Sparking creativity using the Designer EPIC’s Knowledge Center

Now that we’ve got some of those basic housekeeping tasks out of the way, it’s time to have some fun and see what we can do with the Husqvarna Viking Designer EPIC.

The last couple of months have been very busy and while I did a lot of sewing, there wasn’t a lot of time for creativity. Then I got a bad cold and my creative mojo just wasn’t there.

What to do? What to do? Hey – there’s supposed to be some inspirations/projects in the JoyOS Advisor that’s built into the Designer EPIC. I decided to mess around with those to see if something would trigger my creative spark.

Guess what? Something did! Let’s see what I ended up doing and how I got there using the built-in Knowledge Center.

Let’s see what’s in the Knowledge Center. I don’t need any information on Stabilizers and I think I’m good with the Quick Start stuff. I checked out the Sewing Instructions and while there are two projects there, I wasn’t in the mood to make either – a bag and a cushion, but they looked like fun. But more importantly, I’m sure I would have learned a lot of cool techniques. I’m not sure my brain was into learning a whole lot of new at that point in time.

Hm – what about that Step-by-Step Workbook? That sounds more up my alley. Oh yes – this is perfect. A number of different sewing, applique and embroidery techniques. What to choose? I went through several of the menus until I found one that was perfect.

Within the Sewing Program Sub Menu, there were three topics. I made it easy and selected the first one – How to Combine Stitches.

What followed pleasantly surprised me as there were Steps 1 to 15, explaining in one sentence or two, the steps needed to combine stitches and either save them or stitch them out. Not only was there a description of the steps, but any of the important buttons or functions that needed to be used was represented by an actual icon in the mini-tutorial.

Now that doesn’t get any easier than that to figure out how to combine stitches.

I did have one tiny little problem which of course was attributed to operator error! I had forgotten one very important factor. The Project Viewer window that showed the steps of the exercise was covering some of the buttons I was trying to find. AHA – then I remembered that using the icons on the top menu bar of that window could move the Project Viewer to the top, bottom, left, right of the screen, or it could be full screen if I wanted. And if the text is too small? I can enlarge or shrink the text using the appropriate buttons on the same menu bar of the Project Viewer.

If I don’t need the JoyOS Advisor (Project Viewer), I can minimize it to an icon at the bottom of the screen.

In the screenshot below, I was looking for the PROG button and I couldn’t find it until I moved the Project Viewer to the top of the screen. Once I remembered that fact, I was set!

I went through all the steps in the exercise and created a line of stitches from the exercise.

What’s really nice is that I can alter the settings for one or all of the chosen stitches. If I want to shorten the stitch length on a particular stitch, I can do that. If I want to mirror the stitch therefore getting a better flow between some of the stitches, I can do that too.

This was exactly what I needed for inspiration.

Once I had the sequence on the screen, I could either save it or I could stitch it out immediately.

I did both. I find that if I don’t do one of the steps, then I’ll forget that it’s a possibility to do.

In the screenshot below, you can see that I’m saving the stitch sequence and I have the option to save it to a USB (currently grayed out) or I can save to my account set up through mySewnet (the pink cloud). Because the Designer EPIC is connected to the internet, you can set up an account at mySewnet where you can save files.

Before starting to stitch out the sequence, it’s a good idea to look at what foot is recommended. Because you can choose between any of the menus and any of the stitches, you may not realize that you have chosen a stitch that needs a particular foot, and whether you need to change the needle or add stabilizer.

In this case, one of the chosen stitches requires the S foot. I installed the S foot and applied a fusible stabilizer to the wrong side of the work.

Here’s the final stitch out from the exercise. I love it! But what’s even more important, it gave me that spark that I needed to get my own creativity going.

I know you’re thinking – great? Now where would I use that or how would I use that?

Well as I said, my imagination got sparked and I worked on a project which was exactly what I needed to help me get out of my funk.

Come back tomorrow and you’ll see how the Husqvarna Viking Designer EPIC and I created a pretty cool little project using combined stitches.

Have a great day!

Ciao!