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How to successfully machine embroider on a t-shirt in no time flat!

by Christine Baker

Yesterday on QUILTsocial I showed you how to make a beautiful hostess gift by embroidering a tea towel. The Christmas cardinal design, pre-programmed in THE Dream Machine 2, looked just lovely stitched out on the tea towel.

The Dream Machine 2 is also pre-programmed with an AMAZING number of Disney embroidery designs. So today we’re using one of them to embroider a child’s t-shirt, giving me a head start to my holiday gift list!

THE Dream Machine 2 from Brother

THE Dream Machine 2 from Brother

When you press the Disney button on the home screen of THE Dream Machine 2, you open up the Disney character menu.

The home screen

The home screen

As you can see, there are folders for everyone from Mickey and Minnie and Winnie the Pooh to the Disney Princesses and the characters from Cars. Whether you’ve got a little Frozen fan at home or a little Eeyore, you’re bound to find the perfect design for whatever project you want to make.

The Disney folders

The Disney folders

There are also lots of seasonal designs that feature these great characters. I found a beautiful design that featured Mickey and Minnie decorating a Christmas tree that I just love, so I’m using it to decorate a cute little red t-shirt that I have on hand.

Mickey Mouse Christmas designs

Mickey Mouse Christmas designs

For embroidering the t-shirt, I want to rotate the design 90° to the right, so I can mount the t-shirt in the embroidery hoop with the bulk of the t-shirt in the throat of the sewing machine. To do this, touch the edit button and then the button shown below.

Rotate the design 90 degress

Rotate the design 90 degress

The embroidery editing screen on THE Dream Machine 2 shows the selected design, its finished size, and what size of hoop can be used to stitch out the design. As you can see at the top left, my selected design is 5.35″ x 4.49″ and I would be able to use the three largest hoops.

The only hoop that’s too small for the design is the smallest one – as you can see, it’s the only hoop that’s darkened out on the screen.

The design on the embroidery screen.

The design on the embroidery screen.

First I ironed a rectangle of the Sulky Totally Stable stabilizer to the inside of the t-shirt front. You need to make sure that the stabilizer is cut so it’s slightly bigger than the selected embroidery hoop.

The Sulky stabilizer ironed to the inside of the t-shirt

The Sulky stabilizer ironed to the inside of the t-shirt

Next, I turned the t-shirt right side out and drew some alignment marks on the front using an air erasable fabric marker which will disappear when ironed. These marks will help to line up the edges of the embroidery hoop, so the design will be straight and centered on the t-shirt.

Alignment marks on the t-shirt front

Alignment marks on the t-shirt front

As you can see, I placed the inside ring of the embroidery hoop so that the edges are lined up even with the alignment marks drawn on the fabric.

Lining up the hoop

Lining up the hoop

The outer ring of the embroidery hoop was then slipped inside the t-shirt and the inside ring and t-shirt were pressed into it before tightening.

The outer ring of the embroidery hoop inside the t-shirt

The outer ring of the embroidery hoop inside the t-shirt

I then slid the edge of the hoop into the arm of the embroidery unit. I rolled and pinned the edges of the t-shirt so that they wouldn’t get caught up in the embroidery unit as it moved during the embroidery process.

Mounting the hoop on the machine

Mounting the hoop on the machine

I set the machine to work and changed the thread colors as it progressed through the design. Mickey really came to life once the black outline was added!

The work in progress

The work in progress

The Mickey Mouse embroidery could be easily personalized by adding the child’s name to the design on the embroidery design screen of THE Dream Machine 2 by Brother.

Personalizing the embroidery

Personalizing the embroidery

Here’s the finished Christmas t-shirt featuring the Mickey Mouse embroidery stitched with THE Dream Machine 2 from Brother.

The finished t-shirt

The finished t-shirt

And here’s a close-up of Mickey and Minnie – aren’t they cute!!

Close up of the embroidery

Close up of the embroidery

This shirt is SO cute!! I can’t wait to give it to my friend’s little girl – I think she’ll LOVE it!!

Join me tomorrow, I’m using THE Dream Machine 2 to try embroidering on felted wool – my favorite!! See you then!

This is part 2 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 1: THE Dream Machine 2 makes you look good with this embroidered hostess gift

Go to part 3: 7 easy steps to making an elegant embroidered cushion

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