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The Bernina 780 – Medallion Pillow

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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

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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

The Bernina 780 – Improvisational Photo Album Cover

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Note:  The winner of the previous post is Heather K.  There is another giveaway at the bottom of this post.  
Next up in the 780 countdown?  A photo album using improvisational piecing, free motion quilting with the aid of Bernina’s Stitch Regulator, couching, and CutWork flower embellishment, this time on a smaller scale.  I used motifs from Bernina’s Stitch ‘N Bloom collection for the embroidery.  This is a great way to try out new collections!  Keep a stack of designs ready and you will be ready for your next improvisational project…

I’m not a great quilter, but I find I do much better on a smaller scale.   It is less intimidating for me to experiment in small areas.  The Stitch Regulator makes it much easier!

When I was piecing the center I also added some couching using Bernina foot #21 and decorative thread.

These CutWork flowers were so fun to make!  It was really easy to draw them out (either by hand or in a graphics application) and convert them to CutWork in DesignWorks.

Quilting – it is fun to divide up areas and do a different pattern in each.
It is easy to see this from the back.

Want to learn more about the process?  Watch the video.

I had a few CutWork flowers leftover, so let’s do another giveaway.  How might you use CutWork to embellish something you are working on?  Please leave a comment.  Deadline is this Sunday the 23rd at midnight.

Happy sewing!
Amanda