THE Dream Machine 2: machine fusible applique and embroidery, the easy way

Yesterday on QUILTsocial I showed you how easy it is to used the Brother ScanNCut2 to make fusible applique shapes! Today I’m using THE Dream Machine 2 to do some machine embroidery on the baby quilt.

materials

If you’d like to make your own version of my sea creature baby quilt, you’ll need the following materials. I’m using Northcott ColorWorks Concepts fabrics for my quilt.

• ½yd [0.5m] background fabric
• ½yd [0.5m] green for sashing and binding
• 1yd [1m] white for sashing and outer border
• 7″ squares of six assorted solids for applique shapes
• ⅛yd [0.15m] each of four blue solids for pieced border
• 1yd [1m] backing
• batting
• threads to match applique shapes and for embroidery

Embroidering the background

The first thing I did in preparation for embroidering with THE Dream Machine 2, was to divide my background fabric up into 6 sections. I used a fabric marker to draw a line between each of these sections and then hooped the ColorWorks Concepts background fabric. I aligned the hoop so that the line dividing two of the sections was directly across the middle of the hoop (horizontally). The line is very faint, so it’s hard to see in my photo.

If you’d like more info about hooping fabric for THE Dream Machine 2, check out my QUILTsocial post from January 26.

Next I set the lettering that I needed onto the design screen. I set two different words on the screen, the same distance above and below the center mark (the little red plus sign). Next I wanted to rotate the bottom word so that it would be embroidered upside down – you’ll see why in a few minutes!

The design is set and ready to be embroidered by THE Dream Machine 2.

I embroidered the first two words then removed the fabric from the hoop and shifted it to the center of the next two sections of background fabric. I changed the words on the screen to my next two creatures and embroidered them in two different colors. I repeated the process once more to embroider the last two words.

Next, I cut along the line between my top and bottom sections and then cut each section into three smaller backgrounds, each with the embroidery at the bottom of the background fabric. See why I had the bottom word embroidered upside down?

Now the applique designs can be ironed onto each of the backgrounds.

Now the applique shapes cut by the ScanNCut2 are ironed onto the individual background shapes above the embroidered labels.

All of my applique shapes have now been fused and are ready to be machine stitched with THE Dream Machine 2.

Tomorrow I’ll show you two AMAZING features on THE Dream Machine 2 that make machine applique a snap! See you then.