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How THE Dream Machine 2 changes your design into a machine embroidery design

by Jean Boyd

Yesterday I showed you how to make a small embroidered design on THE Dream Machine 2 by Brother and incorporate it into a mug rug. Today I’ll show you how easy it is to use the scanning frame that comes with the machine to turn your own drawings or designs into embroidery designs.

Some time ago, I designed some Redwork and embroidery quilts and thought the drawings would be perfect for the embroidery machine. My original designs were for hand embroidery, but now, here’s a whole new way to use these designs. As an added bonus, my designs could now be re-sized to any size I wanted!

I printed one of my Redwork Basket designs on regular copy paper and then placed the paper on the scanning frame. The paper is held in place with the magnets that come with the machine. I then placed the scanning frame in the embroidery unit the same way I placed the hoops for embroidery. Starting with ‘My Design Center’, I pressed the scan button (the button with 2 flowers and a blue arrow on it), and ‘scan’ and then let the machine do its thing!

My design on the scanning frame ready to be scanned

My design on the scanning frame ready to be scanned

Press the "scan" button to activate the scanning operation

Press the “scan” button to activate the scanning operation

When the scanning was finished, I pressed line and then this screen came up. I can use my finger or the stylus on the red arrows to frame the parts of the design that I want to stitch.

Press ‘OK’ and then ‘Set’.

Move the red arrows to frame the parts of the design you want to stitch.

Move the red arrows to frame the parts of the design you want to stitch.

I can touch the ‘size’ button to make the design the size I want. The size of the design is shown at the top of the screen.

Press the arrow buttons to re-size the design. Then press OK.

Press the arrow buttons to re-size the design. Then press OK.

The default stitching line for a scanned design is a satin stitch, but because my design is going to be quite small, I want to use a straight stitching line instead. I press the top menu button on the side of the screen (it looks like a square with lines on it) to get the stitching line options. I pressed the triple line stitch – you can see it highlighted in blue on the screen. Then I chose the red color for the stitching line by pressing the red square on the color palette.

Press the triple-stitch line and then choose red from the color palette.

Press the triple-stitch line and then choose red from the color palette.

These are simple steps…

Press OK and I’m back on the design screen.

Press the green fill button on the right (it looks like a pitcher), touch a line on the design with finger or the stylus, and the lines are filled in with a red, triple stitch line.

If the design lines are not all connected, I may have to touch each line separately to color it. My design is all one color, but several different colors can be used if your design lines are not connected.

Save the design by pressing the red arrow going into a pocket.

Press ‘next’, ‘preview’ and ‘set’.

Press the "pitcher" button on the top right to fill the lines with red.

Press the “pitcher” button on the top right to fill the lines with red.

Press the arrow buttons to re-size the design. Then press OK.

Press the arrow buttons to re-size the design. Then press OK.

Now I can press ‘OK’ and then ’embroidery’ at the bottom of the screen, attach my hooped fabric to the embroidery unit and the machine will stitch out the design.

On the right is my Redwork design stitched in the original size with double-line stitch. On the left is the re-sized design with triple-stitch line.

On the right is my Redwork design stitched in the original size with double-line stitch. On the left is the re-sized design with triple-stitch line.

I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a few of the basic techniques for THE Dream Machine 2 by Brother. I’ll be back on QUILTsocial beginning on October 30, 2017 with more embroidery techniques and projects for you. Hope to see you then!

This is part 5 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 4: Machine embroidery + crazy quilting makes a gratifying mug rug

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