Announcing new Sew4Home designs ……… now available

We have told you many times about our wonderful partnership with Sew4Home. One of the awesome things we receive quarterly from Sew4Home is beautifully digitized embroidery designs. These designs are exclusively for our Janome Canada consumers and are ONLY available from your local Janome Canada dealer.  Please contact your dealer and ask them to provide the designs to you. They may ask you to come in to the store with your USB stick so you may need to make an appointment to do that? Or they may be prepared to email them to you? Please discuss this with your dealer and also do remember that they have been enormously busy through the pandemic so please be patient and understanding if they don’t respond to you immediately.

Here is a link to our website where you can see what the designs look like. 

These multi-faceted dog and cat designs can be used for all sorts of applications: sweatshirts? tote bags? pillows? quilts & wall hangings? I stitched one out and am not sure what project it might end up in …….. but I like it!

I thought I’d share some advice about achieving best results with these dog and cat embroidery designs:

1. I used Janome MC15000 SQ23 hoop although the design also fits into the RE18 (optional) hoop for that machine. The design comes as 5.6 x 4.8 inches. If you resized it a bit smaller, it could also stitch out in the SQ14 hoop.  So work on approx. 7×9 inch size hoop for your specific Janome machine and you will be OK without any resizing needed. (So, it almost goes without saying that you can stitch these designs in Janome embroidery machines other than the one I used) Of course, you could also make it larger in Artistic Digitizer software and stitch it out in a bigger hoop – great for a tote bag?
2. You will notice in the pic above that the design is pretty densely digitized. Don’t let that put you off! Provided you follow my advice here, you should have no issues with getting good results from your embroidery stitch out.
3. I hooped up TWO layers of tearaway stabilizer, my fabric and a layer of Water soluble stabilizer over the top of the fabric. I used Madeira Cotton soft stabilizer and Madeira Avalon Plus over the top. (Janome Canada distributes Madeira stabilizers so you can ask your Janome Canada dealer for more information about these products).
4. I used quilting cotton fabric but I recommend you consider a firmer fabric like denim or decorator fabric as it will hold the stitches better than with a thinner fabric like quilting cotton. That is not to say you should not use this. I did and it worked but a thicker fabric would be easier.
5. Generally I hoop my stabilizer and then “float” the fabric over top and baste in place with the basting function. However, I recommend you hoop ALL 4 layers for best results. And use the magnets if your hoop has those. And baste with the double basting function. This is all to reduce the risk of puckering and wrinkles around your design. If you take extra precautions, it could save you time and disappointment.
6. Just as an extra precaution, you might like to spray your fabric with a little Best Press to stiffen it slightly if you decide to use a quilting cotton or similar fabric.
7. I did not use a water soluble thread for the basting which is what I usually do when I use double basting. I’m not fond of picking basting stitches out from between embroidery stitches. Too much risk of snipping them. But I knew the inner basting line would be completely covered by the embroidery so regular embroidery thread for the basting was fine in this instance.
8. I was getting some thread looping on the surface of my embroidery near the beginning of the stitch out. Essentially this is skipped stitching. This usually means you have a blunt or incorrect needle. It can occur with a densely digitized design as there are a lot of stitches including underlay for the needle to penetrate as well as your fabric and stabilizer layers. So I stopped the machine and switched from my usual Janome red tip needle to a Janome Purple tip. No more loops or loose stitches. YAY!
9. I also increased my needle thread tension to 4.0 as I felt that tightened up the stitching to my satisfaction. You may, or may not,  need to do this.
10. I used a Janome pre-wound bobbin and the yellow dot bobbin case.
11. And I used Madeira and Janome polyester embroidery thread throughout. The PDF files which come with the embroidery designs list the colour #’s for Janome and Madeira. You can, of course, always change the thread rack in the SET menu on your embroidery machine or Artistic Digitizer software to get the shade #’s for other brands of thread.

Madeira embroidery thread – Polyneon Smart box – available at your Janome Canada dealer

 

Are you inspired to stitch out this cat and dog?