Help with embroidery
 

Trying my new old Designer 1. Having fun for the most part. But I'm trying to do this design, have tried three times, and it puckers and the outlining is not right! What am I doing wrong? Background is cotton, used cutaway stabilizer which I sprayed down with basting adhesive. Thought I had it hooped right. Anyone out there with this particular design on their Designer 1? Help!

Perhaps if you used a stabilizer that has an adhesive coating to stick your fabric to it - a wash away one. Then try to make sure your hoop is tight enough that the fabric can't be pulled through it. Also you might try a wash away stabilizer on top as well. Also, your stabilizer needs to be heavy enough to support the number of stitches in the pattern, so check that out too - should be on the label, I would think. Good luck. I am no expert but this is what I would to.

It could be the stabilizer was not heavy enough or you may not have has the hoop tight

I have a Designer 2. I agree about the tight top but I have not used any wash away stabilizers. I iron on freezer paper to the back of the design and then place the stabilizer. You might also consider changing your needle.

if the design is very dense, you will get puckering no matter how good your stabilizer is. do you have the capability of reducing the density with your machine? the design looks pretty dense to me.

I like to use the sticky back-wash away stabilizer. Hoop the stabilizer then stick the fabric to it. I don't have any problems that way.

I stitched out this design with my D1, but it was several years ago. I put it on a cotton kitchen towel and used a couple of layers of tear away stabilizer. It is a dense design, but not overly so. The D1 definitely has a hooping sweet spot - not too tight, not too loose. My D1 is one of the older ones - it uses the floppy drive!

It looks to me like there is an alignment issue - did the embroidery arm get bumped or brush up against something?

I have found that if you stretch your fabric too much it will cause puckering when you take it out of the hoop. Someone mentioned if the hoop got bumped as it looks like the entire design is off from the outline part.

Also when I have a design that just didn't quite fill in the outline I pull out my handy, dandy fabric pens to fill in the area. Its not a perfect solution but it works when nothing else does.

yes hooping with fabric stretched causes puckering and sometimes when the designs are created the outlines just may not be perfect no matter what you do.

Starch the fabric heavily. don't stretch it when you hoop it and float another piece of stabilizer under the hoop.
My personal thought is that this design may be too dense for quilting cotton. You can probably get it to stitch out without puckers but it will be like having a piece of cement in the middle of your fabric. Less dense designs work best on lighter weight fabric, denser designs work well on heavier ones. In one of the first classes I had with my embroidery machine, the instructor told us that selecting a design with appropriate density for the project was one of the most important things to learn.