15 easy steps to machine embroidery

Today, we’re going to check out the embroidery capabilities of the Husqvarna Viking Designer Jade | 35. The Jade | 35 is an entry level embroidery machine. I wasn’t sure what to expect so I grabbed the User’s Guide, the embroidery unit and jumped right in. All you need are 15 easy steps to beautiful machine embroidery.

Of course, I’m not going to tell you what happened. Nope – you have to read all the way to the end to find out.

Let’s have a look.

Connect the Embroidery Unit to the sewing machine. Just slide off the accessory tray and slide the embroidery unit on until it clicks into place.

There are 70 designs and 1 embroidery font (three sizes) included on the USB embroidery stick that comes with the Designer Jade | 35. You simply plug the USB embroidery stick into the USB port and you can load any of the designs or the embroidery font into the Embroidery Mode.

There is a .pdf file on the USB embroidery stick of the sampler book with all the designs and all the information (like size, colors, number of stitches in the design) needed to stitch them out. Browse through that sampler book to help decide which designs you’d like to use.

I should mention that you can download Complimentary Embroidery Intro Software for the PC from the Husqvarna web site. This will allow you to add more fonts, designs, etc.

Next up is to attach the Embroidery/Darning Foot U.

Using a high quality embroidery needle such as the Inspira brand shown in the picture below will make machine embroidery a whole lot easier. The sewing machine will be stitching at a pretty fast speed and you want a good embroidery needle to prevent thread fraying and breakage.

You’ve had a chance to browse the sampler book with all the designs and hopefully you’ve found one you’d like to try. I must admit that I had to try more than one. They were all nice and I wanted to see them all stitched out, but there wasn’t time. So I chose one to get started.

Once you know the number of the design that you want, it’s easy to scroll through the menus using the arrow buttons on the function panel.

The design selected will appear on the screen. Keep in mind that the Designer Jade | 35 is an entry level embroidery machine so you don’t get the pretty picture that you would on a higher end embroidery machine. But the Designer Jade | 35 has the same information that you’d see on the higher end machine so I think we can deal with a basic picture!

In the screen shot below, you can see the hoop size in the top right hand corner. The Designer Jade | 35 automatically picks the smallest hoop possible to stitch the designs.

Next you see the stitch count (number of stitches in the design) and this number changes as the embroidery is being stitched so you know how far along the stitching is.

The number of thread colors and how many stitches in each is also displayed. The first color (of three) is listed and there are 8304 stitches in that first color.

The speed is at maximum – we see that from the five bars on the left. The size of the design in width and height is next.

The last number in the bottom right hand corner tells us which view we’re in – the Edit View (number 1) or the Stitch-Out View (number 2)

In the embroidery mode, you can make a number of changes to the design chosen. You can change the height and the width (there are restrictions – you can only modify those dimensions by a certain percentage). You can rotate the designs, you can mirror them, and you move them around within the hoop space.

I was very surprised at the number of options available for modifying the placement/look of the designs. To keep it simple, I select a design and simply stitch it out. No need to get fancy on my first try.

Please note that in order to make changes to the actual design, you would need software for those changes and it’s far beyond my knowledge level. The norm is to pick a design that you like, and then change the placement, rotate, change thread color, etc. That’s my style – EASY!

Because machine embroidery is very dense stitching, you need to use bobbin weight thread in the bobbin. I just grabbed some pre-wound bobbins that I use for machine embroidery and popped one in. It worked perfectly.

The Designer Jade | 35 is smart. It knows if you don’t attach a hoop that matches the size selected on the design display. Remember that the Designer Jade | 35 chooses the smallest hoop size necessary for stitching out the design. In this case, that was a 120 x 120 hoop. The Designer Jade | 35 comes with a 240 by 150 hoop, so I had to change the hoop size using the Hoop Options on the function panel.

See how the screen changed in the picture below because the hoop is much larger. If I wanted to move that design around, I have loads of room to move it. In the previous screen, there was no room. The box around the design shows you the embroidery area available for that particular hoop. Using a larger hoop gives you a bit more flexibility in the event that you didn’t hoop your fabric exactly where it should have been hooped.

In the shot below, some of the numbers are blurred because the sewing machine was in the process of stitching out the design when I took the photo.

Perhaps at some point, I’d remember what size each of my embroidery hoops are, but that would be asking a lot!

Fortunately all the embroidery hoops come with the dimensions engraved on them so it’s easy to select the hoop size in the embroidery mode to match the hoop that you’ll use.

Remember I said you need to have two layers of stabilizer. I like to hoop one of the layers when I hoop my fabric. The second layer gets slipped underneath the hoop just before I hit the START/STOP button.

I’m not going to go into details on actually hooping the fabric, but it’s easy, especially with the Retaining Screw and the Quick Release on this hoop. They’re positioned in the lower right of the hoop pictured above.

The biggest trick to hooping is to get the hoop positioned so the design will stitch where you want. As mentioned above, if you use a slightly bigger hoop, you’ve a bit more flexibility to move that design around to get it exactly where you want.

Now a more experienced machine embroidery person would likely be shocked at that – but I like flexibility and I’m not the best at hooping, although I’m not bad! Like anything – the more you hoop, the better you get.

To make the machine embroidery super easy – I would just hoop and stitch out the designs on plain fabric, then cut out the design after it is stitched.

Once you’re comfortable with the hooping process – then you can get into hooping and stitching designs on ready made garments, quilt blocks or whatever. That requires much more precision in the hooping process.

It’s easy to slip that hoop onto the embroidery unit. It snaps into place.

Did you think machine embroidery was a big mystery? Well hopefully you’re still with me and you can see that there isn’t really anything difficult about machine embroidery. Nothing has been hard – OK – the hooping is probably the worst part! But we’re hooping a big piece of fabric – that makes that part easy!

This is such a cool feature. If you’re working on a plain piece of fabric, it’s not so important. But let’s say that you have a garment in the hoop and you want the design to be in a particular spot, by using the Corner Check button on the function panel, the hoop will move around to each of the four corners of the design area and the center. You can easily tell whether your design is going to be stitched in the right spot or not – BEFORE you start to stitch.

I used it and oh boy – was I way off on one design. Needless to say, I had to re-hoop and I had to choose another design that was smaller.

Now is the time to add that second layer of stabilizer under your design. Your hoop is attached to the embroidery unit. It’s easy to slip that second layer of stabilizer underneath the hoop which contains your fabric and the first layer of stabilizer.

At this point, you can use the FIX button (a number of function buttons do different functions when the Designer Jade | 35 is in embroidery mode). It’ll run a line of basting stitches around the perimeter of the design. This will help to stabilize all the layers and keep that second loose layer of stabilizer from shifting. An excellent feature to use.

Remember all this is on an entry level embroidery machine. Pretty impressive!!!!

Now the fun starts – well we get to sit back and watch the embroidery machine as it stitches out the design.

Hit the START/STOP button and the machine will stitch a couple of stitches, then give you a message on the graphic display to cut the loose thread end.

Clip that thread away (this happens after every thread color change), hit START/STOP again and the sewing machine will continue stitching.

The Designer Jade | 35 will stop when it’s time to change the thread color. You can follow the colors chosen for the design or make up your own.

And once the design is finished, you can remove the hoop from the embroidery unit and admire it. I LOVE the design.

I couldn’t stop with just one design. No – I had to do several and none of these were even for my project. Now I do have to find a project where I can use these gorgeous embroidery designs.

Both of these designs come with the Husqvarna Viking Designer Jade | 35!

And there you have it. The basic steps to machine embroidery.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from an entry level embroidery machine. I’ve used higher end embroidery machines and I thought I might be disappointed. WOW WOW WOW – I’m truly impressed. The quality of the stitches, the flexibility for editing, the designs included – were all very impressive.

If you want to dabble in embroidery, but don’t want to pay the higher price of a ‘bells and whistles’ embroidery machine – this is the perfect embroidery machine. There wasn’t anything that I couldn’t do for general embroidery. And the Husqvarna Viking Designer Jade | 35 sews like a dream as well. It only took 15 easy steps to machine embroidery!

Tomorrow – I’m going to combine the embroidery (different designs and the embroidery font), some applique and some decorative stitches into one project. Have a great day! Ciao!