jem39

Like Love Angels, I, too have spent the last couple of hours reading just the last 10 pages of this thread!!! Most interesting. Have to figure out how to mark this so I can read it more often.

I have a Brother ULT2003D. Started out with a used (from local dealer) PC8500. Decided 4x4 hoop too small when I bought a design of a greyhound and couldn't load it on to my card. Went into dealer, said, "I have a problem." They answered with, "well, we can help with that......" And I walked out of the store with my brand new 2003D. Love my machine. Took me several years to really get comfortable with it. It's the old, "well, I might break something" syndrome. The needle up/down button no longer works, but otherwise it's in fine shape.

My biggest problem is which stabilizer to use. I buy denim shirts from the thrift stores and I'm still flummoxed as to which stabilizer works the best - seems to change with each different design. My absolute favorite is a plastic-y tear away one with teeny tiny holes in it. Just don't get your iron close to it as it will be toast and your iron will have goo all over it. I'm not fond of FSL, but have done some. Just finished a quilt for girlfriend using alternate embroidered blocks and blocks of 2 different shades of blue. Haven't taken any pix of it yet. When I do, will try to post. Usually what I do, because I'm curious what design actually looks like stitched out is to get some good quality muslin and stitch out design after design - as I'm either working on computer or sewing on my other machine. Pretty soon I have a stack of designs and I put them all into quilts. All different designs, all colors and it's a lot of fun.

I am going to add one picture in this posting of the first embroidered quilt I made - was for charity.

Nita in wonderfully COOL Florida
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jem39

Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to edit my first posting to delete the attachment - redundant.

Nita in COOL Florida

romanojg

Very nice quilt. If you go to emblibrary.com and I know that Viking both have alot on the best stablizers to use for different projects. They've actually tested them and sometimes show you the results of the test. The one thing that I have learned is that the sharp needles work best for FSL and heavy water stablizer. I save my scraps of stablizer and then when I need to double the thickness or do a repair on the stablizer while in the hoop; I spray a little of JT Spray adhesive (from Walmarts) and attach it. Works great and it helps save on stablizer cost. I've been doing FSL and wanted to use the cone thread since I didn't need it to have that shine that rayon has so after a lot of frustration and thread breaking I use a 14sharp needle with the Ultra Solvy water soluable stabilzer and then set my machine to go slower as an added measure of success. It turns out great and it is a lot cheaper to use that thread for things like that. I'm getting ready to make some battenburg lace doilies for my friend and I'll use that type of thread which will also hold up better. A month ago I wouldn't have done it because it was so frustrating. I'm new as well and I have taken a few classes from my LQS but such a long way to go. Any of you who are live close to Raleigh NC, they are having a sewing/quilting expo in June and they have some embroidery classes that sound like a good thing to have. I'm taking mostly quilting because now that my piecing is doing fairly well I want to start the quilting/binding process. I do plan on doing at least one embroidery class and hopefully 2; they have them on the software part as well. Check out some of the sites for info on the stablizers; it helped me alot.

Sophie2

I would be very interested in having the Embroidery chats all in one place. I do a lot of quilting and have just recently started incorporating embroidery with my quilting. Love doing both. They are very related so feel that a spot for embroidery would be great. Love this site and have learned so much and look forward to learning more.

LynnVT

I have Janome 9000, which does not allow downloads - have to buy the cards which are very expensive. Took me years to take the time to figure out how to do the writing, though it's not difficult when you focus on process. Use it for quilt labels now. Have used various designs but don't have any on hand to show. Would love to upgrade, but can't justify the expense. Have fun with yours!
Oh, and I often use the quilting designs on small quilts - they come out really nice, but larger capacity would be great. Bet you can do it on yours.

mermaid

"new to this thread"..I have the '02 AND the '03 ULT for 9 yrs and I just learned last yr to put my designs on floppies at the computer..!! Up to then I had only been saving them to the floppy from my machines. How dumb is that? Now I find transferring to the floppy is quicker than opening the software & writing to card. Do others with ULT's use their card or floppies more??

SingerSewer

This thread is amazing. I have had my embroidery machine for about three years and barely know how to use it. I love designs and have way too many - sort of like my fabric addiction. Anyway I have several types of stabilizer as well. Along with all of the stuff I have very little knowledge so enjoy very much learning.

My machine will use the card, flash drive or direct connection to the computer to transfer designs. I like the flash drive best. I bought the conversion software and some software to load the card. They cost too much and do no editing but will resize the designs (additional software purchase was required). I would like more information on software that does a little editing, conversion and not too expensive.

Also my machine is somewhat picky about thread. I found this great "deal" online and the thread did not work well at all. It shred so it was not usable. Not a good "deal" at all...just wasted money on that purchase.

Hope they will someday make a separate place for the embroidery. I use it with my quilting. I usually incorporate the embroidery style quilting in all of my smaller projects. Haven't got brave enough to try it on a quilt but use embroidered blocks in quilts.

Thank you for sharing your expertise.

Barbara Antman

I just bought a Babylock Sophia 2 and love it! I have been embrodering many tee shirts and baby clothes for the grand kids. I wasnt sure how I would like embrodery, and was mainly wanting fonts when I purchased this machine. As others have mentioned, the more I get into embrodery, the more I wish I had a machine that could do larger designs. Getting the right stabilizer is still confusing, especially on knits, but it is a learning process. Hope this thread will continue with lots of hints and tips! Thanks for starting it!

romanojg

Hi SingerSewer, with your thread did you try different needles. Sometimes that makes all of the difference even though I know that a lot of machines are picky. It has taken me from Christmas to this past month to get my machine to FSL using the polyester cone thread because the projects that I was attempting to do didn't warrant me using the more expensive thread. After a lot of hair pulling and reading and playing, I finally got it to work by changing the needles and slowing down the machine; not sure if I need it to be slow but it works so unless I'm in a hurry I'll not change it. I too have tons of designs downloaded and slowly getting them organized into folders. I'm lucky because Viking does supply you with a small software package with the machine that allows you to see what your designs are and do a few other things. I was surprised to hear on here how many machines come with nothing. There is a software that I'm going to download as soon as I finish setting up my new pc. It's called ERA Universal; it's free unless you want a copy of the CD then it's $14.95. It is supposed to do everything so you might want to check it out. I agree that it would be great to have our own place to go but it would be great if it was incorporated here since I use mine in quilting as well and I wouldn't have to go to another forum but either way; it would be great. I know that if you go to yahoo there are alot of groups up there; alot of them are based on what machine you have but Ihaven't went up there; yet.

pstrwife

No, I don't think you are off base. I would like that idea too. thank you for thinking of that.