bobbins you're also going to want I keep a little box by my machine I have lots of little scissors in here and that's all this as far as scissors as well and there's a screwdriver in here I read I really use these on the machine you're going to want a pair of curved scissors you see how these are curved okay I don't you see that they're curved and it has this angle right here you need this to get into the hoop if you ever had to cut something loose alright and it's in there you're gonna want to get this to get down into the hoop where you can snip your threads and it won't cut your fabric or your applique maybe you need to trim around your applique cuz it did the tack down stitch you're gonna want a pair of these don't go cheap because they hurt your fingers if you get cheap ones okay I think these are dingers I can't remember anyway I'll link to these as well I also highly recommend a pair of duck-billed scissors okay the duck-billed scissors they have a nice flat duckbill right there and they're also curved okay for you to be able to get down into this if you need to this I use to trim the stabilizer off the back of my projects so I get under there and I'll cut around and the way you that duckbill prevents you from cutting into your project worth every penny you guys I also have a pair of fine fine tiny little snips they kind of have a spring action here I use these 99% of the time also these have a rounded bottom as well okay I can get in there and get a tiny little thing and snip it I use that I use these more than anything else I also have some little clip they like hemostats and these are designed really for lace you know you can do lace right out right out the gate if you want but if you're brand new I just recommend doing practicing on bibs and t-shirts and that kind of thing you guys would not believe how many kitchen towels I have that are fails I use them anyway I also use I have a little this is an old candle jar you're gonna want your cap you're gonna want your spool caps your spool caps are going to keep the thread seated closely the spools seated closely onto the wherever it's coming off of and it will keep it from getting twisted around the back I also use these clips these are hair clips okay you can use binder clips or hair clips I use these if I've got something that's like I have a shirt maybe and it has a big bunch of stuff in here I just take clips and I clip I'll clip it to the to the hoop as long as it's not gonna bother the hoop and it's not gonna change it or move it around at all but I have different sizes of them for different size projects and these are just for machine embroidery projects so that I don't you know they don't have hairspray on them or anything like that listen I don't think so what else what else um also I have a [Music] unwaxed dental floss I used unwaxed dental floss sometimes you'll get a thread nest in here okay and I don't want waxy film to get on to the machines parts so if I get a little thread nest in there and you can't I can't get this up I mean I can't take it apart but I don't want to but if you if I get a thread nest in here I will go ahead and do a floss through here with the unwaxed dental floss and that makes my life a lot easier my needles that I use for the most part are the Schmidt's they're called gold embroidery gold needles I don't know why they call them gold they're made out of titanium but they're really strong and they last forever you can use standard sewing machine needles for embroidery okay use the 7511 no larger than the 8012 because the machine embroidery thread will shred a little bit if you if it it doesn't like that big hole doesn't like the 9014 um I wouldn't go smaller than the 7511 that's just me you know embroiders they all have different ways of doing business but um that's just me guys I just keep my life easy cuz I can pick them up you know I get these at my quilting store I have not seen those at Walmart so this is a bird's nest kit that I got from designs and machine embroidery they had an event in The Woodlands over by Houston year ago and I'd always wanted one and this thing has a single purpose in life and it's not to take out your appendix it looks like it could though what it is designed to do it comes with a link to this as well it comes with this hook excuse me in my nose position and it comes with literally a big old scalpel okay child proof your house this is designed for you to be able when there is a threads nest under here and you'll get them don't be afraid it happens it's fine when you get him and you can't sometimes you can't get the hoop out of the machine cuz it's just built up in there some also I'll let you know every time you walk away from your machine something's gonna go wrong it's like your machine says no no don't leave me it gets crazy I don't know what they're weird like that but you can get here and get underneath and you can slice that out I've had to use it once on the big seven needle that we have command it came in handy well you need them so you know I recommend you get one you'll you'll need it when you need it's one of those tools that you don't need very often but when you need it you really need it you know you'll know and so that brings me to another thing you're gonna make mistakes yo I can't tell you the number of times like I said I have kitchen towels that are fails I can't tell you the number of times I have sewed a t-shirt to itself embroidered a t-shirt to itself um you know you're going along now my machine will tell me when it's out of bobbin thread some of them don't okay um sometimes the thread will just get all tangled up for no reason and you're like what happened there it's usually it's usually a threading thing but you know always do a test use your scrap basket for that always do a test I know you want to dive straight in and do it and just make it turn out right and everything yeah sometimes you know it's in embroidery there's an old saying and they say there are those who tested and those who wish they would have okay so always do a test and you can do it on something that is a similar fabric like an old t-shirt or an old towel and or a shirt that doesn't fit anymore you know put that stuff to use so anyway oh that's uh I just I just don't want you guys let me go back to this okay so back in here again winding the bobbin it Y is the same as a sewing machine no big deal and the next page is going to be setting the bobbin that's the same as the sewing machine here's the upper threading you will have something that looks like this okay most of them will have a numerical you know it's going to tell you you know if you're coming on my machine these two here are for sewing these back here are for embroidery and I guess you could sew with them too I run the thread you know and there's one and it goes in two and three and four and it I mean it it the sewing machine and the embroidery machine thread identical because again it's a sewing machine the only thing that makes it funny with embroidery is this arm that makes it go like this and like this and that's it alright so pretty simple stuff I had said it in a video before I'm gonna hit my embroidery I'm gonna bring you in here so you can see if you read through your little manual it'll tell you so this is one set of designs here's another set of designs there's the Disney designs on mine if I want to do lettering now your Monsieur Manuel will have something that looks like this in it you see that and this is really cool okay so these manuals will have all kinds of designs that are already in the machine most machines come with pre-loaded designs of some sort and so for instance this little sunflower and the leaves there's the sunflower and the leaves right there in my book and it tells me it'll take twelve minutes to sort out or to stitch out and it's got eight colors in it so that's eight color changes okay and yeah so if I want to find the pattern now when I touch that little icon on there here's all of the patterns let me see if I can tilt you down to see here's all the patterns and on this machine there's nine pages of these patterns in here so you touch one it loads that's it now you just need to hoop it and put thread in the machine and press go that's it in this particular machine you have to touch the sewing button and then it's going to there's all kinds of information on here it just is going to do one color it says magenta and I can touch the hoop so now I can see the hoop okay I couldn't see this on my earlier brother machine this is a Bell and whistle thing in these bigger ones okay you you don't anyway I won't go there so if I want to go to a smaller hoop right now that's what it'll look like in a smaller hoop there's the four by four and the little one by one or two by two is greyed out meaning I can't use that so this tells me what its gonna look like so some machines have that feature the reason it's given me the big hoop is because that's what I have loaded in here right now and it has a sensor in this little arm so it knows what hoop is in there I'll go back to home yeah I'll cancel back to embroidery the universal symbols for USB is that little Triton looking thing these are the images that I these are the designs that are on that USB stick right now there's our shell we're gonna do in the next video and that's it not hit sewing it has six thousand 144 stitches it's going to take 14 minutes to stitch out and it has eight thread changes that's it that's as simple this is you guys if you want to move things around you can you can hit size and rotate and mirror and all kinds of stuff like that but again just turn your machine on and start poking around on it you're not going to break it get your manual and if you know or your Quick Start Guide and it talks in here these other couple page preparing to embroider and it takes you through the steps that you need to do you know making sure you have the right foot on it and all that and making how to put the hoop in and then it gives you selecting stitch patterns right there it gives you the exactly what I just went through home this is all actually for sewing and it's got the screen and it's very simple very simple and this is only like for pay for five pages cuz the rest of its in you know five other languages so when you guys go to do a hoop okay you want to have I don't know just enough around the edge all the edges of the hoop see how I did this and it's not sticking out the top that's probably not a good hooping okay you want to make sure you get your stabilizer all the way around in this thing so now I have stabilizer hanging out all four sides of the hoop and you want it hear that drum test that other test I couldn't remember the last time I did this is the plough test if I had fabric on here you want to push it with your finger and if you can make up like a plough if you've got ruffles and ridges popping up your fabrics not hooped properly so yeah this is um this is a good hoop right here and on my machine I just lift the little arm you just I make sure to get the edge underneath the foot first and then put this on and I have to press this little button down some of them have a snap I'm gonna I'm gonna go to my hoop again now it shows this one I need a bigger hoop it's not going to do it because the other three are grayed out nope boo boo well if that's a one so that's why I had that larger hoop off um but that's kind of it for I'm telling you guys there's not much to these things they just look intimidating but they're just a sewing machine that's all they are and you already know how so right so you know if your machine does both get the embroidery arm on it and poke around with it play with it there is um there's a lot of sites you can go to I would suggest if you're just starting out play with the embroidery designs that are in your machine already okay there's no reason for you to go out and purchase more designs until you get comfortable enough with it that you're like okay I can do this you know not in your sleep but that you're comfortable with it that that you that you've gone through and it has made a mistake maybe your thread broke and you figured that out and when you break your thread you back up 20 steps or 20 stitches and then press on from there and start all over clean it up and get moving again so this is this is something you you can definitely do just just got to jump in with both feet guys put that machine to use okay I will be back tomorrow with the first set of stitching that we're gonna do on the machine okay we'll talk to you tomorrow bye

Channel: Power Tools with Thread

Views: 17,237

Keywords: Embroidery 101, Brother PE770, Machine Embroidery, How to machine embroider

Id: kOQCzcIkcx4

Length: 30min 59sec (1859 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 07 2019