Making a quilter’s name badge using the PFAFF quilt expression 720

Sometimes it’s worth the wait! I’ve been planning this project for a long time. In yesterday’s post, I tried out the floating stitches, one of the stitch techniques available on the NEW PFAFF quilt expression 720.

In this post, I use one of the fonts included on the machine to start making my very own quilter’s name badge!

Sooner or later, whether you’ve joined a guild or go to a quilting retreat, you’ll be asked to wear a name tag. I finally joined a guild last year and quickly discovered the need and desire to have a pretty name badge all of my own.

One year later I’m finally getting to it. Thanks to the quilt expression 720 I had a lot of fun making it too! It started with being able to stitch out my name with the machine. I picked the largest font and was glad to find this machine has a stylus – a great little tool to use with the Color Touch Screen. On the quilt expression 720 it even has its own little holding nook on the outside edge of the machine by the power button which makes it handy to grab when you need it.

I planned out my first row of stitching for my first name and included some spaces before and after my name so I could center it above my longer last name. I found it easy to create both rows of text and then space them using the edge of the presser foot as a guide.

I also wanted to add my Instagram account name to my badge. When I created the sequence of letters the length came out longer than my last name; I decreased the length using the arrows on the Color Touch Screen until the length was close to the same as that of the previous rows.

I know from experience with PFAFF machines that there’s some adjustment possible in each direction and that the machine will stop when the adjustment is out of the possible range of the machine. Trust me, you can make your stitches almost any way you want and they will turn out great.

I also could have saved this sequence as a favorite and been able to go back and select it at another time from inside a menu instead of needing to recreate it.

Now that I’m finished stitching out all my rows of text, I trimmed my fabric to approximately 3¾″ square.

I made my name badge on the medium/large size and you might not want one this big. Partly the size was determined by the length of my name (!) but I also had some fun, with a specific fabric in mind for this project. I cut the fabric large enough so that the fun print wouldn’t be obscured – you could certainly make a smaller badge by still following along with my construction method.

Fabric Requirements

You’ll need fabric for the front and the back of your badge. I used strips of the same fabric, two pieces for the sides (1½″ x 3¾″) and two longer ones for the top and bottom (1½″ x 5½″).

You’ll also need a backing fabric of 5½″ square and a piece of batting too. My ribbon is quite thick and long – I left it almost 36″ long.

Come back for the next post where we’ll quickly assemble the quilter’s badge with the stitches on the PFAFF quilt expression 720.