Say A Little Prayer

Today I broke out my embroidery machine that has been tucked away in a closet for over two years!  It was misbehaving worse than a tired two year-old so it was put in "time out" for a bit.  Honestly, I had given up on it and was in the market for getting a new one when I decided to give it one last chance.  If it didn't work, I was going to take it to a local sewing center and have it "tuned up," but I wanted to see if the time-out had worked first.

I started off easy by doing some appliques for my MIL's quilt.  This ribbon design I found on Etsy and I wasn't sure how it would embroidery out.  Sometimes, depending on how the design was digitized, the design comes out wonky.  So.... I held my breath and hit the start button.

Not too bad!  My fussy-cutting of the design wasn't the greatest, but it worked!!  I am SOOOO excited!!!  Maybe that time-out really worked :-)  Now the big test is, can it handle more embroidery.  With that in mind, I went in search of some applique designs that had a bit more to them and I found this from my favorite site to get embroidery designs from... Embroidery Library.  I changed up the colors a bit, but all-in-all, it didn't turn out too bad!

Not too bad :-)  The applique went down smoothly, and the satin stitching inside the flower stitched without a problem.  I swear.... I did cartwheels!  I'm so excited my machine appears to be working!

Now.... the true test will be to do a full embroidery design.  No applique.  For this one, I wanted to try an intricate design with some wording.  So, I went back to Embroidery Library and found this gorgeous design.

 Not only did it embroider beautifully, not once did I have a thread snap or a bobbin get tangled (which were the problems I had been having with my machine).  Seriously, I can't tell you how excited this makes me!! 

After a couple hours tonight of work, I managed to get all the squares cut for the blanket, all the applique blocks done, and two of the five embroidered blocks done.  All-in-all, not a bad night :-)