Today was some work, some play, but all in all, a very nice day.  I finished up a customer quilt.  Lots of laundry done.  I played with my embroidery machine a bit.  I wanted to try Christmas embroidery on some kitchen towels.  I used a heavy cut away stabilizer, and a wash away stabilizer on top, as is recommended…and they are ok, but nothing awesome.  I don’t like how you can see white spots in the green leaves, but I don’t know what you can do about that.

I have a love/hate thing going on with the embroidery.  I’m trying to build my design library, which is certainly not cheap.  And I buy the stock packs from OESD.  My machine, a Bernina Bernette Deco 340, reads exp files.  And that isn’t a problem, except if I want the colors to load to the machine, I somehow have to convert those files to exp+ files.  NO ONE seems to be able to explain to me HOW to do that??? My machine dealer just kind of looked at me…told me my machine wouldn’t have the thread colors in it for the designs I buy and put on a stick, I just have to print out the color charts.  Well, that takes a ton of paper, and then you have to store all those printed sheets, and then you have to flip through all of them to find the one you need.  I am new to embroidery…only had my machine a little over a year…so tell me you wise experienced embroiderers…is this how it’s supposed to be? It’s really quite a lot of trouble…not to mention $$$$.  I’m just not getting it, I don’t guess.  But, it would be really nice to get a good explanation of how I’m supposed to convert to exp+ without it costing a gazillion dollars, which one answer I got would have.  I asked about this on the Bernina blog…and was told I could do it with embroidery software, and of course Bernina’s is recommended.  That’s a pricey answer.  And I still wasn’t told HOW it works, just that I could do it with the software.  I’m pretty sure that stuff cost more than the machine…like around $2,000.00.  Not that big into embroidery.  I know I’m still pretty ignorant about this craft, so if  anyone can enlighten me, I’m all ears…or eyes, I guess, since I’ll most likely be reading the responses. 🙂

I finally got around to fixing my binding booboo on my Gracie’s Star quilt, too.  Now I can get back to the hand stitching, and have a finish soon.  I really love that quilt.

Gotta go hang up laundry! And cheer for the Longhorns!