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Embroidery screen workflow of the Brother Luminaire Innov-is XP1

by Liana Kirkey

Thanks for joining me again today as I continue to explore the Brother Luminaire Innov-is XP1 embroidery features. I’m so glad you’re back because now is when the fun stuff begins! I’ll start with a bit of a warning though – I’ll start with the basics, and work up to some of the more “advanced” features over the next couple of days. Gotta pace ourselves, y’know, or the excitement could get overwhelming!

In yesterday’s post I admired the outside of the machine, the cool thread stand, and the huge 10⅝” x 16” embroidery area. You’ve all heard it said that beauty comes from within, and I touched on the more than 1100 built-in embroidery designs. But… the elegant simplicity of the Luminaire hides so many practical and fun tools and toys to play with. Today’s plan is to discuss the workflow of the embroidery screens, from design selection to stitch-out.

I did stabilize and hoop some fabric, threaded up, and poked around on screen to find a design, at which point my Luminaire gave me a red no-go button instead of the expected green “go” button. Here’s where I left off yesterday:

The Brother Luminaire is almost ready to start stitching.

So now, let me back up and share what I did to get to that point… and why I’m not ready to stitch. From the Luminaire’s home screen, I selected “Embroidery”, then the standard design menu, and then I perused the designs in the categorized tabbed menus until I found a pretty, two-colored feather design that suited the hoop size I’d loaded. But…even though I can see the design on my screen, this is just a preview, it’s not ready for stitching. I can view this preview even larger by touching the icon just below the home button – see it there in the top right corner of the last window?

The Luminaire’s main design selection menu, shown in sequential order, left to right.

By touching the preview button, I can see the design in my selected hoop, or I can magnify the design to fill the screen. That’s not even the coolest part – with the preview simulator, I can even watch it stitch out on screen! Wanna watch a movie with me? Grab your popcorn and check this out:

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.

The Brother Luminaire offers guidance, making the process easy!

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?)

The Brother Luminaire’s Edit screen hides some very cool tools…

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?).

The Brother Luminaire’s baste function activated on the embroidery screen.

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?

A mere drop in the bucket: a single example of a built-in Brother Luminaire embroidery design.

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?

This is part 2 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 1: Exploring the vast embroidery capabilities of the Brother Luminaire XP1

Go to part 3: Playing with the Brother Luminaire embroidery editing tools

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8 comments

Shann August 1, 2019 - 10:04 am

Very beautiful.!

Reply
Liana Kirkey September 9, 2019 - 8:40 am

Thanks, Shann! There are some gorgeous designs built-in – the biggest challenge was making the selection!

Reply
Brenda West August 1, 2019 - 7:22 am

Great information. Someday – would be wonderful to have a machine like this to do such beautiful designs. Thanks

Reply
Liana Kirkey September 9, 2019 - 8:42 am

Hey, Brenda – While the Luminaire is definitely Brother’s creme-de-la-creme, for the most part they have maintained a consistent workflow on all of their embroidery machines. Check out their line-up; you are sure to find something that suits your embroidery needs!

Reply
shoshana August 1, 2019 - 12:43 am

this feather is so beautiful!

Reply
Liana Kirkey September 9, 2019 - 8:43 am

Hi, Shoshana – it sure is. I’ve said it before, and I know it’ll get said again – the hardest part is often settling on just one design – and which one!

Reply
Jackie Wisherd July 31, 2019 - 9:29 pm

Very beautiful embroidery work. I have always enjoyed doing hand embroidery and know I would like doing this had I the proper tools to do so.

Reply
Liana Kirkey September 9, 2019 - 8:51 am

Hi, Jackie – hand-embroidery is a painstaking, time-consuming labour of love, and for those who appreciate that, it becomes a priceless treasure. You are right – you probably would also enjoy the nearly immediate gratification from machine embroidery, but it does not replace the heart and soul you put into your hand work.

Reply

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