FREE Quilting Patterns, Tutorials, Magazine

First steps to embroidering a miniature quilt on THE Dream Machine 2

First steps to embroidering a miniature quilt on THE Dream Machine 2

by Christine Baker

This week on QUILTsocial I’m once again using THE Dream Machine 2 from Brother and BOY have I been having fun with this machine!!

As you’ve seen on QUILTsocial, I’ve used the machine to make quick and easy Christmas gifts, and a sweet Valentine’s pillow, but I’ve also been using the machine behind the scenes on some other projects. I’ve embroidered two t-shirts for next Christmas and even helped my son make a German flag for his history project!

THE Brother Dream Machine 2

THE Brother Dream Machine 2

I’ve always wanted to make a miniature quilt and since I’ve been using this machine, I started wondering about embroidering one. I looked around online and found a few quilt block embroidery designs but they weren’t exactly what I was looking for so I decided to design a miniature quilt on EQ and then import it into the machine so that it could be converted into an embroidery design.

Here is my first design – I created it with a white background, so that I could “scan” the image and remove the background (anything that is white). That way I could use the appropriate coloured threads to embroider onto black fabric and then I would add quilting stitches to emphasize the block edges, sashing and borders.

Miniature quilt design

Miniature quilt design

Unfortunately, the image I created was too big for the machine to import and this error message popped up on the screen.

Error message with file that is too large

Error message with file that is too large

So I went back to the drawing board and saved my miniature quilt design as a smaller image file. Unfortunately, when it was imported into the machine, the embroidery design that was created from the smaller EQ file did not have enough details to make a nice looking quilt.

The embroidery design created from a smaller file

The embroidery design created from a smaller file

So I decided to approach my miniature quilt design a different way. Instead of designing the entire quilt at once, I decided to design a series of individual blocks that could be arranged into a bigger quilt design on the embroidery design screen. Here is the first pieced block image that I created to import.

Pieced block design

Pieced block design

I followed the same procedure that I used last month for importing my Valentine’s design and here is the embroidery design that THE Dream Machine 2 created. Isn’t is adorable?!!

The converted embroidery design

The converted embroidery design

I then designed five more pieced blocks on my computer and used THE Dream Machine 2 to convert them into embroidery designs. I made sure that the colors I used in each design were very distinct so that the machine could easily distinguish between them.

The six block embroidery designs

The six block embroidery designs

Click here to download original PHC files for all six of these embroidery designs. Once downloaded and unzipped, you can use it on your Dream Machine 2 or see if your machine will convert it into a file that’s appropriate for you to use.

Now that I’ve got six different blocks made into embroidery designs, I’m on my way to creating my miniature quilt. Tomorrow we’ll play around with coloring the blocks differently. See you then.

This is part 1 of 5 in this series.

Go to part 2: 1 easy way to change thread colors in a machine embroidery design

[shareaholic app=”follow_buttons” id=”23735596″]

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE...

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.