Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Seeing stars

If you are looking for my Colonial Needle blog hop post, it is HERE

Stars have been playing a big role on my machines lately.   I have, of course, made several of the stack and cut ones for my QOV quilt.   But then I changed gears a little and tried some other stars.
I got some machine embroidery(ME for short) files from Marjorie at Marjorie's Quilting Bee. She has some great ME files for sale in her shop.
Anyway, I decided to take a little "short cut" with some stars.  So I cut some fabric and headed to the embroidery machine.  Here are the ones I did so far:
 You should know that I added the small stars to the design with my machine.  The small stars are a built-in stitch and I just used my machine's edit feature to add them.
 Don't you just love the star fill (in white) ? I think it just makes it pop in a great way.
The outlining on this one is amazingly soft. I looked at the tech sheet and saw the design and thought it would be stiff and make it rough feeling.  Guess what?  Not at all. It is soft and beautiful.  The picture really doesn't do it justice.

Then I pulled out a wall hanging that I started ....... err..... a while  ago.  It didn't have any real plan or goal in mind, so I have never rushed to finish it. No, it still isn't finished BUT,  Kelly, at I Have a Notion, is having a little "Bling your Thing" photo sharing thing going.  So I decided to add my bling to the wallhanging.
I got out my clover mini iron (because I don't have the really cool tool Kelly used to set her crystals) and I got the hot set crystals (that I bought a couple of weeks ago on a whim.)
I looked at the hanging and said "The star could use some sparkle!"  So I sparkled it.
As random as the wall hanging is, I didn't worry about precise placement on these. (okay, so I didn't get them where I wanted them....I guess I need one of those tools.)

As you can see, I haven't trimmed it  yet.  I may decide to add some borders too it.  Only time will tell.

10 comments:

Snoodles said...

I so enjoy seeing what you can do with your embroidery...maybe I need to squirrel away some money for one of those machines! Your bling is fantastic. When you have a chance to finish it, you must show it off!

Barbara said...

Really neat, Gene,the red one catches my eye the most. Had to giggle where youwrote you "decided to take a little short cut". That's so you! :)
Always love bling anywhere, wall hanging looks great!

Rhonda said...

Gene, those stars are great. It's amazing the variety of machine embroidery designs there are.

IHaveANotion ~ Kelly Jackson said...

Love your ME Gene....you are learning so quickly. Guess you could always do a video for the rest of us on editing our designs :)

Great Bling Too! :)

Kelly

Kate Brown said...

I love the outline one with the lacy design, that is just so pretty! The other ones look amazing too. My machine does embroidery, I just haven't figured out how to use it yet :)
I always love a little bling too!

sewfunquilts said...

You are just having too much fun with that embroidery machine.......

Bling is always good!

SewCalGal said...

I love your blocks Gene. I really like the little ME stars under the applique ME star and I also find the bling on the star inspirational! Great idea!

SewCalGal
www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com

Peg said...

Yep it works for me too, to much bling.......garish, these are just right, beautiful in fact :0)

Peg x

Donana said...

Note to self; save & buy embroidery machine. I'm seein stars!

Marjorie said...

I just saw these stars - they're wonderful. I especially like the way you did the pink one - and the colors you used make me want a whole quilt just in pink, white, and blue. The edge stitch you used on the jeweled star gives me an idea for a new edge design--thank you.