9 brilliant features of the Husqvarna Viking Designer Brilliance 80

I’m so excited to be back! This week, I’ll be working with the Husqvarna Viking Designer Brilliance 80 and celebrating Christmas in July!

Husqvarna Viking Designer Brilliance 80 sewing machine

I was chatting with a friend the other day and she’s working on a Christmas exchange, where they have to make items for their swap partner. She’s already completed three of the six projects! It’s never too early to get started on gifts for Christmas. This week, I’ll be sharing lots of ideas that you can use to make gifts for family and friends.

The other thing that’s very important is to start compiling a personal Christmas list of things that we need for our studios and our embroidery/sewing machines. I’ll be providing some items that would be perfect to add to your list!

When I started to seriously sew and quilt over 20 years ago, I bought myself a present. I bought a top of the line Husqvarna Viking embroidery machine. While it was a lot of money for a newbie quilter, I wanted the ability to personalize items with machine embroidery.

In particular, I wanted to add lettering and words. Twenty years and several embroidery machines later, I still love being able to personalize things, whether it’s a quilt label, a quilt, gifts, garments, or anything else that needs to be personalized.

My focus this week is how to personalize ready-made items, or items made from scratch – making items more personal.

Let’s get started.

As you’ve probably guessed, the Designer Brilliance 80 is not only a great sewing machine, but it’s a fantastic embroidery machine.

Husqvarna Viking Designer Brilliance 80 with embroidery unit attached

9 favorite features

Here are some of the top features that I love about the Designer Brilliance 80 and that I would be hard-pressed to do without.

The JoyOS Advisor

This feature will blow you away. First off, you notice how large the screen is. This is a capacitive touch screen, meaning it works just like your smartphone or tablet. No need to use a stylus. The JoyOS Advisor contains a lot of information including tutorials for using the exclusive stitch techniques, the built-in User’s Guide, a stabilizer guide, the Quick Help to help identify the buttons on the screen. You can also select your sewing technique and fabric choices and the JoyOS Advisor sets up the appropriate stitch and tension. I feel like my Home Ec teacher is beside me when I use the JoyOS Advisor!

The JoyOS Advisor screen on the Designer Brilliance 80

Wi-Fi connectivity

This allows me to connect the Designer Brilliance 80 to the internet. I can access the mySewnet blog, store files in the mySewnet cloud, send files between my Wi-Fi enabled machines, and connect to the Husqvarna Viking apps. You can find out more information by checking out this blog post.

deLuxe Stitch System

The Designer Brilliance 80 has two thread delivery systems. The traditional thread tension system can sometimes cause issues with some of the more delicate threads. The deLuxe Stitch System has a thread portioning system that works brilliantly for delicate threads. This video will give you more details.

Exclusive Stitch Techniques

There are some beautiful built-in stitch techniques that are fabulous for embellishing projects. You’ll find tutorials for these stitch techniques in the JoyOS Advisor. They are gorgeous. Here’s an example of a couple of the sequin stitches. Imagine how quick it would be to apply sequins to a project when you don’t have to hand stitch them in place.

Columns of machine stitched sequin stitches embroidered on using the Husqvarna Viking Designer Brilliance 80. So easy to make!

Exclusive Sensor System

There’s no presser foot lever on the Designer Brilliance 80. The presser foot automatically lowers when you start to sew. You can raise and lower it manually, but when you have your hands positioned just so with your work, it’s so wonderful to lower the presser foot with a tap of the foot control. Sensor Foot Lift, Sensor Foot Pivot, and Sensor Foot Pressure are all part of this Exclusive Sensor System. I’d be totally lost without this system. It’s like having a third hand at the sewing machine.

There are loads of other features and functions and well – I don’t have time to delve into all of them today, but you’ll want to check out Design Positioning – which is a brilliant system for hooping your project. You can personalize the machine and so much more. Here’s a link to the Features and Benefits so you can get all the details.

User Guides

There’s a hard copy of the User’s Guide which is also built into the sewing machine! The hard copy of the Sampler Booklet provides a picture and the stitch out information for all of the 565 + embroidery designs that are built-in. There are 30 different embroidery techniques as well.

I strongly suggest that you sit down with both books and browse through them. Follow along with the sewing machine in front of you. Touch all the buttons. Get familiar with all the functions.

If you don’t, then you’re not really getting the full experience with the Designer Brilliance 80 and that would be a shame since it can do so much.

The Sampler Booklet and the User’s Guide

Lettering

Stitching out lettering is my favorite thing to do. You can literally personalize anything and I’ll walk you through some of those projects and ideas later this week.

There are two types of lettering built into the Designer Brilliance 80. There are five alphabet fonts, which you can stitch out in sewing mode or in embroidery mode.

There are also eight embroidery fonts that can only be stitched out in embroidery mode. Each one comes in several sizes and you’ll find examples of these fonts in the back of the Sampler Booklet.

Embroidery fonts

If you’re a visual person like myself, then I would suggest that you stitch out a small sample of all the letters to give you an idea of the style and the size.

The alphabet fonts and the embroidery fonts are easy to access from the menu on the main screen. They are all included in the A tab. It’s easy to scroll through the styles and sizes and choose the one that you want.

The font menu

The Shopping List

OK – so Item 1 to add to your Christmas list – Husqvarna Viking Designer Brilliance 80. You will love it!

PREMIER +2 Software for machine embroidery

If you feel that eight embroidery fonts aren’t enough for you, you can get access to many more fonts in the Premier +2 Software. There are three levels of the software – Embroidery, Extra, and Ultra and if you start with the Embroidery level, there’s an upgrade path to the Extra and Ultra.

The higher the level of software, the more fonts you have access to, but I have to say that the number available in the PREMIER +2 Embroidery package is pretty substantial. In addition to the many fonts, you have the option to play with the style, the size, the fill pattern and so much more.

Using the QuickFont feature in the software also allows you to bring in any TruFont and create your own embroidery font.

Let’s not forget the ExpressMonogram Wizard which gives you the option to make monograms in a huge number of styles, sizes, and shapes.

The photo is just a small sampling of the available embroidery fonts through the ExpressMonogram Wiard. I’ll be chatting more about the Express Monogram Wizard tomorrow.

So the sky is the limit with fonts.

Fonts available in the Premier +2 Embroidery software

If you want more fonts, then you could add the Premier +2 software to your Christmas list. Just saying…..

Wi-Fi Connectivity

I mentioned this already, but one feature that I love about the Husqvarna Viking Designer Brilliance 80 is the fact that it’s connected to the Wi-Fi and thus I have access to my mySewnet account.

All the files that I have saved in the cloud are now available to me on the Designer Brilliance 80.

Or as I create new files or want to share files, I can send them through the cloud. This is huge – no need to find a USB or cables – just hit send. You gotta love that.

So the first thing I do with any sewing or embroidery machine that has the Wi-Fi connectivity is to log in. Then all my files are there!

I’ll be showing you some more of this later this week.

The mySewnet screen option on the Husqvarna Viking Designer Brilliance 80

Not only does the Husqvarna Viking Designer Brilliance 80 have a load of features and functions, but it makes the sewing and machine embroidery experience so EASY and which translates to spending less time being frustrated and more time creating.

That’s it for today. Tomorrow, I’ll put lettering on towels and I’ve got some great tips to share with you.

Have a great day!

Ciao!

This is part 1 of 5 in this series

Go to part 2: 6 key tips for embroidering on terry cloth using an embroidery machine

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