Sewing With Nancy

My guest likes to compare machine embroidery to cooking. When you cook, you follow the recipe, buy the ingredients, but you sometimes tweak the process. That's what happens with machine embroidery. You learn to adjust your design or stabilizer to fit the project. Please welcome Marie Zinno, who is an embroidery entrepreneur who has much to share with us. Thank you, Nancy. I've really discovered that learning the proper and official way to hooping will guarantee embroidery success. In this spa day grouping, the tote, slippers, and cosmetic case all require specific hooping recipe. You might think that these projects aren't easy to embroider, but with my tips, you'll find the winning recipe. "Hoop

it Up

A Guide to Successful Embroidery," that's what's next on Sewing with Nancy. Sewing with Nancy, TV's longest-airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman

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making a difference in sewing, quilting, crafting, and needle arts for over 30 years. Amazing Designs and Klass Needles. I'm hoping that many of you were with us during the first episode of "Hoop

it Up

Our Guide to Successful Machine Embroidery," but if not, you can always go online at NancyZieman.com and watch the first episode. And, as you found out during that episode, if you watched it, we are working with embroidery, but mainly the placement. And how to hoop the fabrics 'cause these fabrics are not necessarily that easy to work with. No, they're not. No. Marie is a professional embroiderer and many times embellishes or changes the blanks. She's buys these blank projects, and this tote always comes with black handles. It always comes with black handles, and sometimes I like to change up the color, whether it navy blue or brown. I've discovered that they're easy to remove. You can easily remove the handles with a seam ripper. And then, if you're going to add a trim like you did on the top, you need to choose that first because that will determine the placement. Exactly. You don't want to put your monogram, or whatever you're personalizing it with, too high. So I try to demonstrate or audition either the ribbon or the trim. Sure. And then, from that point, I use my target ruler to place the monogram centered-- Kind of just go between the two handles. Yeah, you want to make sure it's in the middle. And then, I use my little handy target sticker and put it in that center hole, and then I remove the target roller. Now, these little stickers are just used for positioning only. You're not going to embroider over those, and they always have an arrow so you know which way is the top of the design should be. And they're good for any machine. So any machine can use these. So now, when you're working with embroidery,

we're going to show you two options for hooping

one with a magnetic hoop and one with the traditional hoop. And if you have... Let's start with the magnetic hoop. Okay. It's not going to hurt your machine at all. Nope. Not at all. It's been tested and the technology has improved so much that we do not need to worry about that. We're going to show you with the tote bag over here. Now, you've already marked it. And I would just put down a piece of tear-away stabilizer just to be safe. To be honest, you probably-- It's not necessary, but just for this show, I think it would be good to show that you can use the stabilizer. Take your-- Make it inside out. Right. Maybe I should point to that. So, the bottom frame, the metal part of the magnetic hoop, of course, is on your table. And my target sticker is still in place. Now, if you notice, it's still a little too low for me to actually embroider that. So, I would adjust my tote bag just so that I'm more centered so I can fit the whole name that I'm going to embroider. I've already measured the size of my name so I know it's going to fit in my 4" x 4" hoop. But then, if you would like to embroider in a standard hoop, we're going to be using sticky back stabilizer. Throughout this series we're using different stabilizers, and sticky back is one of the four basics that I like to use. It has a shiny cover, and then, a dull underside. When you peel off the paper, that's the sticky part. You have the shiny side up. So you hoop it before it's sticky so that it doesn't hurt your hoop or make your hoop totally sticky, and then I score it with a pin. Super easy. And then, you just remove the areas that you need to be sticky. So, on a great day, it comes off in about four pieces, which is what we're doing here. And then... I'll let you-- We, again, put the tote......inside out. And the tote body is really over the attachment. So it's easier, when you're at the machine, to see how the orientation will go. And then, we would also use a basting file to hold this down just to reassure that it won't pop out. We'll do that at the machine. But right now, we have it ready to hoop, we have it hooped, we have it ready to do the embroidery, and when we go to the sewing machine or the embroidery unit, we'll show you how to layer... Yep. To create a layered monogram, and then, embroider right on the tote. Buying a blank tote, adding some trim, and then, the shadow embroidery is what we're going to teach next. And as you can see, we have two thread colors with the larger capital letter, and then, the word "Anna." And we've used a light colored thread for the larger letter, and then the navy blue, obviously, for the word, or the name itself. And Marie's going to give you some tips of when she uses light and dark thread. When you set up your embroidery unit of your sewing machine, make sure that you put in a new needle and that you use the appropriate bobbin thread that goes with your machine. You'll have the unit and then, the foot that goes with it, and then you're going to pull up the design. Now, Marie has taken a little time and might want to admit that this was about a minute and a half to get the hoop into the embroidery unit. Exactly. You have to be careful when you're attaching the magnetic frame just so that you don't bump the unit, the attachment, to move it out of alignment and just being careful that you put your correct......the bar down just to hold it in place and that the two frames are lined up. I've actually brought up my large initial, which is going to be the 'A', which we'll stitch first. And that'll be stitched in the lighter color. And then I'm going to add-- which I already have in memory-- the name 'Anna,' and then we're going to layer it on top of the 'A.' It just seems to be a popular look, and I do a lot of personalization. People like it, and it's just a good idea to, you know, audition it with the color scheme and make sure it coordinates with your ribbon and everything. And then we're going to rotate the entire design because I have that target sticker on there and the cross hair on the target sticker is pointing towards the top of the bag. It's very important. And you can see the handles. You needed to point them toward the handles. You don't want your name stitched upside down. I'm going to use these jaw keys real quick to line it up with the target sticker. And then, of course, remove that target sticker. No toppers needed for this bag 'cause it's just a simple nylon-type bag. And another feature I always like to......to tell students is to always use the tracing feature that you have. This will enable and show you that your design is going to fit perfectly inside the frame or the hoop that you're using. I'm just careful that I'm not bumping either side of the magnetic frame just to be certain that everything is going to fit. If that was a problem, then you would just adjust your embroidery design. Make it a little smaller. You have all these tools at the machine. You don't have to re-hoop anything. So now we're going to stitch the first color. And the first color Marie is going to stitch in a light thread color. Right, right. Because if you did it in the reverse, sometimes the bottom color or the thread color would come through to the top. You could always change it with density, but at your fingertips, it's just easy to use a lighter color as your base color. And now,it's stitching the first color, which is white, for the 'A.' And notice, I'm kind of holding the body of the bag out of the way with my hands. I do also have painter's tape here that we could use to keep the bulk of it out of the way, if needed. But, again, this is a project that we embroidery-sit. We're not going to walk away from this. It's not when we go check the mail, or stir the pot, stir the sauce or anything. Get a cup of coffee. So this takes about six minutes to stitch, and Marie's going to sew the majority of this off camera. Well, Marie, you're getting almost finished with this one embroidery. And next, you're going to be adding......the name. The name. But before we do that, you have to do some thread changes. That's right. But we'll let this finish. It's almost done. Marie is what we call "embroider-sitting." You don't have to work, but you just have to hold the fabric out of the way. You don't want to walk away. You want to kind of watch it. And the bigger the tote bag, the easier this project is. So some tote bags are wider than others. They might be able to fit over the unit of your machine, which is very helpful. But sometimes you can't find a tote bag in the color that you want, so you make do. And we have a lot of great tools with this machine so... Okay. Now we're just going to... So, we'll quickly change thread colors, and then, you can see "Anna" or "Ana" is all ready to go. That's right. Let's see how fast you can thread on camera. Yeah, how fast can you thread a machine? Yeah. Well, with this machine, it's really easy, so it's not a problem. Okay. So, here's the beauty of working with the dark thread on top. That's right. So, as you might guess, we're just going to embroidery-sit this again, and we'll come back as soon as we get "Anna" almost stitched. Well, Marie, we almost have this stitched, and I think the things that I learned from this is to have the lighter fabric, lighter thread first, then the darker thread, a lightweight stabilizer, and you almost are embroidering with your tote totally inside out.

Exactly

inside out and kind of upside down. I know it's kind of awkward, but now we're going to take it out of, off the machine. And you'd remove the tear-away stabilizer from underneath. I will, yes, after I get the hoop off the machine. Carefully do that. And if you showed the back of the embroidery hoop, you can see that you just tear it away. That's right. It's quite easy to do. It's a soft, simple, easy tear-away. So when it's turned to the right side, you get this great look after adding the trim, and this is the way you hoop it up for success of a tote. Make a statement by embroidering and giving a gift of personalized slippers. A single initial is all that's needed. Follow Marie's hooping tips for success to achieve the best results. You may think that embroidering on slippers is maybe a little advanced. Well, the slippers, of course, can lie flat. But there are some tips to get the right orientation of the initial and the monogramming and we have a left and a right, and Marie's going to go over those tips with us. But we're going to start with the same type of hoop and the stabilizer as we had before. Working with the sticky back stabilizer, removing the shiny surface so that it's sticky and the slipper can fit into place. Now, Marie, you've got to get things positioned, as you've done throughout this two-part series. When you're only doing one initial or one design, you want to make sure it's in the right location. So, again, I printed out a template on copy paper of the initial that I'm going to embroider.

One

to make sure it's going to fit within that area, and,

two

so that I can mark my center. There's actually a cross hair on this printed template. And then, my little target sticker, the yellow target sticker, will stay in place right until I'm ready to embroider. You want to make sure that the monogram or the initial is going in the right orientation on both slippers. And, generally, the wearer will be reading their initial or their monogram upside down. Sure. Most people think it's the other way, but this is how you would want you slipper to be monogrammed. So, we're going to place this underneath the needle, lining it up perfect with the target sticker. And we're going to add the basting file around that so that it'll hold down our water-soluble stabilizer. So, I've already done that, and you can see that it moves ahead as the first color. Now, the basting file, if you missed the first program, you can go back and watch it online, and that just holds down the stabilizer, a topper stabilizer. That's right. And we use a topper that washes away when you have a knit fabric. That's right, it holds down the pile of terrycloth, velour, fleece, and it just holds the pile of the fabric down until you're ready to embroider. So, now I've added the water-soluble stabilizer, and the basting file is going to stitch... and hold down that water-soluble stabilizer. Sometimes you just kind of hold it until it's tacked down. And years ago, before that, I used to tape it all down. If you don't have that option-- You can still do that sometimes. Yeah, you can tape it all down. So you can see that that little square is holding down the water-soluble, and now it's going to stitch the initial. And it stops, in case we wanted to change a color, but-- And the initial is in the right orientation? Yes, that's right. It is something to remember that you just have to rotate it for each slipper, if possible, but when you keep the target sticker in place, it helps you keep track of what's going on what. Sometimes, I do four or five pairs of these slippers, and it gets a little confusing after a while. So keeping all the target stickers in place until you're ready to stitch is very helpful. Now, when you do the opposite slipper, and you already have that marked, as well. And then, on the screen, you're going to have that design, you're going to make sure you follow that arrow of the target sticker so it goes in the right orientation. That's right because to me it's very helpful if the body of the slipper is sitting on top of the attachment of the embroidery machine. Sure. Because if it was going the other direction, it could bump into the inside of the machine and kind of bump it out of the hoop. So, when you do this slipper, we would have to rotate it so that we do it in the proper orientation. So, those little stickers with the arrows, they just tell you what direction you should do the stitching. They're very helpful. Follow those stickers. Follow the yellow sticker when you're doing the embroidery. So then, after you've done the embroidery, we look on the finished slippers. Marie just tore away the extra sticky back stabilizer and then, also tore away the washable stabilizer from the front. If there's anything left, you can just dampen it, and it will literally wash away. Yes, it will. So, in about 15 minutes of embroidery time, knowing these hints, you can personalize a gift, make a pair of slippers, and give them to a friend, and you'll be a hit. What girlfriend can't use a new cosmetic case? Impress her with a personalized layered monogram case featuring trendy colors and embroidery fonts. Well, this is the third of our trio. That's right. Of things that work great for a spa day. And, Marie, you've chosen blanks that are especially made for the home embroiderer. Exactly. Yeah, there are a ton of blank ready-made items that are perfect for the home embroiderer that work in a single hoop and single needle machine. Many people have the embroidery unit to their machine, but they don't use it. So,

that's what we're trying to stress today

to use it. So, this waffle weave requires a different combination of a stabilizer than we've done earlier today. Right. Well, actually, it lays perfectly flat on your embroidery hoop, which is great. It unzips, and there's no extra pockets on this side. So, it's a super easy thing to embroider, and you would start by finding the center of your case and marking it with a target sticker. So, again, you have that little guide to help you when you're at your hoop in what direction the monogram or name or whatever should go. And so I use that little target sticker so that the zipper would be at the bottom, and you want to make sure that it reads in the right orientation. Then you could hoop it either with a sticky back stabilizer, as we did earlier for the tote bag or the slippers or you could use magnetic hoop. And for this case, I did use the magnetic hoop, and you would use a piece of tear-away stabilizer. And I like to hoop it just with the body, again, sitting on top of the attachment. It just makes it a little bit easier so something doesn't bump inside of the machine and pop it out of alignment. This you just have to get these positioned in there properly, and then they will be nice and tight. And then you would have that. If you haven't gathered by now, you would get it lined up at the machine, as we did earlier today, remove the target sticker. And then put the water-soluble stabilizer. And this is so critical to have a topper that we often shortcut call it because of the waffle weave of the fabric. Exactly. Yeah. If you're not going to try your software and change the density or anything, which I did not even do here, but I did out of the topper and it worked fine. Now, speaking of changing the density, on some machines, as you can see, you can increase the number of stitches. And you just hit the button and it increases it so that it fills in more. That would be very helpful on a fabric like this. Not all machines can do that, but if you have that option, as we just showed you, you can certainly do this. And then, this is the completed......embroidery where you'd remove the basting file, tear away the wash-away stabilizer, and tear away the stabilizer from the back. So, the embroidery is simple. It's the positioning and knowing what stabilizers to use. That's right. So, Marie, we've done a trio. We better show the finished one. A trio for the spa day. You've given me lots of ideas, and I appreciate this. Oh, good, I'm glad you like it. And I'm sure that our viewers will take these ideas and implement them as soon as possible. I hope so. Thanks for being my guest. Thank you for having me. I was so happy to be here. Today, during my Nancy's Corner segment, you'll learn that you can bend the rules of quilting when finishing art quilts. Join me at our annual Quilt Expo event in Madison, Wisconsin, as I meet with one of my favorite art quilters. I'm here today with Frieda Anderson, art author, quilter, designer, fabric dyer. Yes. Boy, you have a litany behind your name, Frieda. I keep busy. Keep out of trouble. That's what you do. And today, we're going to talk about art quilts, big or small, and some interesting inside and finishing details. This is a cute little picture. It's of my dog, George. It's a portrait of him. And this is an art quilt that is postcard size, but notice how stiff it is. Right. And you use a lot of craft interfacing in your projects. Yes. It makes for a wonderful way to frame out smaller pieces. And that's what I've done in different ways on these little quilts that I have here. And you also use fusible web to adhere the fabric to the... To the interfacing, right. It does come with fusible. You can buy it both ways, but I like it better to fuse it myself. And it's stiff. It is very stiff, but not so stiff that you can't sew through it. It's very easy to sew through. It doesn't require special threads or needles to do that. And it's 20" wide, so that's kind of the maximum width. Yes, that's about as big as you can deal with it as a frame. So, you've seen the little project, and the little project is finished on the edges just with satin stitching. And I've use a rayon thread to do that, so it's a bit shiny, but any thread would work to do it. Cotton or silk or polyester or whatever. And before you finish it, you want to put some kind of little label and hook to hang it up with because once it's all layered together you can't do that. Now, we have-- The next option is two layers. Yes. I love your contemporary, bright colors. So this little quilt was completely made and bound with a fused binding, and then, I covered the interfacing with fabric and used a decorative blade to cut it with, and then sewed the quilt right onto the frame. And, again, it has a little loop on there. And I sew this label with the loop on before I make all of the layers. So the label goes on first. Correct. Then you would apply... This to the front. So, it's a picture frame. It is. It frames it really nice, and it gives it body when you hang it on the wall so it becomes stiff... all by itself. I like this. It's very fun to do. Now, the next option shows-- beautiful color combinations, I might add, but it's more like a pillowcase. It is. I created the little quilt top and then pillow-cased it so there's no binding on the edge. And then, I left a slit in the middle which I have covered with my label. Clever. And then I cut the interfacing the same shape as this, a little bit smaller, and fit it in. Like the pillow. Like the pillow. So, you made the pillowcase, which is the outer design? Slipped it in, and then you did... And then I stitched a little bit to hold the layers together. Like stitching in the ditch. That's exactly what I did, yep. Now we have a pretty, pretty one for the... One more way to deal with it. I'm just going to de-thread it. There we go. So this one, I made the little quilt again and finished it off. And then when I took the interfacing, I wrapped it like a package. And you can see the corners right here are mitered, just like you would wrap a package. And I put a little bit of fusible in there and fused it down. Right behind the whole picture, there's no fabric. So it's the white showing. And then, stitch the quilt onto the front of it. Again, with a little label and hook on the back. And this is about as big as you can get with the project. And also, in the bed of your machine, you only have so much width. Exactly, you only have so much room you can feed it in there. And since it is a little bulkier, that's why. Right, but it is stitched down through the machine, so you can see that that's five or six layers that I've stitched through right here without any issue at all. It really stitches so easily. Well, Frieda, many of us think of quilts as big bed quilts, but they can be... Small wall pieces, art pieces as well. And then, instead of using the traditional batting, work with craft interfacing to make them like works of art, which they are. Thank you. Thank you for being with us. My pleasure. Thank you for asking me. It's time to wrap up this two-part series on "Hoop it Up." A special thank you to Marie Zinno for sharing her embroidery expertise. If you'd like to rewatch this episode or any Sewing with Nancy episode from recent seasons, go to NancyZieman.com, and you can watch online. Or at the site, join me on my blog or follow me on Facebook. Thanks for joining me today. Bye for now. Marie Zinno and Eileen Roche have written the book, "Hoop

It Up

Guide to Successful Embroidery" which is used as the reference for this two-part series, and includes six embroidery positioning tools. It's $29.99, plus shipping and handling. To order the book, call 800-336-8373 or visit our website at sewingwithnancy.com/2924. Order item number BK00125, "Hoop Guide to Successful Embroidery" Credit card orders only. To pay by check or money order, call the number on the screen for details. Visit Nancy's website at NancyZieman.com to see additional episodes, Nancy's blog, and more. Sewing with Nancy TV's longest-airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman

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Baby Lock; Madeira Threads; Koala Studios; Clover; Amazing Designs and Klass Needles. Closed captioning funding provided by Pellon. Sewing with Nancy is a co-production of Nancy Zieman Productions and Wisconsin Public Television.