The Bernina 780 – Paintwork Leaves!

Posted on December 28, 2012March 23, 2015 by Amanda Murphy — 2 Comments

Note: The winner of the Medallion Pillow Giveaway is Allison C, who said:

I love my grandmother’s cutout sugar cookies
with lots of sprinkles which I have been craving hardcore these past few days.
I’m pregnant and far too sick to even think about cooking, but that doesn’t
stop me from craving food. (Hopefully it won’t stop you from craving fabric either, Allison!)

I sewed a lot in two weeks and still had one night left with the Bernina 780. I decided to experiment a little more with PaintWork. I took some of the leaves from my Bella feature print that I designed for Blend Fabrics and converted them in DesignWorks.

If you don’t believe these were painted by a sewing machine just watch the video!!!

Thanks so much for following along as I explored the features of the Bernina 780. Thanks also to Bernina and the staff of Sew Much Fun in Lowell, NC for making it possible.

Happy sewing and happy New Year!
Amanda

The Bernina 780 – Medallion Pillow

Posted on December 26, 2012March 23, 2015 by Amanda Murphy — 57 Comments

I hope everyone had a fabulous holiday and enjoyed the beauty of Christmas!

I’m back with one more project that I did with the Bernina 780. Yes, in response to an email that was sent to me, I did pretty much just sew for two weeks. There was no cleaning or cooking. (What a silly question.) I had a Bernina 780!!!!

This time I did a little bit more with the embroidery. The motif is taken from a medallion in my Bella collection for Blend Fabrics and converted using Bernina’s DesignerPlus software. You can see all the details in my video.

I used the 780‘s fancy stitches to add detail around the edge of the middle panel. I also used the endless embroidery option for quilting – you can see it a little in the bright pink border. The endless embroidery option allows you to take ANY of the hundreds of stitches on the 780 and size it up to use for a continuous embroidery design. It is a great option for creating a unique quillting motif – particularly for borders.

I used the Stitch Regulator to go around the circles in the outer border, accentuating their shapes.

And I used the buttonhole feature – it makes perfect buttonholes every time!

Let’s giveaway three fat quarters of Bella, plus a couple of patterns this time! To enter tell me what your favoriate holiday cookie is! One entry per person and the deadline will be this Thursday night (the 27th).

Thanks so much for following along with me and happy sewing!
Amanda

The Bernina 780 – Christmas Mantlepiece Decoration

Posted on December 24, 2012March 23, 2015 by Amanda Murphy — 4 Comments

Note: The winner of the previous giveaway is ikceb. I’ll be back with another giveaway later this week.

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone! I saved this post especially for this day. I wanted to show you how to make a festive mantlepiece decoration using PaintWork and embroidery.

I thought this Christmas card design would be a perfect vehicle for that exploration. There were certain elements that led themselves to embroidery.

While other elements lent themselves to the delicate look of PaintWork. What is PaintWork? I’m glad you asked! PaintWork is the added tool that allows the Bernina 780 to paint with textile pens!!!! Yes, you heard correctly. This machine can paint! (Actually, with this tool so can the 580 and the 830 – I tried it on the 580 that I used to sew Modern Holiday and it worked great!)

So I digitized some of the elements in DesignWorks – the snowflakes and the branches in particular.

I fused the completed design on heavyweight interfacing and added a border and binding for a quick Christmas mantlepiece decoration. For more details, watch the video.

Happy sewing and very merry Christmas!
Amanda