Unboxing the Husqvarna Viking Designer Sapphire™ 85

I’m so excited to be here this week to share the brand new Husqvarna Viking Designer Sapphire™ 85 sewing and embroidery machine with you. Check out that gorgeous color!

Husqvarna Viking Designer Sapphire™ 85

Usually, when I introduce a new sewing machine, I start with some features. I’ll be covering all the features and benefits as the week goes on. But today, I’m diving right into machine embroidery. I want to show you something pretty exciting about this fantastic sewing and embroidery machine. Let’s start by having a close look at the start-up screen.

What do you see in the top left corner? And what do you see in the right-hand corner? Are those Wi-Fi symbols? Yes, they are! The Designer Sapphire™ 85 is Wi-Fi enabled. That just brings a whole new element to the world of embroidery!

The start-up screen

I know, you’re thinking, why would I care if my sewing/embroidery machine is Wi-Fi enabled? First, if there’s a system update, I don’t have to worry about taking the machine to the dealer. If there’s an update available, I’ll get a notification about the upgrade once I log onto the internet, and I can easily download and install the upgrade. There are options when you do the download and install, so if you need to sew, you don’t have to wait, but the updates don’t take long, anyway.

Secondly, once you have access to a Wi-Fi enabled sewing/embroidery machine, you’ll want to get a mySewnet™ account. This account will provide you with online storage for programmed stitch files you can create, and it also includes storage for embroidery designs. You get 100MB of storage in your free mySewnet™ account.

The mySewnet™ account lets you transfer embroidery designs from your mySewnet™ embroidery software to your embroidery machine or from one Wi-Fi enabled embroidery machine to another. No USBs, no cables. Once you get used to this, it’s tough to go back to using USBs.

Once I’d connected the Designer Sapphire™ 85 to my Wi-Fi and logged into my mySewnet™ account, I had access to all the files I stored in my mySewnet™ cloud storage. How cool is that?

The status of mySewnet™ account

If you’re new to a computerized sewing machine, you might be intimidated by the screen, but you don’t have to be. There’s built-in help called the JoyOS Advisor™, which you’ll see on the start-up screen.

If you look back at the first photo of the start-up screen, you’ll see a prompt in the top left-hand corner. It mentions Applique, and Pop-Up and Applique combined. What is that? If you touch that section of the screen, you’ll be directed to the stitch menu containing these exclusive decorative stitches. That’s right – you don’t even need to search for these stitches.

There’s an onscreen tutorial with directions on using the Applique and Pop-Up stitches. I don’t even need to take a class – I can follow along on the screen. I have a built-in assistant!

The Applique and Pop-Up combined stitches with an online tutorial

The Joy OS Advisor™ is huge, and I’ll be coming back to explore this fantastic feature throughout the week.

The JoyOS Advisor™

With your mySewnet™ account, you also get access to the mySewnet™ blog, which contains What’s New, Tips & Hints, Social Media, and new embroidery designs add to the mySewnet™ Library. You won’t be inundated with messages, and it’s nice to get notices specifically related to your sewing/embroidery machine.

The mySewnet™ blog

Within the JoyOS Advisor™ are many tutorials with videos, split into four categories: Sewing, Quilting, Embroidery, and the Knowledge Center. Here in the Sewing section, I can select my fabric type and weight. If I need, I can choose the sewing technique. The large multi-touch screen is capacitive. What does that mean? It functions just like your smartphone, so swiping, pinching, and stretching are the norm. It’s super simple to use.

The Sewing menu in the JoyOS Advisor™

I’ve scrolled to the bottom half of the Sewing section of the JoyOS Advisor™. So… say you didn’t know how to sew on a button using the Button Foot with Placement Tool. You select the option on this screen to get a tutorial on using that presser foot. It just doesn’t get any easier!

The tutorials in the Sewing section of the JoyOS Advisor™

There’s a section with quilting techniques.

Some of the tutorials in the Quilting section of the JoyOS Advisor™

There’s also a section for Embroidery Techniques. What’s very neat is if you choose a specific technique and drill down, the built-in embroidery files corresponding to that technique will pop up in the Embroidery Edit screen. If you want to learn a new embroidery technique, using the JoyOS Advisor is the perfect way to learn. You don’t have to search for the files – they come to you, with step-by-step instructions on what to do!

The Embroidery section of the JoyOS Advisor™

The Knowledge Center contains all kinds of information, including a Stabilizer Guide, which is incredibly important for embroidery or machine applique. You’ll also find a Quick-Start Guide for when you first get your machine, a Step-by-Step workbook, and a whole lot more. It’s best to sit down with some quiet time and go through these tutorials. The best part? The Joy OS Advisor™ is patient. It doesn’t mind if you watch the same video over and over again until you get the information set in your head. You have to love that!

The Knowledge Center in the JoyOS Advisor™

Drilling down into each category will provide written instructions and, in some cases, a video to show you how a particular feature works. Here, I’m having a look at how the needle threader works.

The tutorial on using the Needle Threader

Can you believe the entire User’s Guide is a built-in feature? I select it using the open book with the magnifier icon on the bottom of the screen, and the User’s Guide is right there.

The built-in User’s Guide

What’s even more impressive is that I can search through the User Guide using the Table of Contents as though it were a physical book, but it’s much easier to use – selecting any topic on the screen will take me directly to that section.

The Table of Contents of the built-in User’s Guide

I can also search the topics alphabetically in the Index. And if that’s not enough, I can use the Search function to find a specific topic. Oh boy, it’s so amazing to have all this information right at your fingertips!

The Index of the built-in User’s Guide

As I mentioned, I want to dive right into embroidery to show off how amazing it is to have Wi-Fi connectivity in the Designer Sapphire™ 85.

The Designer Sapphire™ 85 contains over 620 embroidery designs, with 30 different specialty techniques, and eight embroidery fonts with multiple sizes ranging from 10 to 80 mm. What’s even better is that you can combine and position the designs right on the Embroidery Edit screen. So, get creative and design your embroideries!

In the Embroidery Edit screen, I have multiple ways of bringing in an embroidery design. Did you know you can incorporate the decorative stitches in embroidery mode? You can, and that brings up all kinds of possibilities I hope we can explore this week.

As I mentioned, there are embroidery fonts in multiple sizes; you can access the built-in designs, as shown in this next photo. By scrolling down the screen, you’ll see more of the embroidery designs in this menu. You can also load the embroidery designs using a USB stick or from your mySewnet™ cloud.

To access the mySewnet™ cloud, you need to connect to the Wi-Fi and log into your mySewnet™ account.

The A Menu of Embroidery Designs

Here’s the other incredibly cool feature about the Wi-Fi connectivity. If I have access to the subscription-based mySewnet™ Library, I now have access to over 5,500 embroidery designs that I can search for right on the Embroidery Edit screen. And new designs are being added all the time. Oh, this is amazing!!

This menu shows the latest designs added to the mySewnet™ Library – a group of bugs and fish. Hmm, imagine what kind of creative picture or design you could make using bugs and fish!

A menu of embroidery designs in the mySewnet™ Library

Here’s a screenshot of a fun new font you’ll find in the mySewnet™ Library. The letters incorporate animals, and they are adorable – I want to stitch them all out! Notice I can search by design size, by my favorites, or by words.

A fun animal-themed font in mySewnet Library

I want to make a monogram for a small project I have planned. I’ve carved out a quiet spot with a nice comfortable chair to do some handwork. The only problem is that I don’t have a place to put my needles, and my scissors are always falling between the cushions. I’ve decided to make a caddy for the arm of the chair. Step One is to create a pocket with a monogram on it.

Let’s see what kind of lettering we can find in the mySewnet™ Library.

The letter E from the Elegant Script font in mySewnet™ Library

That’s an exquisite letter E, and I love it. How cool is this – I didn’t have to buy the letter. I didn’t have to make it. I just searched the mySewnet™ Library, and after selecting the design, I loaded it right into the Embroidery Edit screen.

Now it does look a wee bit bare all by itself, so I’ll dress it up by adding one of the built-in embroidery designs. I selected a small motif from the Signature Designs Menu A and brought it into the Embroidery Edit screen to duplicate the design, and simply rotated the second design. Using the positioning tools on the Embroidery Edit screen, I put my ‘new’ design below the letter E. It was easy to group those two motifs, so they became one. I duplicated that design, rotated it, and moved it to the top of the letter E. It was super easy to do all the edits right on the Embroidery Edit screen. I could have played for a long time on this design, but let’s get to Embroidery Stitch-Out.

My elegant monogram created in the Embroidery Edit screen

I hooped my fabric and stabilizer into the 120 x 120 mm hoop. There are three hoops included with the Designer Sapphire™ 85 – 360 by 200 mm, the 260 by 200 mm, and the 120 by 120 mm. So right from the start, you’ve got options when choosing the appropriately sized hoop for your embroidery.

I used the Sensor Q-Foot and touched Start. Oh, how I love to watch the embroidery stitch out. And don’t you love that bright orange stitching on the blue fabric?

My embroidery design being stitched out

Here’s my final design, which took no time at all to create. I have a monogram that I love, and I made it with the edit tools in the Designer Sapphire™ 85 (granted, I do have a subscription to the mySewnet™ Library). The monogram is ready for the pocket of my new armchair sewing caddy.

The completed embroidery design

That’s all the time I have today! Be sure to come back tomorrow when I walk through some of the physical attributes of the Husqvarna Viking Designer Sapphire™ 85 – there are so many reasons why you, too, would want this sewing and embroidery machine sitting in your studio!

Have a great day!

Ciao!

This is part 1 of 5 in this series

Go to part 2: 15 features + 7 accessories that make the Designer Sapphire 85 super!

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