Sewing Machine

Just finished up some baby gifts for some friends of mine. I'm super excited about all my new Brother Innovis 950d machine can do. I'm just learning to work out the kinks.. and figure out what works well with different fabrics.

The only frustrating thing, is that the feeder feeds slightly to the left when sewing a straight seam, so I have to be constantly vigilant. It's a little annoying. But I'm learning how to work it.


The embroidery stuff is great. No complaints. It still makes me giggle when I watch the machine go at the cool designs. All I have to do is set it up, and press the start button. Then, if the design has multiple colors, I change the top color thread only, as needed. The Minnie Mouse you see is from the image bank stored on my machine, which is the only brand which licenses with Disney for embroidery images. It was the first image I embroidered with my machine. There's this little picture frame window on the right hand side of the machine. I decided to put Minnie there for now.

The fancy sewing stitches are really cool but eat up a ton of thread. I'm really wishing I had a surger thread extension for this machine like I've got for my antique Sears Kenmore. It would be really helpful for when I'm doing regular stitching. I can't use regular all purpose or cotton thread when embroidering, because it's fluffy and the wrong fiber content.

Still deciding whether I like the rayon or the polyester thread for the embroidery machine function. Not sure. I need to see how it holds up and survives the washing machine in various temperatures. I've experimented. Minnie Mouse's pink bow and skirt were polyester, and her ears, and the white are rayon. The texture on the finished image is similar. The flesh tone on Minnie's face is actually all purpose thread, because I didn't have the right thread for that at the time. It embroidered in chunky and very thready. It was bulky and did not look clean and crisp like the other two thread fibers did. As to brands... I'm still deciding who I like best. I've got Thread Art, Coates and Clark, Guterman and Sulky that I'm learning on and experimenting with. I think that the Guterman and Sulky spools work best in my new thread box.

I've had so much fun updating my sewing storage as well, the new machine inspired me. And... I discovered sewing storage boxes for the first time! So, I got the Sulky thread box. The left side holds my all purpose thread and the right side holds all of my embroidery thread. I bought a 20 kit on sale from Thread Art.
I also discovered that Art Bin sells a storage box deep enough for surger thread cones. I also bought the surger thread cone tray insert. It's really cool. It says you can only store 25 in there, but if you put some of the cones upside down in between the cones on the stands, you can fit almost double in there. This fits the regular sized cones really well. I don't have any extra large cones to try it on. Oh, you can see in the bottom left corner, my surger cone extension that my dad made for the Sears Kenmore machine. He made one for my mom's machine, which I grew up using, but when I moved out and got married, I needed one for my machine too, so he made me one as well!
This is another box by Art Bin. I bought two of these. Its designed to be a bobbin box. I got it for $1.97 at Joanns website. It's twice as expensive in the store. Anyhow, I really like it too. I bought some Dritz size 15 spools to try on my machine, and they dismally failed, in additino to their cheap quality, they caused nothing but problems. I've got about 10 that I don't want. So... if you want them, let me know. They are just taking up space right now. The Singer size 15 bobbins that I bought at the Joann's Store in Whittier worked really nicely. I still think the Brother 15 ones work the best, but they are the most expensive, and I thin the Singer ones make for an adequate substitute. I would totally post pictures of the gifts I made, however, one set I gave away without taking pictures, and the other set, I have yet to give away... and wouldn't want to spoil the excitement for that friend!

Sew......Have a great weekend!