Skip to main content

Playing with Pictures

I've told you before that my Babylock Unity embroiders also.  I bought the digitizing software a few years ago that goes with the Babylock called the Palette.  I think I have version 10.  I use it to digitize designs...well, ok..I'm learning still.  Digitizing is not easy!  I figured that since I'm a mechanical engineer and I work on CAD software all day, digitizing would be a breeze.  Well, it's not!  There are a lot of little tricks and order matters. 

I played around with the picture aspect of the Palette.  Supposedly, you can scan in any picture, tell Palette that you want to digitize it and voila! You have a digitize picture that you can then embroider.  So I used one of my youngest son's senior pictures.  Isn't he handsome?  I had to crop his face or the file would have been huge!



It took a few tries and I had to adjust the number of threads, the contrast and brightness a few times before I got an image that I liked. 


It took a while to embroider it.  Oh.  One important tip.  When you're digitizing, always group your thread colors so that it will embroider one color at a time...unless you need to layer colors.  If I had not grouped this image, I would have changed out thread three million times!  Ok.  That's a slight exaggeration.  But it would have been a ton!  Here's the final image. I planned to do it on patch material so I can burn the edges.  I made a coaster for my office.


 I think it turned out pretty well.  I still need to play with it more.  But I can have some fun with the kids' pictures! 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My birthday present! A Babylock Unity!

I was pretty frustrated with my quilting machine! I have had an Elna Quilter's Pro 7200 for almost 10 years now.  It has been a great machine and we have created many beautiful quilts with it.  But,  the time had come for a new machine. After looking through reviews and watching YouTube videos and playing with machines at the sewing center,  I bought a floor model Husqvarna Topaz 30. I was so excited.  It could embroider,  it could quilt....I went home feeling good because I got a good deal on it.  But my excitement was short lived.  The first time I tried to embroider on it,  the bobbin decided to eat thread!  What did I do wrong?! So I emailed my sales lady,  and she gave me pointers.  I got it to embroider a few things,  but I kept fighting that hungry bobbin!  It kept eating thread. I took it back a few times,  but still no luck.  My wonderful,  understanding husband suggested I trade it in on a ...

Paper Piecing 101

I made my first paper pieced block! I pulled it from the Carol Doak website. She has a lot of free patterns on her website.  You guys should check it out because some of the patterns are pretty neat. It's just www.caroldoak.com. I have been wanting to try paper piecing for a long time, but have been scared to try it . I found this pattern on the Carol Doak website because it was labeled Paper Piecing for Beginners. That's me! It was not as hard as I thought, but you have to pay attention to how you place the fabric before you sew it to make sure it's going to cover the entire space correctly. The picture above shows the paper with the lines that you sew on. The middle picture is how the finished block looks before you trim it.  Do not tear the paper off until after you trim the block to the proper size using the paper as your  template .  The third picture is the completed block  after  it's been trimmed to the proper size . The easiest thing to do is to p...
2018 Recap Hey guys!  I'm back!  I know I haven't posted a lot this past year.  But it's been an exciting, hectic few years for us as a family.  I've made several quilts that I'm going to blast through.  As I get older, times flies by so fast!  Not a joke.  So all of you youngsters out there, enjoy each day and don't take it for granted! 1.  The most exciting event is m y youngest son got married to a very sweet young lady, Lily.  Their picture is below.  It was the most beautiful, calm, full of love wedding that I've been to.  We had only close family and a few friends.  Aren't they gorgeous! 2.  My husband and I traveled to Italy for two weeks to see my sister and brother in law.  We had a fabulous time!  Italy is beautiful and overwhelmingly full of history! These are some of the best pictures that we took.  Our favorite city to visit was Florence, Italy by far.  We enjoyed walking and roa...