Two years ago I bought myself a new combination sewing/embroidery machine, a fancy-dancy Brother Innovis 4500D Duetta.  Although there are many things about the machine I like, it has also always intimidated me a bit.  With my go-to machine (Bernice, my lovely Bernina 1630) on the fritz and in the shop now for 7 weeks waiting for a replacement part, I’ve been getting to know this machine a lot better – and I love it more every time I sew on it.  He finally has a name – Brewster.  I took Brewster with me to my last quilt retreat and I have to tell you, he was a complete joy to sew on.  But although I’ve bought the threads, stabilizers, designs and notions needed for machine embroidery, I’ve been too chicken to try – until tonight.  I got an e-mail from Brother that they were having a 50% off sale for Disney designs, and knowing how much Juliette is into all Princesses Disney these days, I browsed out to the site and showed her some of the design on my iPad.  She REALLY likes Snow White, and immediately picked a Snow White design she wanted me to get for her.  At $3.50, who could argue?  So I screwed up my courage, got out my machine to learn how to attach the embroidery unit and foot, bought the design, downloaded it to my machine, and stitched it out. I decided to sew it on one of her undershirts in case it turned out bad.   I did have one mishap, since I didn’t take the shirt apart first, but I was able to stop the machine, snip the few threads that caught up the bottom, back up 10 stitches and start over again.  Thank goodness for a really easy to use and intuitive machine.  I didn’t have to look up any of the directions for all of that.  And the knit shirt wasn’t the best idea, parts of the design shifted badly enough that the outline stitches are not aligned properly, but Juliette won’t care one bit, I don’t think.  So I have a little surprise for her when she wakes up tomorrow.  Yay for me, and for her!  A two-fer.  Lord, took me long enough for the first one though, right?!

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