Let’s embroider with the Ruby Royale

Today, I’m going to show you how easy it is to embroider with the Husqvarna Viking Designer Ruby Royale.

We’ve gathered all the supplies and tools that we need and the rest is in the sewing machine.

I didn’t mention fabric the other day, but essentially you could embroider on pretty much anything as long as you use the correct configuration of stabilizers, needles and thread.

Let’s get started.

Connect the embroidery unit to the sewing machine. Install the Sensor Q-Foot and place a bobbin filled with embroidery bobbin thread into the bobbin case.

Toggle into Embroidery Mode.

We’re going to keep this simple for the first stitch-out. I chose one of the designs from the over 180 built in designs in the Design Menu. Once I highlight the design, it will appear on the screen.

Look at the bottom left corner of the screen. The sewing machine tells me that I could use an 80 X 80 hoop for this design.

Since I don’t have an 80 X 80 hoop, I’ll have to change that setting. In the event that you can’t remember the sizes of the hoop(s) you have, it’s easy to identify the hoop size as it’s shown on the bottom of each hoop.

If I didn’t have the particular size of hoop that was indicated, I would choose the next largest size available. It wouldn’t make sense (although you could) to use a very large hoop such as the Royal Hoop (360 X 200) to stitch out this small design.

If you attempt to use a hoop size that doesn’t match what’s on the screen, the sewing machine will tell you. You have the option to switch to the hoop as per the sewing machine or change the hoop size setting to match the hoop that you’re using.

Touching the My Hoops icon will bring up a list of hoops that you can choose from. In this case – I’m going to use the 120 X 120 hoop.

Under Machine Settings, you’ll find a Hoop Selection menu. Here, you can highlight the hoops that you own. Then, when you load a design, the Ruby Royale will use your list of hoops (not all the available hoops) to select the one that’s most appropriate for the design you’re going to stitch. A nice touch and this takes one more decision out of your hands.

You can override this if you wish – just remember that you can’t use a hoop smaller than the design. The sewing machine doesn’t like that and you’ll be asked to change the hoop size to a larger size before you can start the embroidery.

The screenshot below shows the design with the new hoop size. Notice how the size of the design has changed. The design will stitch out in the same size as the previous screenshot. The size of the design has changed relative to the hoop size. The dotted line around the edge of the screen shows the embroidery area for the hoop. This design isn’t very large and so in the smaller hoop – it filled the embroidery area more than it does in this larger hoop.

I showed you yesterday how easy it is to hoop the fabric. Just open the Quick Release and loosen the screw. Put the stabilizer underneath the fabric and sandwich them between the inner and outer hoop parts. Insert the inner (top) part of the hoop firmly into the outer (bottom)  part securing the fabric and stabilizer between the two pieces of the hoop. Close the Quick Release, tighten the screw and you are set!

Next up, you need to slide the hoop connector (on the hoop) into the hoop attachment on the embroidery arm. Make sure the hoop snaps firmly into place on the embroidery arm.

Choose your embroidery thread color and thread the sewing machine. You may find that you have to use the Sensor Foot Down/Pivot if the Sensor Q-Foot is too high to use the needle threader.

You may have to change colors several times depending on the number of colors used in your design. No need to change the bobbin thread unless it runs out! But we’re not going to worry about that for the moment.

The fabric is in the hoop and firmly attached to the embroidery arm. The machine is threaded and the design is chosen.

The screen below is the Embroidery Edit screen. There are many changes that we could make, but for the first stitch-out – we’re keeping this simple. No editing, no fancy stuff. We just want to see the Ruby Royale in action.

All that remains is to hit GO! which will take us to the Embroidery Stitch-Out screen.

This is a screenshot of the lower part of the Embroidery Stitch-Out screen. You can see that I have one design chosen with 1,464 stitches. I still have 1,464 stitches to stitch since I have not started the sewing machine yet.

I even get an approximate number of minutes (or hours) that it will take for the design to be stitched out!

I know you’re thinking hours? Oh yes – some of the designs can be fairly complex and large and can take quite a while to stitch out. While the embroidery machine will do the stitching on its own, everyone I know likes to “babysit” the embroidery machine while it stitches. As much as these new embroidery machines are miracle workers, things like broken needles, frayed or broken threads, empty bobbins or just even color changes are all things that can stop the embroidery.

I hear people are using video baby monitors to keep an eye on the progress. I love that idea. Now, who has a used video baby monitor that they no longer need?

Now that everything is set and I’m in the Embroidery Stitch-Out screen, I just have to hit the START/STOP button on the Function Panel and the embroidery machine will start to stitch out the design.

As the design is stitched out, a cross hair shows the position of the needle relative to the design. This moves through the entire stitching process and is very useful for a number of reasons which I will explain later on.

Once the design is completely stitched, a message pops up telling you the embroidery is finished. You can also program an audible alert when the embroidery is finished. This is one of my favorite pop up messages.

In the picture below, you can see that the size of the design is fairly small compared to the size of the hoop. Since this is the smallest hoop that I have, I’ve no choice but to use this one. If I were going to do a lot of small designs, I could group them so they stitch out in one hooping, but that may not be practical so I may want to invest in a more appropriate size of hoop for the size of embroidery that I’m most likely to use.

The fabric has to be tightly hooped to get a nice stitch-out, so once the design is complete, you want to remove the fabric as soon as possible to get those fibers relaxed. Some fabrics require more care and different techniques for hooping to prevent damage to the fibres. We’ll explore a few another day.

There you have it! Simple and easy. But this is just to whet your appetite. Designs can be resized and combined. You can add letters and numbers in different font styles and sizes. Don’t forget that we can also use all those stitches in the sewing machine in our embroidery designs. And if you start looking at designs on the internet – well your head will spin! We’re going to keep it simple here – just remember that there’s no end to what you can dream up to stitch out.

Tomorrow I’m going to investigate some options with the built-in fonts and I have a great project for you. YES! Let’s embroider with the Ruby Royale!

Have a great day!

Ciao!