Embroidery the Easy Way?

As promised, I've got a lot to tell you about my newest embroidery sewing machine and the fun I'm having with it. Oh, it's not all fun and games but once you get things figured out it can be exciting to watch the designs appear and creative, too. There's just so much to learn! The machine I've been playing with is a Singer Futura XL-400:

Singer Futura XL400

This is by no means any kind of a high end machine, and a plastic Singer to boot, but it's been pretty easy to use and the end results has been good, too, so I'll shut up now about modern Singers. This machine came to me via Goodwill Online auctions where I got the machine in one bid and a set of three embroidery arms in another bid. I took a chance that one of those arms was going to fit the Singer Futura and it did but now I have a Pfaff Creative 1.5 embroidery arm with large hoop and manual plus an unbranded arm that could be for a Brother machine. But that's okay because I've learned that the right parts just might come along one day or someone reading this post might want just what I've stumbled upon!

The Singer came home with me and I got it all sorted out with a borrowed power cord and foot control but there are issues. I keep getting error messages and it seems like I'm not in the right mode. It occurs to me it might be stuck in the embroidery mode so I back out of it just like I was going to take the embroidery arm off and then start the machine over again and VOILA it works! There does seem to be an issue with the speed control so with a repair manual, free from a Facebook group for Singer embroidery machine users, I find the component that controls the speed and order it. There are also some levers that have their handles snapped off so they also get ordered along with the large hoop that was missing and I'm good to go.

Dell laptop with Futura Embroidery software loaded

I forgot to mention I needed software, too, so I ordered a disk for this model and crossed my fingers that it would work. Above is a laptop with old Windows 7 or 8, a better match for this older system embroidery machine anyway. Everything was installed correctly so now the fun begins! I had some small under four inch circles that I used for making zippered pouches originally intended for earbuds but used for anything. Some of them were just too plain so I downloaded some designs that would fit the fabric theme and colors to come up with the following:

Truckers: another good theme

In the above design with a big truck, there were ten "blocks" where you had color changes and each block had to be selected, sent from the computer directly to the sewing machine via a cable, press Start on the sewing machine and it stitched the block. When finished the machine stopped, you cut off the thread, added the next block, chose your thread and rethreaded the machine, hit Start, and you were off and stitching. Here's the above design all finished:

This might be my mantra

How cute is that? You can see the finished product below. It wasn't all fun and games when Harry Potter turned out not to line up right and I had to remove those extra stitches:

Are those shadows or misplaced outline stitches?

Even my cat, Meg, was curious enough to sit on the chair and watch the needle but this isn't something you can just load and forget: you need to be attentive to any mishaps that can be corrected if found early.

Meg the cat, ever curious about what's going on

I finished a project for work, adding our initials to some microfiber cloths that we use for wiping off white boards. It only takes about ten minutes for each one but with 36 of them it adds up quickly.

Microfiber cloths with BUL stitched on each one

 I had way too much fun with those circles that are for holding earbuds:

Backside to compliment printed fabric on most of them

 Then I have a few designs that I just like and I'm itching to try out but first I need to find a purpose for the design. For instance, I have a Mustang GT and an Elvis head: what could I possibly do with them? I'll think of something!