Hello again everyone! I was coming back to let you all know how my embroidery has been going! Then I happened to read some of the comments about the vintage versus the Brother SE-400. So, I wanted to respond to those first. Granted, I do not have really any experience with a vintage machine that old. I have one from around the 70's that was a bit of a bear to use. That being said, I do have a Brother SE-400, so I can weigh in on that. I personally like the sewing option on my machine. I find it super easy to use, and since I give lessons to little ones as part of our homeschooling co-op, I love the option of controlling how fast it can sew. Our two six year olds in the group love to put the pedal to the metal. I turn the speed way down, and no matter how hard they push, it stays one speed. NOW. As far as the embroidery function goes...I could have cheerfully thrown it out the window today.
I am self taught on the embroidery functions so that is probably why I am frustrated. There is so much information on how to work it properly that I really have to learn by trial and lots and lots of errors. I tried out the Sew What Pro free demo b/c I could not get embird on my computer to save my life. I really enjoy using SWP. I will probably buy it. I have spent hours these last couple days trying to figure out how to do straight lettering. I still cannot do long straight lines of words b/c I only have a 4x4 hoop. I believe in the research I did that I can use bigger though. I just have to be willing to put the money out. I don't understand how to split a pattern yet. I have done the actual splitting in the SWP program, but haven't loaded it into the machine to attempt it yet. Anyway, instead of doing one straight line of "Walt Disney World" on the shirt, I had to put the words like this:
Walt
Disney
World
Except centered of course. It worked out much better, but only after my machine tried several times to eat my shirts, and succeeded a couple times. I realized I needed to start doubling up my stabilizers, and that helped. So, after several days and 2 ruined shirts, I managed to get 4 shirts embroidered out of 12. I will include a photo, but remember there will be more on each shirt. This is just the top section of the front. We are putting a Mickey design on the front, everyone's nicknames on the back, Mickey balloons on the back as well, and our top ten reasons for visiting WDW. The top ten reasons will be a transfer. No way am I trying to embroider that. They would have to put me in a straight jacket.
So, here is the first one that was semi-successful. This was before I realized I needed better stabilizers, so the D in Disney was a little iffy, but passable.
Oh yeah, at one point today my needle fell out as I was trying to put it back in and went down in the machine. Hopefully that won't screw everything up, but I took it apart (probably the 5th time I did it in one day), and was not able to find it. So far it isn't bothering anything. Fingers crossed. It has been a comedy of errors for sure, except everyone is laughing but me.