Exploring the plentiful custom embroidery feature of the creative 3.0

A quilt’s not finished until you add the label! In yesterday’s post on QUILTsocial I showed you how I used the PFAFF creative 3.0 to finish a placemat using the sewing machine’s sequencing feature and built in stitches. In today’s post I’ll share my process for creating a custom embroidered label for a quilt.

The label I’m going to make is for the quilt that I started quilting earlier this week. I’m hoping to finish it really, really soon! One thing I do to keep me motivated to finish a project is to have the final elements ready to add at the very end. In the case of a quilt, those elements include a hanging sleeve, the binding, and a label.

Designing my label with the creative 3.0 gives me a great opportunity to share with you some of the embroidery designs that are included with the machine. I’ll also be able to show you how easy it is to use the machine to embroider and before I know it, that label will be done!

The creative 3.0 comes with two different size embroidery hoops and 157 embroidery designs.

The included embroidery designs are in a separate manual which allows you to browse through them away from the machine and plan out how you’re going to use them. That’s what I did! I like how the manual tells you the stitched out size in millimeters and in inches beside each design.

I chose embroidery designs to go with the tea party theme – some hearts arranged in a pattern and a mug that I could stitch out in fun colors.

I knew which details I wanted to include on my label – the name of the quilt, the years I started and finished, and my name. Now I needed to start working in the embroidery mode on the machine to create my label.

I placed the heart design first – the order in which you place the designs is the order that they’ll be stitched out by the machine.

There are embroidery fonts that are only accessible once inside the embroidery mode and these are what I chose to use for my label. There are sewing fonts – the ones I chose from when I did my sequencing on the placemat – that I could use as well. To use them I needed to save my design in a file then select it while in embroidery mode. The stylus is great for selecting the letters on the Color Touch Screen.

The photo below is of my label embroidery designs on the Color Touch Screen. There are a lot of features here and all I can say is that it’s a very intuitive process! To find out what an icon is for, you can press the “?” icon and then press the icon you’re wondering about and a pop up will explain its function.

You can see the ‘move’ function is highlighted – if I touch one of my designs with the stylus and get a green box around it, that’s the design that can be moved.

Beside the ‘move’ function is the ‘scale feature’ which I had to use to decrease the size of my quilt title. Can you see the rectangle around my designs on the left? That’s the hoop area and when I went to start stitching out my label a pop up told me that my design was outside of the hoop area. I used the scale function and the stylus to decrease the size of my title.

Then I was ready to stitch it out!

There are cross hairs on the Color Touch Screen to show the progress on the design – it’s helpful for moving to a specific stitch to restart after breaking a thread. Luckily this didn’t happen to me the whole time!

I tried out the monochrome button when the machine kept prompting me between each letter of my title to change the thread color. With the monochrome icon selected, the machine just kept stitching!

Unfortunately, I still had it on for my first mug too, so it stitched the hearts in the same color as the rest of the mug!

You can see the hearts on the second mug though. You might also notice that it’s the same mug but in a different direction. I used the mirror function and really like how it made the mugs frame the date on my label.

I was delighted when the machine beeped and this pop up appeared!

I wandered off for a minute and could still hear the sewing machine working on the embroidery, great way to tell if it’s still working… At the same time, I really like how I was able to make a custom label for my quilt using the built-in embroidery designs on the creative 3.0. I know I’ll treasure having this label on my quilt! It’s so appropriate.

The built-in embroidery designs I selected really made the label unique! I love the fonts and how easy it was to change threads when stitching it out.

The embroidery possibilities are plentiful on the creative 3.0. I think I see a few more custom embroidered labels in my future!