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Embroidering a quilt label with the PFAFF Creative 4.5

Embroidering a quilt label with the PFAFF Creative 4.5

by Sarah Vanderburgh

The PFAFF Creative 4.5 is ultimately an embroidery machine. While it does all of the little things this quilter wants it to do amazingly well, it also led me to experiment with embroidery for the first time!

Quick. As a quilter what’s the first thing you think of to make with an embroidery machine?!

A *quilt label* of course!

Embroidery Unit on PFAFF Creative 4.5

Embroidery Unit on PFAFF Creative 4.5

Creating Stitches with Sewing Programs

A tapered, repeated stitch

A tapered, repeated stitch

There are several sewing programs in the PFAFF Creative 4.5 to help you create unique stitches. You use these programs in the sewing mode. I used the tapering program and the single stitch program to create the design for the border of my quilt label.

Taper angle choices popup

Taper angle choices popup

“Tapering increases or decreases the width of the stitch during sewing to create symmetrical or asymmetrical tapers.” (from the awesome included manual.)

You could spend a lot of time exploring the options in this machine!

Personal Stitches File

Personal Stitches File

Once you’ve created stitches you like, you can save them into personal files to use again. You can add any stitch to these files which makes it conveniently quick to continue work on a project without spending a lot of time recreating stitches.

Stitch conversion popup

Stitch conversion popup

When you select one of your designed stitches in embroidery mode it gets converted to a single embroidery stitch. Now you can move it around the screen and duplicate it too.

PFAFF stylus

PFAFF stylus

I found using the included stylus made moving the design around on the Color Touch Screen easier than trying to use my finger. The stylus came in handy when selecting letters too.

Adding Words

Embroidery fonts

Embroidery fonts

In the embroidery mode you can see all of the fonts available on the Creative 4.5. The first three in the left column and the first two in the right are available as stitches in the sewing mode too.

You can design a variety of quilt labels with all of these different fonts!

Design to Stitch Out

Design to Stitch Out

This photo shows the progress of the machine on the embroidery. I’m a little ahead of myself here but I wanted to show you the detailed screen information. The large cross shows where the needle is in the design. The numbers in the highlighted green box let you know the position and color of thread being used. Yes, you can program the thread colors for each section – each letter even! The little green half circle is the speed control for the embroidery. Let’s just say that full speed intimidated this quilter! I had to slow down the machine a bit so I could watch it in action 🙂

Okay. So that’s making the design. A few more photos to show getting the machine and fabric ready!

Embroidery Unit

The embroidery unit bag

The embroidery unit bag

The embroidery unit came in its own box which included this travel bag. I store the unit in it when not in use – you can see how big it is!

Hoops stored in bottom of bag

Hoops stored in bottom of bag

Some of the packing material from the box gets transferred into the bag to store the hoops as well. This unit comes with three sizes of embroidery hoops.

Dynamic Spring Foot

Dynamic Spring Foot

Dynamic Spring Foot

Select the embroidery stitch out option in the task bar menu and the machine will tell you to attach the embroidery unit. It will also tell you to put on the Dynamic Spring Foot. Again, the trusty manual is your best friend here!

Hooping the Fabric

Fabric and stabilizer in hoop

Fabric and stabilizer in hoop

It’s easy to click open the hoop and put in the fabric with stabilizer underneath. One more click to clip in the top part of the hoop. The Color Touch Screen shows to use the 120 x 120 hoop for my design. Of course I couldn’t use ordinary white fabric to play – I chose pink instead!

Hoop attached to embroidery unit

Hoop attached to embroidery unit

Design being stitched out

Design being stitched out

Now it’s time to use the Start Stitch button – the one beside the presser feet buttons on the front panel. I will divulge that it took me longer than necessary to figure this out – what a newbie! Remember, manual = bff!

The machine creates the design in the order it was created. Threads are automatically snipped on the long stitches.

Design finished

Design finished

The design is finished! You can see that the threads weren’t snipped between the letters so I’ll carefully cut them with some small scissors. Then I’ll cut the label to my desired size.

My first embroidered quilt label is a success! Not too bad for my first time using the PFAFF Creative 4.5 embroidery machine. I already started planning to use different designs to make labels that coordinate with my quilts – Halloween, Christmas, hearts, tulips! The options are limitless, too bad my quilting time isn’t!

This is part 4 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 3:  Perfect presser feet to make a zippered case

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6 comments

Noora November 23, 2021 - 5:50 am

Oh what a nice bag you got.
Please advise me where I can buy one for machine and embroidery unit.
Thankd

Reply
Linda February 25, 2020 - 2:06 pm

Need to find out how to get usb designs to show up on screen of machine for not much if any info on using the usb. I have the 4.5

Reply
Cecil November 1, 2018 - 12:50 pm

Hi did you ever do a part 5? If so it is not liked here and I love to find out more!! Im on the fence about buying it as I’m a beginner but the potential to personalize is what intrigues me!

Reply
Sarah Vanderburgh November 1, 2018 - 2:49 pm

Hi Cecil,
I’m so glad you are exploring my posts about the PFAFF Creative 4.5. Here is the link to my final post of the week where I used the Shape Creator feature: https://quiltsocial.com/add-charm-to-fabric-with-the-basic-shape-creator/

Reply
Pauline Perry March 2, 2016 - 3:19 pm

What a great idea to make a quilt label using embroidery as a border – I feel quite dim for not having thought of that myself! Brilliant.

Reply
Sarah Vanderburgh March 2, 2016 - 9:03 pm

Thanks Pauline! It wasn’t all my own idea and I hope you try it out too!

Reply

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