Embroidery screen workflow of the Brother Luminaire Innov-is XP1

Watching this “stitch out” on screen (I chose high-speed, by the way; there are 3 speeds to choose from), I affirmed my thread color choices – I’ll substitute white for the red and use royal blue in place of the black thread. And… back to that red “no-go” button… Why, oh whyyyy is it still red??? Oh, thank you – I was hoping you’d ask, so I could show you this: when the start button is red, and you don’t know why, just push it. The screen will tell you what’s needed to give the go-ahead! Sometimes you need to push it more than once; there may be several instructions to follow, but you won’t have to guess. I love it!

So it turns out, after all that playing, I still haven’t actually “Set” my design. The Luminaire told me first to lower the presser foot with the handy-dandy button on the machine frame, and when the button was still red after doing that, pressing it again told me to “Finish editing the design”. Turns out it’s still in a deciding kinda mode.

So, after touching “OK”, and “Set”, I’m on a new screen where I can edit the design in numerous ways – you can see these screens below. Look at the information offered on screen: the magnification factor, which hoops are suitable, and the overall design size, as well as the programmed colors. I love being kept informed! There are also a ton of editing tools, which I’ll play with tomorrow, but for now I just wanted to see how this beauty stitches. (However, for you overachievers in the audience, how many of those tool icons can you figure out?)

Since I’m not doing any edits, I’m moving right along to the Embroidery screen by touching the Embroidery button in the bottom right…where I get even more information specifically pertaining to the stitching process. By the way… I have a green light – it’s finally ready to stitch. It’s actually a quick process, but I lingered on explorations and explanations. Hey, it’s our hobby – what’s our hurry, right?

The last thing I want to do before beginning to stitch is to turn on the baste function to secure the fabric to the stabilizer. It’s not necessary for this design, but I love to use it when I’m floating fabric on the stabilizer (Shhh… don’t tell anyone I said that – but notice I didn’t say floating the stabilizer under the fabric. In my book that’s a no-no!). When I use water-soluble stabilizer on top, I also like to use this function to baste it in place. See the frame around my design in the pic below? That’ll stitch just beyond my design (I can control how much), and that smart little stitch just pushed itself to the front of the line so it can sew first (after all, stitching it last is kinda like closing the barn door after the horse got out, right?).

So, finally, finally! It’s truly ready…

Set…

Go!

Oh, let me tell you – it just purrs – so smooth and so quiet. Furthermore, as my teenage daughter with a driver’s learner’s permit (gulp!) likes to say, it really goes “shoom”. Even at the Luminaire’s top speed of 1050 stitches per minute, it hums a pleasant working sound. It even sings a short jingle when the design is done. Just look at this embroidery – isn’t it gorgeous?

As I mentioned, getting to this stage seemed to take a long time (you should have seen how long it took me. I don’t get distracted easily, but – hey, what does this button do?). Oops, sorry what was I saying? Oh, yeah…it’s not as long a process as I made it out to be: in reality, I selected and Set design, bi-passed editing, and went straight to the Embroidery screen. I added a baste stitch and hit go.

Tomorrow, however, I’ll take even more time and play with some the Luminaire‘s embroidery editing tools as I compile a design using built-ins, text, and more. I can’t tell you what more until tomorrow – that would just spoil the surprise, now, wouldn’t it?