I have had a lot of fun playing around with STITCH COMPOSER in our Janome Horizon Link Suite software. This is one of the components of a software package that comes standard with the Janome MC15000 and is called Horizon Link Suite. The Janome MC12000 also offers Stitch Composer on the Horizon Link CD of software that comes standard with the machine. The Elna 860 also includes Stitch Composer. Those are the 3 machines to date which include this fun and very useful software which enables to you to ADD 9mm sewing machine stitches to the hundreds that are already included with the machine. WOW! this makes the number of decorative stitches on these models absolutely UNLIMITED! I find that concept really cool as I use decorative stitches a LOT and often find myself wanting to change things up with a new and completely different stitch.
New decorative stitches created using Janome Stitch Composer software. The little stitch out was then outlined with a strip of sequins using our Janome Ribbon/sequin foot and then constructed into a little zipper baggie
Enter STITCH COMPOSER with its inbuilt instruction manual or workbook to help me learn all I need to know about making as many decorative stitches as I have time to make!
One way to create new stitches is to start with an image which may be used as a cheat sheet to drop stitch points around the image. Each stitch point is simply a click to drop a dot. Actually rather easy to do!
Two different mushroom stitches I had fun making – one with long grass and one with mowed grass! I used the image above as a back drop to help me make the mushroom shapes.
A word of advice to beginner Stitch Composers:
- Visit the little blue question mark in the top right corner of the Stitch Composer screen. There are literally dozens of pages with all you need to know on how to operate this software. Use it as a workbook and you will be creating lovely new 9mm decorative stitches in no time at all. Work systematically through this “how-to” to gain the maximum benefit from this great and easy to use software program.
- Space the stitch points approx. 2mm apart. If they are too close your stitches will be way too small and you would never be able to unpick such tiny stitches. Nor is it that pretty. Try as far as possible to have TWO large grid blocks between your stitches. This is not always possible when going around curved shapes but try.
- Keep your designs simple. Complex fiddly things will not stitch out well as too much detail just gets confusing. Look at the apple below: that is a good shape to use as it is simple. The image for this was found online….just google “images of apples” and take your pick from the copy right free images. All you need is the backdrop to create your delicious apple!
Simple, easy and everyone can see its an apple! Check out our month of everyday blog posts on September 2014 – more details was posted then about how to create this apple stitch.
We think our 2 different little owls are rather cute.
Gingko leaves and Christmas trees…..lots of fun to create….lots of creative potential on decorative stitched projects.
Another online image of an inukshuk which was used as a back drop to create our little Canadian inukshuk stitch – see stitch out of inukshuk just above.
Another way to create new stitches is to simply click drop stitch points about 2mm apart……here I made a skyline of buildings to go with our JANOME SKYLINE series of machines.
