Easy design placement and 9mm decorative stitches: HV Designer EPIC 2

Isn’t this an exciting week? How did you like the Multi-Function Foot Control, Ribbon Embroidery Attachment, and Integrated Dual Feed technology from yesterday? What great features!

I wish I could go through all the amazing features and functions of the Husqvarna Viking Designer EPIC 2, but there isn’t time. Today, I’m looking at two more great features – perfect design placement and 9mm decorative stitches.

We all learned to hoop at some point in our machine embroidery journey. We’ve been taught all kinds of tricks to get those designs placed exactly where we want them to be. But on second thought, the way we’ve been doing this placement in the past was almost like hooping in the dark! We marked our fabric, tried to hoop as accurately as we could and hoped for the best.

Well, we don’t have to worry about that anymore. With Design Placement, the design will be placed in the EXACT spot every time, even if we’re bad at hooping fabric.

Start the preparation process as usual. Load the embroidery design onto the LARGE screen of the Designer EPIC 2. This will determine the hoop size needed for that design. Next up is to hoop the fabric with the appropriate stabilizer.

If you want to mark your fabric as part of that process, go ahead. In the case of my quilt block, I didn’t need to mark any lines as I used the seam lines as a guide, but if you have a large open area, you might want to place some marks to help as a guide.

Now open the mySewMonitor app on a tablet or smartphone and go to the Design Placement tab. This will activate the camera on the smart device.

Simply take a picture of the hooped fabric making sure to get the entire hoop in the photo. A pop-up menu will let me select the hoop size. The photo doesn’t need a perfect angle as I’ll be able to adjust the corners of the hooped fabric photo to the virtual corners of the hoop in the photo.

Oh my – this just opens up a whole lot of creative possibilities. You can’t beat that for accuracy.

NOTE: I added this photo to help clarify the process as my quilt block is long finished! I hooped a piece of fabric for demo purposes. 

Once I have the appropriate hoop size selected and the corners of the display window are matched with the virtual corners of the hoop in the photo, I can use the paper airplane at the bottom of the screen to send the photo to the Designer EPIC 2.

Yep – it doesn’t get any easier than that.

It’s important to note the Designer EPIC 2 has to be connected to the Wi-Fi and it has to be logged into your mySewnet Cloud account for the Designer EPIC 2 to receive the file. The same thing with the smartphone – it needs access to your mySewnet Cloud account to send the file.

The Designer EPIC 2 will verify if it’s OK to receive an external file from my device. In this case, that’s my smartphone.

You’ll notice in the photo above, my embroidery design (LUCILLE) is already loaded onto the screen. I could load it before or after, but if I load it before, I know exactly which hoop I need.

Now you can see the background on the screen has changed to exactly what appears in my hoop.

Really? The first time I did this, I was amazed. OK – even the tenth time I did this, I’m still amazed! For those of us who aren’t experts at hooping, this is brilliant.

You’ll notice my embroidery design isn’t centered (up and down, nor left and right) in the open area between the seams.

It’s a simple matter to tweak the placement of the embroidery design using all the embroidery edit commands on the Edit screen of the Designer EPIC 2. I can move, rotate by as small as 1° increments, change the scale by up to 20%, mirror the design and a whole lot more.

Best of all, I can see exactly how it will appear on my quilt block. Oh my – this is amazing!

Once I was happy with the placement of the embroidery design, I hit GO and moved into the stitch-out mode. The embroidery design is stitched onto my quilt block exactly where I wanted it to be.

Imagine how easy it will be to accurately position an embroidery design on anything. I’ll hoop the garment more or less where I want the design to be stitched and now I get the chance to make sure the design is straight and centered.

This feature will make everyone an embroiderer extraordinaire. I’ve got to find more things I want to experiment with.

Here’s something else super exciting. The standard decorative stitches are now 9mm wide. This includes zigzag stitches.

The stitches haven’t just been widened, but they’ve been proportionally changed to produce an appealing stitch and in some cases, the detail of some stitches is much clearer because of the larger width.

In this stitch-out, you can see a comparison between the 6mm, 7mm, and 9mm stitches.

I’m all about flexibility and the wider stitches will be awesome!

In conjunction with the wider stitches and the new Integrated Dual Feed (IDF) technology, the presser feet have been modified to accommodate both changes.

The new A foot is huge compared to the older model. And, there’s a small 9 engraved on the foot.

All the included feet with the Designer EPIC 2 have been modified either for the larger stitch width or the Integrated Dual Feed. Specialty feet can still be used on the Designer EPIC 2. Each time I select a stitch with a potential width of 9mm, I’ll get a pop-up message reminding me to verify if I’m using the appropriate presser foot. I can turn this pop-up message off if I don’t want to see it.

Personally, I like the reminder.

That’s two more great features/functions of the Husqvarna Viking Designer EPIC 2. I can’t believe how many new or upgraded features and functions are available on this amazing sewing/embroidery machine.

Tomorrow, I’ll explore the mySewnet ecosystem. While it may seem complicated, I’ll try to put a simple spin on it.

Have a great day!

Ciao!