Embroidery Detour

In the process of getting ready for the Artistic Artifacts open house, I took some time to reacquaint myself with the embroidery capabilities of my DSM.  Really, in the 3 years since I bought my Baby Lock machine, I have only had a "passing acquaintance" with this feature.  With holidays approaching I thought I might want to do some gifts with embroidery and also combine it with the screen printed fabric, so I set out to explore the built in designs, and found several to try.  Here are 2 that I stitched out.

I knew I also had the capability to purchase designs on the internet and download them to my machine, but had never tried it before, so decided it was time.  Better late than never, right?  I have used Embroidery Library in the past so went to their site to see what I could find.  Of course, there was lots to choose from!  Fortunately, I realized that my order history was in my account so I was able to download previously purchased designs in the new format (my old machine was a Pfaff) as well as make new purchases! And the process to transfer to the machine was straightforward.  So, the embroidery component is back in action!  Here are some purchased designs.

The cardinal above was a challenge - much more stitching here.  The problem came when the machine jammed - not once, but twice! Major thread jam under the throat plate.  However I was able to get it resolved and finish stitching, and actually learned a key point about putting the machine back together by reading the manual - fancy that!

 I especially like these 2 redwork designs. 

I think I've shown these in previous posts, but above are 2 mug rugs that combine screen printing and embroidery in the same project. More of these are in progress!  Coming soon - a tutorial on how I made the mug rugs.