Kim Jamieson-Hirst has a neat explanation of cutting and embroidering applique spring flowers for you all today: this was all done on the Artistic Edge 15 Digital Cutter and Janome Mc500E embroidery machine. However, the same applique-in-the-hoop technique is applicable to any of our Janome Embroidery machines. Enjoy!
I decided to use the Janome Artistic Edge cutter and the Memory Craft 500E to make a spring-like appliqué project. To keep things simple, I decided to use a design that was already in the SimpleCut software (included with the Janome Artistic Edge 15 Digital cutter ), rather than creating my own. I created a new project, chose a flower design that I found in the symbols area in the SimpleCut software, and copied and pasted three of these flowers. I adjusted the size of each of them, so they would be slightly different, before arranging them in a pleasing design.
Then came the creative part! I filled in the flowers with colours to represent the fabrics I’d chosen so I could see the final result. These appliquéd flowers would have decorative stitching around their edges , courtesy of the Janome Memory Craft 500E.
I had lots of fun choosing different stitches for each flower.
When the design was complete, I cut out the flowers and their centres using the Janome Artistic Edge 15 Digital cutter.
The ability to move the Artistic Edge 15’s cutting blade to exactly where I wanted to start cutting eliminated wasted fabric. The red laser pointer is a fabulous tool built into this amazing Digital cutter!
I was amazed at the precision of the cuts, especially on the intricate flower centres.
I downloaded the embroidery file to my USB memory stick and uploaded it into the Janome Memory Craft 500E and was ready to start stitching.
I really like how the Janome Memory Craft 500E stitches an outline for your appliqué shape (placement line), which allowed me to place the perfectly cut appliqué pieces in exactly the right positions on my background fabric. I did a trial run on a fabric scrap just to be sure everything was going to stitch out the way I wanted on the “real” background.
After fusing the appliqué shapes down, the Janome Memory Craft 500E did a fantastic job of finishing the edges of the appliqué pieces with all those elaborate – and small – stitches.
I took the finished project out of the machine embroidery hoop and popped it into a wooden embroidery hoop – it was ready to hang.
It’s starting to feel a little more like spring in my house now .