Today I’m going to share one more of the embroidery features in the PFAFF Creative 4.5. The quilter in me thoroughly enjoyed playing with the Basic Shape Creator to design my own charm square.
Designed 5″ charm square
The machine and embroidery stitches manuals
If you’ve followed along with my posts this week, then you’ve heard me refer to the manual more than once! This machine comes with two – one is the owner’s manual and the second features beautiful photos of the available embroidery stitches with stitch numbers and color thread details.
Using the Basic Shape Creator is explained with step by step instructions in the owner’s manual. I followed the directions once, then changed out the stitch and shape to create my own.
Select a stitch
In embroidery mode, select a stitch to design the shape with Basic Shape Creator – the button to touch to get into the Shape Creator is the one with butterflies in a curve in the right side menu.
Select a shape
Next select the shape you want to create with your stitch. The arrow on the image shows which direction the needle will go around the shape as it embroiders.
See the calculator icon?
calculator popup
The calculator popup lets you touch the number of times you want the stitch repeated in the shape. Don’t worry if you get it wrong the first time – there’s a plus and minus sign for you to change the number and see the results to make sure you like it before you stitch it out.
Basic shape created
This is how the shape that I created looked on the Color Touch Screen. The design needed to be in the space between the black square guides. The machine will let you know if your design won’t fit. 😉
Now it’s time to stitch it out!
Stitching out the design
Embroidery trimmed to 5″ square
When the design was finished I cut the joining threads between the stitches and trimmed the fabric to a 5″ charm.
Embroidered charm in placemat
Then I decided to use the charm and make a placemat!
I used my free Charmed placemat pattern and cut stash pieces to the sizes I need. Notice I used up the rest of the selvage fabric I created earlier this week? I love projects that let me try out new techniques and use up my stash!
Designing my own charms with the embroidery stitches available with the PFAFF Creative 4.5 has opened my mind to the creative possibilities of combining quilting and embroidery.
I hope you have been inspired to create new things this week!
This is part 5 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 4: Embroidering a quilt label with the PFAFF Creative 4.5
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