Applique Cafe on YouTube!

Good afternoon! I’m sampling new designs today {which you can always catch on Instagram} and finally getting around to a blog post from September 2013! Jeff & I have some friends who have been telling us for years that we need to do more with video, so one sunny day back in September, I decided to do just that. I had a new design to sample and on a whim, I videoed it with my Iphone. For the record, I hate my voice on video just as we all do. Also, I am an A-M-A-T-E-U-R videographer person-with-a-phone. Lastly, I have yet to master splicing 6 videos together, so there are 6 videos in this segment to watch. Lastly again, I was taking the video solo, so that’s why I had to stop and start so many times so I could actually sew the design. My phone doesn’t seem to have a “pause” button. Lighting is so-so and there is a part where I’m talking over my machine and you can’t hear me. Overlook all that and MAYBE you will learn something?

This series of videos might be helpful if A) you have a multi needle machine and aren’t quite sure how to use it or B) you are new to applique and want to understand how it works. I supplemented the video with a few photos too so I will try to explain the process and get you through this post!

Background: I am sewing a simple 1 fabric zig zag design (Zig Zag Moose) on my Brother PR650 6 needle machine. I like to assign thread colors to my machine and here I explain how and why I do that. This is a sample for Applique Cafe, so I sewed it on 2 layers of medium cutaway stabilizer in my 5×7 hoop (PES format).

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Here is video 1!

Just a closeup of the colors of thread on my machine, which I “assign” to each needle so my machine knows what colors it has to work with. I mention in the video that 1 needle out of my 6 is always free and you can’t “lock in” that color. It can be any needle, and I usually allow my free needle to be white or black. So if black is on needle 1, then that’s my free needle and there is no anchor by it on the screen.

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Closeup of my HOME screen. The top 2 rows are built in designs and fonts. I use a USB stick which is the button I pointed to. Side note: I have a USB cord that connects from my computer to my machine, but for some reason it takes forever to send something to my machine, so I just use the thumb drive (see Sewingmachine.com stick). I think there is something wrong with that USB port on my machine, but I have not wanted to part with my machine long enough to get it checked out! The checklist looking button is where you go to assign colors.

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I changed needle 6 from Khaki to Light Brown using Reset and Set buttons! “Set” assigns light brown to needle 6.

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These are the colors of thread currently on my machine.

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Here is video 2 and video 3.

There is a pause between them because my thread broke! I left off after video 3 with fabric prep, which is below. I cut my piece of plaid fabric for my Moose.

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I iron my fabric to get any wrinkles out. Generic Target Shark iron and I keep it on mediumish (not high) with NO STEAM.

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I’ve cut a piece of Heat N Bond Lite and I’ve ironed it on the back side of my fabric. If you don’t know what HNBL is, check out this post. It’s a fusible product which will fuse the applique fabric (the plaid) to my garment. Or in this case, my stabilizer!

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Don’t forget to peel away the paper! It will leave a shiny layer on the back side of your fabric.

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I’ve placed my HNBL-ed fabric down after the marking stitch, so now it’s time for the tackdown stitch and

video 4.

After video 4 I trimmed around my design (around the tackdown stitch) using my Gingher 4″ curved scissors. These are great for trimming and makes it easy to get up close to the tackdown stitch. Havels has a tiny curved scissor as well.

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Here is video 5

…after I’ve trimmed my fabric and I’m ready for the zig zag FINAL stitch. I tried to say something at the end of the video but you can’t hear me over the buzz of the machine. Sorry ’bout that!! Sew sew sew and lastly there’s

video 6 which wraps up this design!

I hope this is helpful! If you have any questions, feel free to comment! I hope to do some more videos in the future, and you can find them on my YouTube channel!  New designs coming soon to Applique Cafe!

Monogramming Nike Shorts

So…. it has been raining here for 2 solid days. All of the snow and ice is north of us, so all we have had is rain and cold and cold and rain all.day.long. yesterday and today. I’m over it and ready for SPRING! and Nike shorts! I had a customer bring me some Nike shorts to monogram this week, and after asking around to see if anyone had done them before, I “figured out” which stabilizer to use. After I was done, I realized it might be handy information for those of you out there who haven’t done any yet.

I used water soluble “solvy” on top. Yes, it’s water soluble, but I just pick and pull it off when I’m done.

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I used Waffle Tearaway on the bottom. As you can see, I hooped it all together and also used a little Sulky KK2000 spray adhesive to “stick” the tearaway to the underside of the shorts to keep it in place. This type of tearaway is a little thicker than the standard iron on tearaway, which is like paper, which I normally use on towels and bibs. Nike shorts are made of a thin polyester type material, and I wanted to avoid any puckering with the weight of a monogram. I considered using cutaway (medium) but went with the tearaway and it did fine.

Do you notice anything “off” on my monogram below? There is no bobbin thread showing, which means my tension is off. This doesn’t affect this particular monogram, but it might if you were working on another project. I will show you in a minute how to check your tension on a 6 needle machine.

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Before I actually did the monogram, I wasn’t sure what size I should do. I looked around on Pinterest and saw a bunch of monogrammed Nike shorts in a variety of fonts and size monograms. I was between a 2.5″ and a 3″ monogram, so I printed both and cut the monogram out to see which size looked best, and also it helped with placement. I used Monogram Wizard Plus “Master Circle” as my font. MWP has a print option which comes in handy when you are deciding size and placement.

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I went with the 3″ monogram after consulting with my customer!

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Here’s the finished product! As I mentioned, if you search “monogrammed Nike shorts” on Pinterest, you will see all kinds of fonts and placement. I love the way these turned out! These are navy with a turquoise monogram. Hot pink would have been cute too!

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Now on to my tension issue. I have a Brother PR650 6 needle embroidery machine, which comes with a handy dandy tension test feature. On machines such as mine, your tension is controlled by knobs on top of the machine.

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Looking at your Home screen, select the button with the bird on it.

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It will pull up some embroidery designs built in to your machine. Go to page 2 and you will see the tension test.

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6 color bars or lines = 6 needles = 6 thread colors.

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I go in and program each step according to the colors of thread on my machine. Huh? I assign black for needle 1 because black thread is on my machine for needle 1. Etc…

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As you can see below, I’ve assigned my colors and it shows the 6 steps with needles sewing in order to test each needle, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6.

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Here are the results of my first tension test. Again, no bobbin thread showing. Since all 6 rows are lacking in bobbin thread, I have to assume there’s an issue with my bobbin! Had it been only 1 needle, then I could assume there was an issue with that 1 needle and the rest were fine with no bobbin issues.

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After taking my bobbin case out, I quickly found the culprit. It looks like the thread is caught and is balling up before it can come out of the bobbin case.

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Bingo! I removed the “knot”, re-threaded and put my bobbin case back in. I use Magna Glide Prewound L bobbins.

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Tension test #2 results are below, and you can see the bobbin thread. A good rule of thumb per Steve at Sewingmachine.com, is 1/3-1/3-1/3. 1/3 colored thread, 1/3 bobbin thread in the middle and 1/3 colored thread on the other side. Mine is not exactly 1/3 each but it looks much better and I can work on the tension up top!

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I hope that was helpful ~ both the stabilizer with the Nike shorts AND the tension test! You can find more helpful videos regarding 6 needle machines at Sewingmachine.com!

Before you go, check out Whimsical Fabric’s latest blog post! I had the pleasure of being their “Featured Customer” for February! Find out more about me and running my own business! WF has great fabric, shipping supplies and sewing patterns for those of you who sew. She also hosts a “Sew Along” each month so check out her blog to find out more. She’s also on Facebook and has a sew along Facebook group if you are interested in joining! Basically she picks a pattern to sew each month and blogs about each and every step. There are discussions on Facebook and lots of photos!

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Lastly, all of our designs are on sale through Tuesday, February 18th at Applique Cafe! Below are a few new ones listed last week.

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I’m off to snuggle with my Maggie. She is scheduled for surgery in the morning to be spayed!! She has already begun her first heat cycle (eeek!!), so the timing was perfect and we’re anxious to get through tomorrow. Have a great rest of the week! We are hoping for some sunshine tomorrow!

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Before and After

Happy Monday! It’s a beautiful day in Alabama ~ sunny and 66 ~ and the kids are out of school and are outside playing. Perfect day to be inside sewing and doing a blog post, huh? This weekend Jeff took Sissy to a Father Daughter Dance. This is one of 100,000,000 reasons I thank God for giving us a little girl. Such a fun night and I think I had more fun shopping for this dance than anything. You won’t find much fancy and shiny in Mallory’s closet, but on this night I had to find the perfect dress. After searching high and low for a dress with a decent price tag that she would probably only wear once, I found this one at Belk. Can’t beat the sale dress with an add’l 40% off. Believe me, there are some tacky dresses out there. It’s hard to find decent, cute girl clothes once you bypass the toddler sizes. Anyway, they had a ball and here are a couple of pics!

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My two girls!! Love love love them!!

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Now on to what I have really been up to lately. We have roughly 750 designs on our website. For the past several months, I have been going through some of the old designs and either editing the web photos to remove the background, or re-sewing the design altogether. It’s amazing what fresh fabrics will do! I use Photoshop Elements to remove the background of my photos. I test stitch all of our samples usually on a double layer of medium cutaway stabilizer (5×7, PES designs). Sometimes if I have a shirt then I sew it on a shirt. I try to take my web photos outside in good sunlight (I have a Canon Rebel xsi), then I crop & edit them in a program called Photoscape, which is free. I then use Photoshop Elements to remove the background from the image. This is tedious work and the whole web photo process is why it sometimes takes us 3 days to get a new design listed.  I use both programs because I am not savvy enough to just use PE. I also use Photoscape to add the watermark (www.appliquecafe.com) to my photos. All you do is add text!

Here are a few examples of some BEFORE & AFTER shots of some of our older designs. This is our Bird on Vine design which has been around for a long long time. I re-sewed it on a Sassy Kid Blanks Candy Pink A-Line dress and it looks soooooo much better! If you missed it, see my RECENT POST about Sassy Kid Blanks and all they have to offer. There’s nothing really wrong with the old picture and this has been a popular design, but the background is a little dark and as you can see below, the design looks great on the pink dress.

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Love love love this design on this dress! This is the 5×7 design on a size 6 dress.

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This is our Birthday Cake design before & after. The background on the left is super dark, and it just needed a makeover. Again, this is an older design (#109 out of like 750). Doesn’t the new web photo look SOOO much better? When I say “remove the background”, I mean I remove the stabilizer or shirt or whatever the design is stitched on. It really makes the design itself stick out.

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Here is our Birthday Hat (girl) design and this was one of the very first designs we did (#4). My old web photo (left) was way too dark. I probably took it inside and it definitely looks better with some new fabric and a better, brighter photo.

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I think this is one of my favorites. This is our Mittens design. The left photo is dark and the fabrics are kind of blahhhh. It looks 200X better with brighter fabrics and an edited photo.

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I’m slowly getting all of the designs edited with no backgrounds and a few more re-sewn that need makeovers. I hope it makes a difference! I’m stitching our Lion design now, and our Rudolph is next even though Christmas is a long way away.

Photos make all the difference in selling your product! Try to get outside on a sunny day and take your photos. Props are good too if you are selling a dress or a shirt (like my dress form above). Hang your shirt from a tree, or the vinyl photo backdrops are popular now too. Search for them on Etsy.com!

Check out ALL DESIGNS on our website to see how our photos look! Have a great week!