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Hexagonal sashed borders part two: making ends meet

Hexagonal sashed borders part two: making ends meet

by Liana Kirkey

Are you ready to complete yesterday’s border pattern? I get so excited every time I figure out how to do something extra, you know, something above and beyond what the original tool was designed for. The Brother Luminaire2 Innov-is XP2 and the Brother Luminaire XP1 Upgrade Kit (Premium Pack II) both offer stitch-perfect hexagonal Sashed Borders. But I wanted a not-so-perfect hexagon—I wanted to extend the top and bottom sides to make this table-runner length. So I played and fussed, figured and experimented, and lo and behold… my idea came to fruition!

If you’re joining me for the first time today, you might want to back up and play with yesterday’s post, where we marked our fabric with the needed guidelines and stitched the endcaps. Or you might even want to start at the very beginning of this series – the quickie projects we made this week will set the sashing process firmly in your mind, which will be helpful in this final stage where we manipulate the process for perfect, outside-the-box results. If you’ve been with me all along, power up your Luminaire and let’s get to playing!

We left off yesterday with the two ends stitched and waiting to be joined:

Where we left off yesterday with our Brother Luminaire XP sashed border

Where we left off yesterday

Let’s get the last markings on the fabric before we get to the machine and the nitty-gritty stuff. Measure the distance between the join points as shown in the picture below, and divide that measurement in two; mark the halfway point:

Mark the halfway point in the gap between the ends for lining up with the Brother Luminaire XP

Mark the halfway point in the gap between the ends.

Now, hoop your fabric in the large hoop with the mark you just made close to the halfway height of the hoop, and slip the hoop onto your machine:

See the mark on the right, about halfway up the Brother Luminaire XP’s hoop?

See the mark on the right, about halfway up the hoop?

Now for the machine setup: We used a 12″ (inside-point to inside-point) hexagon for the end caps, and, to keep the actual math to a minimum, I simply doubled that for the length. Which now means setting up a new hexagon border on the machine.

Select Embroidery → Sashed Borders (Menu Q) → Hexagons (Tab 3) and the same pattern you used yesterday; I used Pattern 001, the nifty geometric. Now, follow along with me: Set the height to 24″, the border width to 2″, and this time keep the default hoop (10⅝” x16″). Like yesterday, we want to continue with a triple stitch, and set your color if you like. Save it to Memory, and then recall it. Make sure you retrieve the 24-inches, not the smaller one!

Set up your new, larger hexagon border; save it, then recall it to embroider on the Brother Luminaire XP.

Set up your new, larger hexagon border; save it, then recall it to embroider.

Remember yesterday when I said each segment has its own job to do? Each one lines up to different reference points based on their sequence position, and fine-tunes the adjustments needed to make the overall design fit perfectly. That’s why we need the whole pattern, not just one of the solo singles (see them in the pic above?) – we want the Luminaire to do the hard work (the fitting) so we can rest on our laurels, LOL.

So, we’ve got the whole 12-part pattern loaded, and your machine is trying to tell you what to do. DON’T! Here’s where the manipulation comes in. We only want to stitch the very last segment. This is the only part that’s actually meant to meet up, beginning and end, to specific stitch points.

Ignore the machine’s hooping instructions (‘cause we won’t sew this first segment anyway), but touch OK. Then keep touching OK until your machine is at the ‘ready to sew this segment’ stage.

Completely bypass the Brother Luminaire XP setup instructions until you get to the Embroider screen.

Completely bypass these setup instructions until you get to the Embroider screen.

Once at the Embroidery screen, touch the Forward/Back key (needle plus/minus). At the bottom left of the screen, you’ll see navigation buttons that will allow you to move through the segments. To quickly get to Segment 12, touch the left arrow. Sneaky, huh? Touch OK.

Skip to segment 12 on the Brother Luminaire XP

Skip to segment 12.

Now the on-screen instruction reads ‘Please re-hoop the material’, but we already did that so we should be good-to-go.

Touch OK and follow the directions to align this design’s start point with the end point of the last pattern; touch OK.

Follow the Brother Luminaire XP onscreen instructions to align Segment 12 with the previous design

Follow the onscreen instructions to align Segment 12 with the previous design.

Next, you are asked to align the segment’s end point with the start point of the first pattern, but we’re nowhere near it. What we’ll do instead is align it to the midpoint mark we drew. On mine, this meant shortening the design and tweaking the angle, but the projection makes that easy. Once that is aligned to the mark, go ahead and stitch it.

Align the design’s bottom to your drawn midpoint mark to stitch on the Brother Luminaire XP.

Align the design’s bottom to your drawn midpoint mark.

Once you’ve got it all lined up, touch OK and stitch it. And then…

Once you’ve stitched it, touch Home to exit this design, then retrieve the same design again. The rest is a repeat of what you just did: bypass the setup for the first segment and jump to Segment 12. Line up the beginning and ending stitches to their respective connectors and voila! If you hooped carefully, you’ll even get this repeat in the same hooping. If not, rehoop and rely on the same tools you’ve been already using to precisely align this repeat, and then stitch the closing piece in this line. Done – a perfect join!

Now, just to make sure the process is firmly entrenched in your mind, do those sequences once more on the other side for a complete, all-around oblong hexagon. After all, practice makes perfect! Mine’s all done – how’s yours coming along?

All perfectly matched connections completed on the Brother Luminaire XP!

All perfectly matched connections complete!

Now, I’ll leave you with your choice of ending for this panel. You can trim it down, then stitch-and-turn a backing onto it as we did with our previous projects, or you can back-and bind it more traditionally, or you can even piece some contrasting borders onto it. Me… I’m leaning towards backing-and-binding, then maybe filling the center with in-the-hoop stipple quilting. It’s a big enough area that it’ll be a good opportunity to experiment with joining. I saw someone do that sometime back but haven’t had the opportunity to try it yet. Perhaps the time has come—or maybe it’s a project for another day…

I hope you had fun exploring the possibilities of the new Sashed Border features from the Brother Luminaire XP1 Upgrade Kit (Premium Pack II) and the Brother Luminaire2 Innov-is XP2. I have to admit, not being a quilter, these are not features I’d have explored had I not been asked about them. But I’m glad I got the chance to delve into this whole new realm, because I can see great potential I’d have otherwise missed out on! How do these Sashed borders inspire you?

This is part 5 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 4: Hexagonal sashed borders: above and beyond on the Brother Luminaire XP

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