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2 features on THIS sewing machine make machine applique a breeze!

by Christine Baker

Yesterday on QUILTsocial I used THE Dream Machine 2 from Brother to embroider the names of our sea creatures onto a background fabric. Today I’ll use two of the amazing features on this great machine to make stitching them a breeze!

THE Dream Machine 2

THE Dream Machine 2

The fusible applique shapes that were cut with the ScanNCut2 are all fused and ready to be stitched!

Ready for stitching

Ready for stitching

Great feature 1 – pivot function

If you’ve ever done any machine applique, you’ll know how tedious it is to lift the presser foot each time you need to change the direction of your stitching, well, not anymore!!!

THE Dream Machine 2 has this amazing pivot function that will blow your mind! When activated, each time you stop sewing, the machine will drop the needle into the fabric and the foot will lift up allowing you to rotate your fabric in any direction for your next stitches! I can’t believe how amazing this is!

The first thing we need to do is adjust the pivoting height. This adjustment is found on settings screen 3 of THE Dream Machine 2.

Settings screen 3

Settings screen 3

I increased pivoting height slightly on the settings screen. This just means that the foot will rise up 7.5mm when I stop the machine.

Increasing pivoting height

Increasing pivoting height

Now I just need to push the pivot function button found on the lower left-hand side of the sewing screen.

Pivot function button

Pivot function button

Once this function is selected, the button becomes highlighted to show that the pivot function has been activated. To stop, I just push it again and the highlighting will disappear and it goes back to normal sewing.

Highlighted pivot button

Highlighted pivot button

Here’s a little video that shows the pivoting function in action:

Using the pivot function on THE Dream Machine 2 from Brother – YouTube

In this video, Christine shows how easy it is to machine applique when you use the pivot function on THE Dream Machine 2 from Brother. www.quiltsocial.com

Great feature 2 – width control

When doing machine applique, sometimes it’s necessary to get into a spot where stitches are too wide to fit. To make your applique look nice, you need to make stitches narrower in tight spots and then wider in more open spots. THE Dream Machine 2 has an awesome feature that makes this process super easy – it’s called the width control slider.

To activate this feature, enter the settings screens of THE Dream Machine 2 by selecting the settings folder at the top of any screen.

Select settings screen folder

Select settings screen folder

The width control setting is on page 1 of the settings screens. To activate, select the “on” button. It’ll now be highlighted blue.

Set width control to "on"

Set width control to “on”

The speed control slider button is now the WIDTH control slider! Sliding it to the farthest right gives the widest possible stitch.

Setting to widest stitch

Setting to widest stitch

Sliding it to the farthest left position will give the narrowest possible stitch (a straight line). Any stitches that can’t be adjusted with the slider will be grayed out on the selection screen.

The narrowest stitch

The narrowest stitch

The bottom left of the sewing screen on THE Dream Machine 2 shows the width indicator in an actual measurement as well as a picture of where the slider is positioned.

The width indicator

The width indicator

While stitching, the slider can easily be moved back and forth to get the desired stitch width. Here are three different stitches I tried on THE Dream Machine 2, stitched while sliding the width selection slider back and forth.

Changing widths

Changing widths

Now you can easily get into small spaces with your machine blanket stitch! Here’s a close up of the blanket stitching sewn using THE Dream Machine 2 from Brother.

Close up of blanket stitching

Close up of blanket stitching

Here’s the finished seal applique which was cut with the ScanNCut2. I can’t believe how easy it is to machine applique with this machine! I love doing hand blanket stitching and have never been a fan of doing it on a machine, but I think I’ve been converted!

The stitched seal

The stitched seal

I’ll work away at the blanket stitching on the rest of the sea creatures and tomorrow I’ll get this baby quilt all assembled – see you then!

This is part 4 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 3: THE Dream Machine 2: machine fusible applique and embroidery, the easy way

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