Tips and Hints

Have you ever made a great discovery in sewing and embroidery, but had no chance to share it with others?

This is your chance, along with tips and hints from us and other professional designers and dealers. We need your great ideas! Let's share the word.

One of the stickiest, messiest things we do in embroidery is to use spray adhesive. The spray gets all over everything and we inhale the fumes from the adhesive. There are several methods for minimizing these problems listed below.

Using Plastic Milk or Juice Containers.
• Find a container that will fit inside your hoop.
• Carefully, cut the bottom out of the container as evenly as possible.
• Cut a hole in the container, opposite the handle, just large enough for the spray nozzle and your finger to fit.
• After hooping your fabric, place container inside hoop and spray.

Making a Mask
• This will make a cover for your hoop to protect it from over spray.
• Cardboard the weight of the stiffener in a new shirt works best for this method.
• Lay inner hoop on cardboard, trace inside of hoop.
• Draw a second line inside the first (about the height of your hoop plus a little for fabric.
• Cut out cardboard on inside line.
• Mark cutting lines from cut edge to inner line, in much the same manner as you would snip ease into a collar or sleeve.
• Cut on marked lines and fold down.

Canvas Masks
• Cut canvas, denim, duck or other heavy fabric into large enough pieces to cover your different hoops.
• Mark inner hoop onto fabric.
• Cut fabric about 1 1/2in. inside marked line.
• Surge or zig zag all raw edges.

Cardboard Box For Applique Pieces
• This is handy for spraying small pieces, such as for applique.
• Use a box about 12 in. tall with top flaps intact.
• Cut a hole in side of box near top end large enough for spray nozzle and finger.
• Open box and place a sheet of paper on bottom.
• Place piece to be sprayed on paper.
• Close box lid.
• Place nozzle in box facing downwards and spray.
• Remove sprayed piece.
• If spraying several pieces replace paper before continuing.

1. Save Early Save Often: Few things are more frustrating than losing files because of a software error or your computer suddenly locking up for no apparent reason. Saving often minimizes the amount of data that can be lost.

2. Save Before You Print: If you are going to have a hardware and/or software problem, chances are good that it will happen when you try to print.

3. Installing Image Design Disks: From time to time, you may get a design or image disk that needs to be installed onto your hard drive. Most manufacturers try to set up the installation process so that the files are copied into your standard design directory. Some disks, however, copy the designs/images into a generic directory (example: c:\designs\easter). Most users can simply open these files by looking into this directory; however, if you are using Viking's DOS Customizer or Digitizer, you will need to copy/move the files into the needed directory or onto a diskette. Normal Directory:

C:\Husq\PCX\PCX2

Easter...

C:\Husq\HUS\HUS2

Easter...

1. Use your large (3 attachment) hoop for stitching out your samples; you can get 2 or more per hooping.

2. Have the workbook page copied on clear mylar (this is allowed for your own personal use) and use as a placement template - this only works on the actual size pages.

3. Use regular tear-away stabilizer and spray adhesive instead of sticky paper; this works great in your regular hoop and can even be used with a hat hoop.

4. When you use spray adhesive, use Goo-Gone to clean up the hoop.

5. Freezer paper can be used as an iron-on type stabilizer in a pinch.

6. We suggest that you use Woolly Nylon for animal fur and raised designs.

7. A new thread called Cotti is great for cross-stitch designs, quilting, and satin outline designs. It makes your machine embroidery look hand done.

8. A new Brother customer let us know how much the workbook pages help her understand which part of the design is on her screen.

9. Nancy Copeland of Copeland Crafts here in Dayton makes adorable Christmas ornaments using the Coaster from Special Techniques and the Candy Cane on Baby's First Christmas from Christmas 96.

10. She also suggests increasing the size of the JOY & NOEL from Christmas Cross-Stitch for beautiful door pulls. She was nice enough to make us one and it is beautiful. Thanks, Nancy..

11. Terry Thoreen reminds us all that when cleaning our machines, not to forget to clean the bobbin case. Just a tiny piece of lint under the hinge can totally throw our tensions off.

12. While on the subject of cleaning, don't forget to remove the throat plate and clean around the feed dogs, this can be a major cause of problems if left too long.

13. Save your design every few minutes or at each color change to lessen the chance of losing it. The best time to remember this is before the power goes out or the dog unplugs your computer, not while sitting there in the dark crying over two or three hours of lost work.

14. (From Doris Young. She has won a free disk for this great tip.) If you are having trouble with an embroidery design stitching because of a high number of stitches in an area, place a piece of batiste fabric on the back of the fabric when you're hooping it. This will keep the embroidery design from stretching. It works like a charm. This has saved a lot of designs for her.

1. "Q" will exit the program.
2. After Satin Stitching if you double click ENTER it will take you directly to Manual Stitch.
3. Holding down the SHIFT key after making the first manual stitch will force the lines to be either vertical, horizontal or at a 45 degree angle. This is true also for "fills" and " satin columns".
4. When scaling, holding down the CONTROL or SHIFT key allows non proportional scaling. This is especially helpful in scaling lettering to fit.
5. When saving a design as you work, if you have scaled your image, put the scale factor in the name. This can help eliminate guess work when you return to the design.
6. When FILLING if after choosing your entry and exit points, you simply press enter again, the program will use the last fill angle you chose.
7. If using the EU program, you can get your thumbnails to be in the correct colors by simply OPENing the file and re-saving the color palette. If necessary, change the thread colors first.
8. If your thread colors keep coming up reset every time you open a design, it sometimes helps to use FILE NEW, reset the colors, before opening an existing file. This is not always successful but sometimes it works.
9. To help avoid "break" in your deigns, be sure to AUTOCENTER and save your colors before saving the design.
10. If you get a "break", delete the autocenter, delete the last stitch before the autocenter, find the break and fix it, re-save your color palette, re-autocenter and save under a different name. DO NOT re-save with the same name! The file is corrupted and will give the same error again!
11. Always go File NEW before starting a new design.
12. Always reset colors before starting.
13. Load your PCX before starting to digitize or continue working on a started CSD (keeps colors from being messed up.
14. When doing manual stitches left mouse button is for stitches and right mouse button is for jumps.
15. When setting the perimeter of fills and satin areas, the left mouse is straight and the right is curved.
16. To move through the design without affecting the stitches use HOME< END and the four arrow keys on your keyboard.
17. To make a screen capture of your CSD for placement purposes, use ALT F10 and look for the resulting PCX in the last opened image file under either ES01 or CS01.pcx
18. Use Color Change to stop the machine and place a thread change command in your CSD.
19. Use thread color to change the color representations of the threads already set in your design. It does not affect the machine commands only how your picture looks on screen.
20. Remember to exit the CS Program and restart it every hour or so in order to avoid the build up of resident memory and cut down on error messages and the program crashing.
21. Editing out unnecessary travel stitches as you digitize will result in a cleaner CSD with less thread breaks.
22. Changing your fill spacing for special effects and shadowing is easier and quicker than using the manual stitch. Moving stitches makes the edges much neater and smoother.
23. Delete segment will delete all stitches of the same type in sequence, before the stitch where you have the cursor when you hit delete segment.
24. Delete Selects will not delete the first or last stitch selected.
25. When making a satin column, instead of ENTER hit SPACE BAR and last stitch will be on bottom of column instead of top.
26. When doing a fill, after giving your entry and exit points, "double left click" to bring up the Adjust Fill Angle Box. This will allow you to choose the exact angle you want. You can also change stitch lengths and spacing from this box.

1. Holding down the SHIFT KEY while making manual stitches, FILL areas and Satin Columns forces lines that are totally horizontal, vertical or at 90 degree angles. If you form FILLS using this method and also outline this way your outline will easily match your FILL.

2. If you are having a lot of trouble with thread breakage or bog downs, try oiling your machine and adjusting your tensions. Many times we find that the upper tension is too tight. While holding your Upper Cassette by the thread end, the cassette should SLOWLY roll down with just a very slight jiggle. Not fall fast and not remain still.

3. The stars in the Upper Cassettes should face with the prongs up. Some cassettes were shipped with the prongs down and this has caused many people some confusion.

4. When doing lettering you must add tie-offs to the BLOCK lettering or it tends to unravel.

5. When doing Lettering with the SCRIPT lettering, after selecting your words, you should edit out the tie-offs at the beginning and end of each letter except at the beginning and end of each word.

6. Remember, the smaller the lettering the larger the SATIN SPACING should be. This eliminates a lot of the problems we have with thread breakage.

1. (From Mary Alice, an instructor for Sew Biz Sew & Vac, 2389 First Street NE, Birmingham, AL 35215 Phone 205-853-1960). She has won a free disk for this great Brother PE Designer tip.)

This is an alternative to the manually punched method we teach in the April DHD Club and some of you might like it better. Try both methods and use the one that works best for you.
Lou

When doing Cutwork. use the applique option in Design Center. Once the design has been cleaned up to your satifaction, select all and duplicate. Move the duplicated design away from the original. Click on the spool option and outline it in a satin stitch. Move the satin stitched design directly on top of the "appliqued" design. It means that you are alternating between "line image" and "sew setting", but it is quite easy to do.