FREE Quilting Patterns, Tutorials, Magazine

Inspira stabilizers save your machine embroidery work

Inspira stabilizers save your machine embroidery work

by Elaine Theriault

Welcome back. I’m going to make you wait one more day before I reveal the stitch-outs on the Husqvarna Viking Designer EPIC, as there’s an important step to share with you when machine embroidering.

Husqvarna Viking Designer EPIC with embroidery unit attached

Husqvarna Viking Designer EPIC with embroidery unit attached

Stabilizers are critical to the success of your machine embroidery. Without a stabilizer, your work will pull, warp and pucker, making a very unattractive and hard to work with design.

There are many stabilizers on the market. Not only different brands, but many different types and while you might be able to substitute one type for another in a pinch, it’s very important to use the correct stabilizer for the job at hand. Otherwise, you’re asking for trouble.

The Inspira brand of stabilizers is excellent and comes with a wide variety of types.

Small selection of Inspira stabilizers

Small selection of Inspira stabilizers

Wait! Before you say that this is going to get complicated – it’s not! Remember, I mentioned the Knowledge Center on the JoyOS advisor – that’s the first screen you see when you turn on the Designer EPIC? Instead of hitting Start New, or the User’s Guide, or the Embroidery Techniques, I’m going to the Knowledge Center. Guess what’s in there?

Yep – all kinds of information about stabilizers. I told you this entire process is so easy. No hunting on the internet, no trying to find a lost manual – it’s all built into the Designer EPIC.

Stabilizer guide selected in the Knowledge Center

Stabilizer guide selected in the Knowledge Center

There are different categories of stabilizers. The one selected above is the specialty category.

The one below is the Tear A Way products. Don’t know what a tearaway stabilizer is? The description is shown below the row of gray boxes.

Tear A Way stabilizer menu

Tear A Way stabilizer menu

Did you notice that the labels on the screen are the same as the actual product? That makes it super easy to know you have the correct stabilizer. And if you need more detailed information about the stabilizer, just click on the icon for that particular one and you get all the information you could possibly want. You get an in-depth description of the stabilizer, when to use it, and detailed instructions on how to use it.

I told you – it doesn’t get any easier!

Information on Tear-A-Way Stabilizers

Information on Tear-A-Way Stabilizers

List of water soluble stabilizers

List of water soluble stabilizers

OK – it’s time to get to work. I want to get out of the Knowledge Center and into the work area. I simply hit the START NEW button on the bottom right of the screen.

Press Start New to get to work

Press Start New to get to work

But wait! I need to sew something before I start my embroidery project. No worries. I can sew WITH the embroidery unit attached. I simply toggle from embroidery to sewing mode in the top right-hand corner.

Toggle switch between embroidery and sewing mode

Toggle switch between embroidery and sewing mode

Now that the sewing mode screen is up, I can choose the stitch and the appropriate settings that I want.

Choose the stitch and the appropriate settings

Choose the stitch and the appropriate settings

And yes – I can SEW with the embroidery unit attached. This is fabulous. It saves having to remove the embroidery unit, find a safe place to store it and then put it back on when done stitching.

I would be careful of the size of the project that I work on. While I could work on something fairly large, I wouldn’t want my project catching on the embroidery arm.

Sewing with the embroidery unit attached

Sewing with the embroidery unit attached

I’m not going to have a chance to hoop anything today but wanted to show you that on all the hoops, there are four notches that assist you in lining up your design on your fabric. It takes a bit of practice to get that right. While I’m doing an okay job with hooping, I do try to hoop a big piece of fabric and then cut my image after. That’s the cheating way to do it, but it works!! I’ll have more on hooping tomorrow.

Four guides to help position your item when hooping

Four guides to help position your item when hooping

The hoop has a spring lock on it and a screw to help keep that fabric and stabilizer tight in the hoop. The last thing you want is to have ripples or movement during the machine embroidery process.

Spring and a screw to tighten the embroidery hoop

Spring and a screw to tighten the embroidery hoop

In addition, there are clips that help stabilize the larger hoops.

Clips are used to help stabilize the larger hoops

Clips are used to help stabilize the larger hoops

While it sounds like there are a lot of steps to do machine embroidery, don’t forget that they’re all documented in the JoyOS advisor. Step by step!

Let’s not forget that if you don’t want to sit at the sewing machine to browse the User’s Guide, you can download it to your tablet and read it at your leisure. I wasn’t a fan of e-books until recently. Now I think they’re great. Very handy, very useful and easy to use. That’s important to me, especially since I can be very technically challenged sometimes!

User's Guide on a tablet

User’s Guide on a tablet

That’s it for today. I’m off to try out some different styles of embroidery which I’ll share with you tomorrow. Oh my – where am I going to start? I want to stitch them all out!

The Husqvarna Viking Designer EPIC has so much to offer. It’s like being a kid in a candy store with your Dad’s VISA. You can try it all!

Have a great day!

Ciao!

This is part 4 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 3:  Easy to embroider on the Husqvarna Viking Designer EPIC

Go to part 5: The EPIC embroidery features of the HV Designer EPIC

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE...

2 comments

Tricia Kemp July 25, 2017 - 5:09 pm

I love this machine! I bought it in late March and still have a lot to learn. I find the information given here to be extremely helpful.

Reply
Carla A. Canonico July 31, 2017 - 9:13 am

Thank you Tricia, glad you’re enjoying the info.

Reply

Leave a Comment

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