In-the-hoop machine embroidery project

I finished a project. This was a kit I bought from sulky.com after I watched one of their free webinar classes on an in-the-hoop project. I don't think the kit is available any more but you can still get the design from Pickle Pie Designs and use your own fabrics. 

I've been out of machine embroidery for a number of years so these kind of projects, where you do both the embroidery and the construction in the hoop, are new to me. I wouldn't have been able to do them on my 7570 because not only were the hoops too small, but I no longer had a way to get designs into the machine except through the special cards. My new machine is a Pfaff Creative 3.0 and it comes with a large 260x200 mm hoop, or roughly 8x10 inches. This was a fun little project. The first block took me a long time because I didn't want to mess it up, since I only had the fabrics from the kit and no extra. I think it turned out really cute. My kit also included a book, also from Pickle Pie Designs: Modern Machine Embroidery It contains helpful information about machine embroidery, step by step instructions for a number of projects and a CD with designs. 

Machine embroidery is not an inexpensive hobby, nor is it always simple. There are so many different kinds of stabilizers on the market now. Back when I started with my 7570 in the early 2000's, there seemed to be only cut away, tear away and water dissolving. Now they have mesh and woven, heat soluble, fusible and more. Which one to use for which application gets confusing fast, even though the manufacturers all have charts and color coding to help you. There are many different types and weights of threads too. And designs! Oh my, so many designs. 

And then there's the embroidery machine. A few years ago I intended to replace only the embroidery function of my 7570 by buying a standalone machine, but ultimately decided to stay with the Pfaff brand. Back when I bought my 7570, it was their top of the line and only sewing/embroidery machine. This time I went "middle of the road" with the Creative 3.0 - there's a less feature-full 1.5 model and a more feature-full 4.5 model and then the top of the line "Icon." Now my 7570 was expensive when I bought it and the Creative 3.0 was not cheap either but the Icon costs as much as a new car. It projects an image of what you're going to embroidery onto the fabric and has speech recognition. It's no longer a computerized sewing/embroidery machine, it's a computer that sews and embroiders.

It's fun to embellish a few things with embroidery and I plan to do more of it. It's a luxury to have such a machine and to afford the threads and materials to do this for fun. Now I just need to find some more time to devote to it!  

Oh happy day!

I am able to use my VIP Customizer embroidery software on our Windows 7, 64-bit machine and send designs to my Pfaff 7570! Woohoo! Happy dance!

It was a convoluted, ridiculously long process during which I had not one, but TWO blue screens on the computer. But I did it! It is sad (and frustrating) that it was such an ordeal, and crazy that I am so happy about accomplishing it that I will blog about it. But it works and I can continue to use the machine and software I've already invested in and hold off purchasing a standalone embroidery machine. Yes, there could be benefits to having a second machine to do embroidery, and it would be nice at times to have a 5x7 field, but there are drawbacks too. The biggest reason for not buying a second machine is that I don't need more stuff. Plus I don't have the room for it.

So for anyone who comes here in search of a solution, I will tell you what I did (and this will also document it for me in case I have to do it again.)

First, VIP Customizer will not run on a Windows 7 64-bit machine. I know I said I got it to work, but it's because I'm running it in XP mode. See, Microsoft realizes that although most software will run fine in Windows 7, some does not, so they have (thankfully) provided a way to run XP in a virtual mode and let you keep using your (old) software.

1. Make sure you're running Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate. You cannot run XP Mode in Home Premium. Sorry.
2. Go here and follow the directions to download and install XP Mode
3. Now normally you'd be able to open VIP from your Windows 7 desktop but, there's this little purple thingy in the way. Yes, the dreaded dongle. The dongle is not recognized on 64-bit machines, so I found I have to run VIP from within XP Mode.
4. Within XP Mode you just have to make sure you "attach" the USB token before you start the program. It's a drop down menu at the top of the XP Mode window. So that's all fine and dandy. I can run VIP and even navigate to the drives living in Windows 7 world where I stored all my embroidery designs. But the designs are no good if I can't get them to the machine.
5. I can't remember which upgrade it was, 98-XP or XP-Vista, where the cable that came with my Pfaff quit working. Or maybe it was the hardware that excluded serial connectors. Anyway, the solution is the Keyspan USA 19H adapter. It's the only one that works to convert the Pfaff cable to USB. And you probably need another little adapter for the pin-pin connection between the Keyspan and the Pfaff cable.
6. The next hurdle is drivers. I went here to download the drivers. I downloaded the W7 drivers just fine and W7 recognized the Keyspan cable but it didn't do me any good because the VIP software is running in XP world and it couldn't see the cable. I downloaded the XP drivers and the machine blue-screened. Not good. The cable came with a disc containing a Keyspan Serial Adapter Assistant program and drivers. However, when I plugged in the cable from within XP Mode and let the device wizards do their thing to search for drivers, it ultimately didn't work. There was a message that there was a problem and the USB cable could not be "attached" like the purple dongle could. So the solution was to download the XP drivers from the tripplite.com site but save them to a folder instead of just choosing run. Then, unplug the cable and from within XP Mode, go to the folder and click it and expand it and run the install.
7. So now the cable was finally recognized (attached) and I could go embroider, right? No. Wrong COM port. The cable installs on COM3 and it needs to be either COM1 or COM2 for the VIP software. From within the Keyspan Serial Adapter Assistant program, go to Port Mapping and change it to COM1 or COM2. It said COM2 was already in use but it let me pick that one anyway. All is good now, right? No.
8. Still couldn't communicate. Back to the Keyspan Serial Adapter Assistant program to see what I can change. I changed the Endpoints from "Compatible (Interrupt)" to "High Performance (Bulk)" and that worked. I have no idea why, I don't know what the two choices even mean, all I know is that I jumped for joy and let out a whoop when I saw this:

A New Year

My first resolution of the year should be to blog more often. Believe me, there are lots of blog entries that never get from my brain to the internet.

Christmas came and went but a good time was had by all, which means me, my husband, and our four cats. I had 2 weeks off from work (woohoo!) so I tried to do everything I've always been meaning to get to but in the end I mostly watched movies, knitted, and relaxed. Not a bad way to spend a couple of weeks. I did accomplish some things, like decorating the house for Christmas, spending the day in the city with my friend spinnity, swatching and packing some fabric away, and baking Christmas cookies. But the vacation just flew by. As it does.

As far as resolutions for the new year, I mainly just want to be happy. But here goes:

1. Blog more often - see, it is first! What I really want to do is use my blog to communicate to friends and family. I want to document the things I've made and share them with others. So I will try to get the blog ideas out of my head and onto the internet.

2. Lose weight. Oh yeah. This is on most everyone's list and is on mine every year too, even when I don't make a list. We have a gym membership and we bought Dance, Dance Revolution for the XBox 360 (yes, we did!) so maybe I can dance some pounds away.

3. Embrace my hobbies. I get frustrated because I have so many interests and not enough time to enjoy them all. But I need to let go of that frustration and just enjoy what I do. I should not fret that the spinning wheel is sitting idle because while it sits, I'm sewing or knitting. As long as I am enjoying what I'm doing, then I should not feel bad that the supplies and equipment for other things are sitting idle. They will get used eventually.

4. Think before I buy. I've already been doing this although it's really tough when it comes to fabric and yarn, but I have shown restraint. When faced with tempting purchases, I try to summon up the little voice in my head that reminds me of the materials I have at home that are unused. The little voice also reminds me that I don't need more things in the house. I have to ask what the purpose of possessing the object is and if it is really worth taking up valuable space.

5. Find the good in my work. I'm talking work-work here, as in J-O-B. This is a tough one. I have issues I can't go into here. Suffice it to say that I need to hang on for the next 7 months to a year (hope it's not that long) until another contract job comes along. I don't want to leave the company I'm with but leaving the contract job at this time would not be good for my company.

6. Nurture relationships, be they friendships, family, or my darling husband. Good relationships can't be one-sided so I need to do my part in order to keep them good.

And now to put #1 and #3 into practice. One of my neglected hobbies has been machine embroidery. When I first bought my Pfaff, I thought I'd be embroidering lots of things and I did do some embroidery early on and had fun with it. But over the years I've only been collecting designs and expensive software and not much has been embroidered. We recently upgraded our home computer operating system to Microsoft Vista and that prompted me to find a way to get my embroidery software (VIP) working again. With help from my husband and the internet, we found the right drivers for the dongle and the correct type of cable and I'm back in business. Even though I had sewing, knitting, spinning and weaving I wanted to do, I took time out to embroider some Christmas designs I've been meaning to get to for a while now. These are from a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer collection I bought a while back. I intend to make them into ornaments, which is why I embroidered mirror images. I stitched them onto felt and used tear-away stabilizer on the back.

These were taken with my new camera, a Nikon Coolpix S200, which my husband gave me for Christmas. I asked for a small camera that I could slip into my purse and take with me to make snapshots of friends or things I make. It's a great little camera. It doesn't replace my Nikon D50 SLR of course but there are plenty of times when I just want a picture and don't want to deal with the lenses and stuff. My husband also got me a small camcorder, something else I asked for, so that I can take little videos of things. Here's a boring little video of my embroidery machine in action, taken with my new RCA Small Wonder. I'm sorry I chose to video when it was stitching white thread. Oh well, I'm learning!