Machine Embroidery Basics 101 for BEGINNERS

hi everyone thanks for joining me this is a very beginner basics 101 video tutorial on how to use machine embroidery it's very hard to do tutorials on embroidery because everybody's machine is different but I wanted to show you some of the things that I didn't know when I first started out in embroidery how to hoop your design when to hoop your design how to get your design where you want it these are all very basic things that the tutorials I was watching kind of left out and assumed I already knew that so I'm going to the first half of the video I'm just going to show you where to get started and in the second half of the video if you want to watch that I talked more about what kind of machine - by what - by to get started and more of a QA type second half of the video where I just go into some of the details and what I recommend so the first thing I'm going to tell you is if you if you're brand new to embroidery start with scrap fabric just get to know your machine get to know how it works don't put a shirt on right away don't put a towel on right away the first thing we're going to do in the video is I'm just going to show you the very basic how to get your design where you want it to be on your project and we're just going to do that on a piece of scrap fabric just to get you familiar with hooping to get you familiar with your machine and to get you familiar with the very basic how to go from hooping to the machine to pressing the start button so that we're gonna do that first and then I'm gonna walk you through how to make this makeup towel which is super easy I use these all the time these are excuse the lint the sittin on my desk these are black makeup towels so it's really nice when after you wash your face so you don't get mascara and stain uh your good towels that we keep makeup towels all my girls use them so I'm gonna show you how I made this and then I also made a beach towel and I'll want kind of go through that really quickly but again this is a very basics 101 if you are a seasoned embroider you probably aren't even going to be interested in this video and if you're brand new again the first it's going to be showing you how to get it sat centered and lined up and go from the hoop to the Machine and the second half I go through what I recommend to get started what I recommend as far as machines and all of that information so let's get started so now we're going to talk about what do I need to get started with embroidery there's very few things that you actually need to get started with embroidery now there are a lot of things you could get and there's some videos that I watched told me on why you need this you need this you need this and honestly I've never used half of those things so I'm telling you the bare basics that you need to get started and again I'm encourage you to practice use practice fabrics and to start out not with a shirt not with any specialty items just practice on some fabric so in order to do that you're going to need tearaway stabilizer this is a staple to any embroidery projects that you're going to do you're going to probably use some care weight as stabilizer enough I don't know the majority of your projects if not all I pretty much use tearaway stabilizer on just about everything as you get more comfortable with embroidery and you just say okay when I do a shirt I want to do a towel you're going to have to look into that and there might be some additional stabilizers that you want to add because that's something that you're going to do and it's going to help your project turn out better but to get started start with some tearaway stabilizer I buy it by the roll it also comes in sheets I'll link everything that I can find in the description below the video but you're going to want some tearaway stabilizer if I need your hopes you're going to need your scissors now this is a pair of scissors that I most often use these are handy because when you have a project in your hoop and the bend in them I hold it this way you can see makes it easy so that you're not fighting with this hoop with a flat straight pair of scissors trying to cut threads or trying to cut fabric or whatever you need to cut it has this bend in it so it makes it easier to get in there there's us over this style of a scissor and some people like these this one also has a bend these also come in straight but this has a it's a kind of a protective edge and this keeps you from cutting the part of the fabric that you don't want to have so I pretty much use this pair all the time you don't need both to start out just get you a pair of plain or at least sharp says there's nothing even have to be these you can just have sharp fabric scissors to start out but I recommend these the other thing I use a lot is a 505 a temporary adhesive and this is for if you want to float your project and that means you're not actually putting it in the hoop you're just putting on top and I'll show you that when we do the towel project so in order to do what we're going to do you're going to need tearaway you're going to need some temporary adhesive you're going to need your scissors and your hoops and then I this is what we're going to be making I make these a lot these are makeup towels and I buy these black towels and I'll link them in the description below the video but they have this band right here the stepford a band that many towels have at least if I can get the light to catch it there so this is not a plush we're not sewing on the towel part so we're not going to need to put anything else on there if we were going to do a towel like the beach towels that I just posted the other day and you wanted to do this style and you're embroidering on top of the pile of the towel then you're going to need water-soluble stabilizer and that looks like this and it just disappears and the when it gets wet it just dissolves so if you want to practice or do you know maybe buy if you have an extra towel laying around and you want to practice on this then you're going to need the water soluble stabilizer for this particular project or any project that has like a pile to it you're going to need a pen or some kind of something to mark with and beyond that I think we're ready to get started so what I have done is I've already created my design I'm not going to get into how to insert fonts on my machine or the technicality of my specific machine this is why a bit hesitant to do an embroidery video because everybody has a different embroidery machine and everything is a little bit different but I'm going to show you all of the basic features and I'm going to assume that you have already either bought a embroidery file and you're using that or you put the letters in on your machine however your machine does that you'll have to read your manual and you've already got the file set up in the machine so without further ado let me flip the camera around I'm going to show you how to get the frame already for what we're going to do and I'm also going to show you how to get the frame ready if you just want to practice on a piece of fabric so let me switch things around and I'll be right back okay so I have my frame I have my stencil most hoops are going to come with the stencil which fits right inside and that just helps you find the center points if you didn't get one of those don't stress you'll be fine you're going to cut a piece of stabilizer that is a little bit bigger than your frame on all sides don't use your good scissors to do that you can either tear it or cut it with some plain scissors and then you're going to need a ruler so for the first for practice we're going to hoop our fabric which means we're going to put the fabric in side of the hoop so the first thing you're going to do is take the bottom part and that's the part that hooks onto your machine and I have mine oriented the way it's going in the machine and my machine it hooks on this side a lot of machines it hooks on this side so for me it helps to orient it the way it's going into the machine so that I can just keep everything in my mind the right way so I've got nice stabilizer and I'm just going to this is just a spare piece that I had that I didn't end up using so it's been hooked before but yours is just going to be nice and flat then you're going to take your fabric and this is just a scrap piece of fabric it's the piece of muslin to practice on and you're going to put that in your hoop you're going to turn the knob on your hoop to loosen it I'm going to need to loosen it in order to get this fabric in alright so once you have that done I'm just going to place your hoop inside and I like to push down in one corner and then go to the opposite corner and kind of push down and you're trying to keep this fabric and your stabilizer taut and I'm going to go to the other corner push down and I'm kind of pulling my fabrics I haven't tightened my hoop yet be very careful cuz it'll rip and then you want to make sure that it's down on all four sides all the way down in your frame I'm gonna tighten your frame up so I'm just gonna tighten this back up now this is something that I never saw anybody tell you in the videos but the very first time I did this to practice my in the middle of my embroidery my frame popped open and I lost my placement the whole project came out of the frame and there was no way to line it up I like to use these binder clips now my Janome actually comes with its own clips but I find these work just as well and I just prefer to use those most of the time so I just put these clips over and that is just going to ensure that my frame is not going to pop open and lose my project halfway through now make sure if you have excess fabric that if you put the clip on that it's not going under here where you might be embroidering so I'm just going to kind of just roll it this way and flip it into place so I feel good about that my machine I read embroidery fabric is in place I have my stabilizer in place if you do this it should kind of make that sound it should sound like a drum if it doesn't it's too loose and you need to tighten up your fabric and your stabilizer a little bit so the next thing I'm going to do is take my template and this is another part that I never saw in a video when I started was how do you line this up so I'm gonna take my template and I'm going to take this is just a pilot friction pen to see races with and iron so it's not going to be permanent if it happens to show through and I'm just going to mark right in the center where that dot is there's a cutout in my template and that shows me the center of my hoop right there if you don't have a template usually there are marks right here and right here and right here and right here on your hoop and you can simply line this up and create a crosshair and I'm just lining up those marks on my hoop and you can see that's right in line with that dot that I made so for just our scrap project I'm just going to use one of the on board designs on my machine so we're gonna go over there so now we're going to take it over to the machine and I'm gonna show you how you use this to line it up that's the part that was missing the first time that I went to embroider is that I never saw anybody show you how do you line this up where you want it to be so we're just going to assume let's we're just using scrap fabric but we're let's just say this is our shirt and we've got it lined up and we're going to make it so that our pocket design is centered right over this frame right over this dot so we if I was going to do my name right here I would try to line it up so that wherever I wanted my name to be on my shirt the center that was right here and I would do that by taking my shirt and saying okay I want my design to be right here on my shirt and I'm gonna fold it in half that's my center point and I would match that center point up right there and then I would hoop the fabric so does that make sense it'll make sense when we do the towel but for right now we're just practicing and we're trying to get to get a design right in the center of our fabric so let me go over to the machine and I'm going to show you how to do that part okay so here I am over at my machine this is the Janome memory craft 500e and I have put a design on my machine right here and when I inserted this into the machine it automatically puts it right in the center of my design if yours for some reason does not there is usually a onboard command within your menu to Center it and it will put it right in the middle the middle of this screen right where those crosshairs are represents the middle of my fabric right where that is now I put my hoop on and I set it to the home position and again you're going to have to refer to your machine to figure out how to do that I can't show you on this one and it's going to pertain to each machine but for me I can simply just put it in and push the home button and it goes right where it needs to go so it's right in the center of my design now once in a while this is going to be off it'll be you know a few marks to the right or the to the left mine happens to be right on this time but if it was off what I would do is I would put it down I brought my needle or drop the presser foot put my needle down lift it up and see if my needle is right in that dot and I don't know if you can see that let me see if I can zoom you in but my needle is right where that dot was so it's right where it needs to be but if it wasn't I would just lift it back up and I would use the controls zoom back out I would use the controls on my machine to move it so I would go in2 so if it wasn't centered correctly I could go into my machine and click the appropriate buttons and I could move the hoop just a little bit it only lets you move it I think seven millimeters up or down but it is right where I wanted it's right in the center so I don't need to make any adjustments so all I have to do at this point I now have it centered on here it's centered on here so it's going to put that design right where I want it so all I have to do let's put my presser foot down and this machine tells you if you forget put the presser foot down hit the start button and it's going to stitch out that design [Music] now once it starts stitching I usually immediately stop it take my scissors and trim off this tail so that doesn't get stitched into it and then restarted now my machine automatically cuts the threads when it stops and starts not all machines will do that some machines you may have to win every scissors so now you can see it has stitched to the design right in the middle of the fabric right where we put that spot so that's how I would practice that's going to show you how to line things up if I wanted to say I wanted to do another practice and try to put something down here all I would do is let me back back out and I'm just using the on board designs so I would go back into home and go back into the library and I could pick out say I wanted to put a flower down on the corner so I would grab my flower okay and it's gonna automatically put it right in the center so I when my machine in particular I have to go back home and now this flower so I could put this flower down here and then I could stitch that flower and that's going to go down here we know the butterfly is right here in the center so again that's how that's all there is to lining that up now let's line up an actual project and create the makeup towel and I'm going to show you how I would do that and we're going to float the fabric which is a little bit different technique okay so we're back over here at our hoop and we're going to do the makeup towel like this on our black blanks so what you're going to do you're going to start with your tearaway I have this rotary cutter that I use for paper only and I find that really helpful alright we're going to place our tearaway on top of our hoop we're not going to put the towel in the hoop we're going to do what they call floating so I'm going to go ahead and hoop the tearaway only again make sure you keep that nice and tight make sure that all the way down all right once you have it your tearaway hoop to check for the drum test yes it's nice and taunt looks good so I'm gonna put my clips back on alright so we've got that done now what I'm going to do is using my Center marks I am lining that up my ruler up with this mark and this mark and making a mark right down the center I'm gonna do the same thing this way and you can use a regular pen this isn't ever going to show check out my crosshair this way and this way so this is where I'm going to use the 5:05 spray we're going to do what's called floating and that means we're going to put the towel on top of the project on top of the tear away instead of hooping it in the hoop I find when I do towels if I put it in the hoop it's more likely to pop open and move so this makes it really easy so use this 5:05 spray if you have it if you don't have it you can just pin the towel down to the stabilizer I like to use this it makes it really quick and easy I spray this over a trash can you shouldn't spray it anywhere near your machine and you really shouldn't spray it around your cutting mats but I'm just going to so that you can see what I do but just a quick spray on top of it not a ton just a little bit temporary adhesive and again I recommend you spray it over the trashcan so when I'm doing a towel what I like to do is put the bulk of the towel on the opposite side of where it attaches to my machine so I got some people's machines a lot of them hook on this side might happens to hook on this side so I'm going to keep the bulk of the towel out here and again we're shooting for the band of this towel that's not nappy so I have my towel laid out this is the back of the towel you can see the tags here so I'm going to fold it in half so that I'm looking at the back just like this and that's going to establish my center point so now what I'm going to do is line up my target area which is this band right here right on the center this way and the center that way so I'm lining this up up and then I'm going to lay it down and I'm going to keep looking back here to make sure that I'm following that center line with the center of my stripe perfect so we're still looking at pull it back here we're still looking at the wrong side so then I'm gonna open it up and just lay this side down so that that Center is following and that honestly is all you need to do so again this is for a towel that we're embroidering on that doesn't have any gap if they were going to do this way you would do the exact same thing this is where you embroider on the NAP and it's a separate video and like I said as you get into specialty things you're going to want to do a little research on what you need but if we were going to do it this way I'll just tell you quickly I would do this part the exact same way I would line up right where I went the name right with the center point and then I would add a layer of this right on top which is my water-soluble stabilizer and then I would pin it down but every step up till right here would be exactly the same to do this the only difference is you need to add a layer of water-soluble stabilizer if you're going to embroider where the NAP of the towel is okay so if I were going to put this down I would use some pins these are what I like to use these are actually quilters safety pins you can see they have a bend in them and it makes it really easy to be able to just pin this down like this you just have to be very careful that they don't get in the way of your embroidery so I will I babysit my machine and I often will stop it or move them or hold them down so that they stay out of the way or you could just use a regular straight pin just make sure you're pinning where the fabric is not so you would put that down since we're doing it on the part of the tab that is not nappy we don't need to add that additional layer so we're just making the makeup towel and we're putting it right in the center of this band so that's all I would do at this point if it makes you feel better you can go ahead and pin your fabric down as well so now we're gonna take this back over to the machine I'm going to show you what happens over there okay so we're back over at the machine I've got my hoop on you can see I have my towel so the bulk of the towel is out of my way again some people had this bar on this side so you would want the bulk of the towel over here out of your way you want to make sure that the sides are not going to get scooped up under the hoop so I will be watching that but again I just put my design on the screen so it's right centered where it's supposed to be I can double-check that by going over here and telling it to Center so it's centered the way it should be I'm not really concerned about it being in a specific dot i've already put my towels so that it's centered right where it needs to be so the next thing I need to do is if you notice this makeup is going to go in this direction it's horizontal so it's going to print it out this way I need it to print it out that way so I need to go into my machine on board and again yours will have this feature you have to find where your particular buttons are but I click this and then I can rotate it 45 but it's still right in the center so right now it's gonna print out this way and that's exactly what I want so whatever you're looking at on the screen it's what's going to happen over here so you want to make sure that you do that rotation you're gonna hit OK and then most machines have what's called an air Trace and when I'm trying to fit something very specific in a very specific area a smaller area I want to do this air Trace just to make sure that it's going to kind of go where I think it's going to go so what I'm gonna do is click this button and I'm just going to click this button and I'm watching it to see it's outlining where the design is going to be and I can make any adjustments that I need to if I want to move it up or down or sideways or whatever I need to do at that point but that looked pretty good so I'm just going to let it go and then we're gonna put our presser foot down I'm gonna keep my thread out of my way hit start it's going into the NAP a little bit let's start I'm gonna stop it and I'm gonna cut my tail so I should have maybe move that up just a little bit it's hard to tell from the angle I met with the camera for the air Trace but you'll you'll watch it and see that it's that's pretty close some some head start so here's our finished makeup kal and you can see it is perfectly right in the center of the towel right where we wanted it and all that you do is again pull this out it just tears away that sticky isn't so sticky that it's going to snag your towel shut your frame aside and then on it looks like that it's right right in the center so then on the back you just go in and you tear away the center stabilizer some people like to do a sticky stabilizer with towels and some people like to do cutaway I just think this makes the nicest look and I want these are actually going to be used this isn't just a decorative towel so I use just use the tearaway and I like these black makeup towels I make great gifts for my daughters and my daughter-in-law and we just use them so that you don't mess up your good towels when you're drying your face after you wash your face you have makeup stains any little pieces of stabilizer that's in there will come out at the first wash and you just if you have any tie offs you can trim those up and I used white bob and thread you could use the color so that it blends a little bit differently or you could use black I just I usually keep white in mine unless it's something that I know the back is going to be seen a lot but that's it that's how I make the makeup towns you can see it's perfectly centered just do that so if I fold this in half put my finger right where the center point is you can see it is perfectly and centered that's how you line things up now again if you want to do the beach towel method and you're you don't have a band where it doesn't have the plush part on it with this then you need to do one additional step and you're going to pin this down and it just needs to be as big as your name I would probably cut a piece about that big and then I would pin it into place over the top and then do the exact same thing you want to make sure that you orient your design correctly so that it's going to go in the right direction ask me how I know eebee style actually has a name on both ends because I forgot to flip it and on this end it's going this way and on listened it's going the right way but edie won't mind so that's how you do the basics I hope that this was helpful I know it's a lot of information and I know this is just there if you're not new to embroidery you know all of this this is just the very basic stuff that I couldn't find online when I was getting started it was they all assumed that I already knew how to hoop it and that I already knew how to find the center and that I already knew how to orient the design where I want it it's going to be very hard to do any specific machine tutorials because everybody's machine is different your menus are going to be different but they all have the basic same functions some have added editorial functions some has more than others but all of them are going to give you that ability to Center your design to center your needle to move things left or right most embroidery machines if not all come with at least some designs some will have more than others and like this butterfly this was just a design that came with my machine and then you can always buy your own embroidery files from there are so many you can find them all over at sea you can find them just searching embroidery designs there are just tons and tons and tons of really great digitizers so thanks so much for watching I hope this helped and I hope to see a lot of you posting your embroidery projects in the crafts crazy group and the sewing group I would love to see them and if you have any questions I'm happy to help you if I can now I want to start with the disclaimer and tell you I am by far not an embroidery expert I've had my machine for about a year and a half or so but what I found when I was starting out was that there was a lot of basic things that the embroidery tutorials that I was watching left out and so I've kind of figured him out on my own but I just wanted to give you the very basics if you are brand new to embroidery or you have had a machine and you have it you've been too intimidated to try it I just want to give you those few tips and tricks so that you can be successful and there are so many embroidery YouTube videos out there that can take you to the next step but I just wanted to give you a few pointers to get started just so that you are no longer afraid of your machine and then you'll start getting into the bigger projects now the first question I know you're going to ask me as which embroidery machine do I have and which embroidery machine should I buy I have a Janome a memory cat memory craft 500e it's a great machine I love it I did a lot of research before I purchased the machine and the number one thing I can tell you is that you want to buy a machine with the largest hoop size widths which fits within your budget so I was very tempted to buy just an introductory machine and I think it had a four by four frame that was all that you could stitch out nothing larger than four inches by four inches and I was very tempted to buy that just to see if I would use it and then I thought well if I spend that money and I decided I liked it then that money's gonna be wasted and I'm gonna have to do something with that machine and then go on to another one so try to get a machine with the biggest hoop size that fits within your budget I would recommend personally never buying a machine without at least a 5x7 frame if you're only going to have a four by four frame I think you're going to regret it and you'll be quickly upgrading initially when I thought about my embroidery I thought well what am I really going to embroider that's bigger than four-by-four I just can't see myself doing that and now i barely embroider anything that's smaller than four by four so just keep that in mind get the largest hoop size that you can get now these are the hoops that comes with my machine mine came with four they sometimes come with two sometimes they come with less you sometimes you can buy accessory hoops but my smallest frame is five and a half by five and a half and I have five and a half by seven point nine and I have seven point nine by seven point nine and then my largest who is 11 by seven point nine so this is a pretty large hoop so again the only embroidery machine I've had is the Janome memory craft so I can't really recommend other machines I do hear great things about Brother embroidery machines there are machines that are combination sewing and embroidery that's another way to go I personally didn't want to tie it my sewing machine while something stitching out so I chose to go with a standalone embroidery machine but there are combo machines available and there are standalone machine available there's multi needles mine's just a single needle I'll show it to you here in a minute when we get into the machine so it really depends on your personal needs your personal budget and what exactly you think you're going to be stitching if you're going to be doing it for a business etc etc another thing to consider when and you get an embroidery machine which is something I didn't really realize until after I had my machine is that you have to pretty much purchase additional software now some machines will come with just a basic software package that lets you do you know flip maybe flip it around or change it but when you buy an embroidery file you're going to buy it for your it's going to come in one size so if you buy a four by four embroidery file a four by four design you can't just take that four by four design and make it ten by ten you can't just stretch it you can't just redo it now if you have additional software some of those software packages will allow you to do that but embroidery software can be very pricey I personally use in brilliance it's not one of the cheaper ones it is very user friendly and it has a ton of things that I can do I can resize files without any problem I can work with fonts easily etc so you're going to want to do some research about your machine and what software it comes with and you know what software you might want to purchase if that software doesn't do what you need it to do my machine personally I really didn't get any software with it there is I can do a lot with in my machine without going to any software there's a lot of designs built into my machine that's another thing you want to think about I can move things around I can flip them I can you know duplicate them all of that within the machine but if you want to make your own files you want to buy fonts embroidery fonts you want to you know maybe buy a design from a digital designer or a digitizer and you want to customize it by adding a name into the design etc you're going to need an outside software to do that so that's something else to look at I didn't really realize that when I bought my machine that I wasn't going to be able to just immediately create my own designs and throw them into the machine and that was going to be it there's a lot more to it that's another thing some software's will let you import vector files or like SVG's some files will let you or some software will let you create your you know do the drawings some files some software just let you manipulate the file you know again stretch it do the kind of stuff that you can do on the machine but do it on your computer screen so another thing to consider when you're looking at software and I hope I'm not going too fast though so I'll make more sense in a but that's another thing when you start buying embroidery files something that you need to realize is again if you buy a quarter inch font it only makes quarter inch letters if you want it and also four inch you might have to also buy that file the 4 inch file if it's not included now some designers give you like half inch one inch inch and a half three inch all in one file but just know that you can't just buy in one font and if you're used to like the Cricut design space software or Photoshop or illustrator you can't just buy a font and then stretch it now and brilliant software will let me make a word I can type my name and then I can stretch it and it will read is all the stitches for me but not all software is going to do that so keep in mind that when you buy fonts when you buy designs that you can't buy it in one size and think that's going to fit all and less you have the software to manipulate it now on board at least on my machine and I think on most machines I can resize things bigger or smaller by 20% and that's it so it doesn't make a big difference but I can make something slightly bigger or smaller without going to any software but that's it only by 20% either way either 20% bigger or 20% smaller so keep that in mind the other thing you need to keep in mind is when you buy embroidery files make sure that they include the file type for your specific machine different machines take different types of embroidery files so I have a Janome my machine takes files ending in dot j EF if you have a brother machine I believe it's dot P es so each machine each brand has their own type of embroidery file so you want to make sure that that is included and that's the only file you're going to need when you download you don't need to download for you know for instance if you have a brother machine you don't need the download that dot J file so that's gonna save you a lot of space because most him digitizers include all the different file types so when you click the download you're going to get all of them you can get rid of all of the ones except for what you need for your machine that's really all I have I just hope that this video was helpful to you that it makes you a little less afraid to try embroidery if you already have a machine or if you've been thinking about getting one it gives you a little bit more information about what you need to look for and what you might need to go along with it and just gives you a little bit more insight about embroidery and how to get started I will link my craft crazy a Facebook group as well as my sewing group we do talk about embroidery in both of those groups quite a bit and you are welcome to ask there are many more seasoned embroiderers than myself in those groups that can answer any advanced questions that you have or I'm happy to help you if I can answer any questions with my experience and thanks so much for watching until next time never stop making

Channel: Lorrie Nunemaker

Views: 325,372

Rating: 4.9246168 out of 5

Keywords: Machine embroidery for beginners, how to machine embroidery, embroidery machine, how to embroider, machine embroidery, embroidery stabilizers, temporary spray adhesive, wash away, embroidery for beginners, machine embroidery tutorial, machine embroidery ideas, machine embroidery on towels, towel, gift idea, gifts, lorrie nunemaker, beginner, tutorial, tutorials, DIY, mother's day, gifts for girls, makeup, make up towel

Id: mkDAF3PHtrw

Length: 41min 32sec (2492 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 06 2020