Purchasing time!

[amethyst73]

Ooo!  If this sale (see the first slideshow ad) applies to the Baby Lock E-line (and I don't see anything saying it doesn't, but I will call ahead and make sure), then today is the day!!!

And if it doesn't apply, I shan't go down to Sunnyvale today.  I'll go tomorrow instead, when the store is likely to be less of a madhouse than it will today.  There's a really convenient E-line I class that meets the Tuesday evenings of the 3rd and the 10th that I want to get into.  (My church choir rehearsals start Wednesday the 11th, and I'd like to not have to have a lot of weeks where I'm out late doing stuff Tuesday and Wednesday both.  There's also an all-day-Saturday version of the same class, but I'm fairly sure I'd burn out if I did it all in one day.)  And, well, I want to have an opportunity to play with my machine a bit before class starts.  (Next week is looking really busy, so I'd probably not be able to purchase it until Friday/Saturday.)

The other thing about the sale, if it applies?  It will make me feel MUCH better about ordering one of the super-packs of embroidery threads from JoAnn's while the 40% thread sale is going on.  (I was going to anyway, but I was being sad even at the sale prices.)

Speaking of machine embroidery thread:  Recommendations for brand?  Type (rayon or polyester)?  I've seen complaints about thread breakage/fraying with just about everything, though Sulky seems to be something of an exception, so I'm leaning that way.

(I also have a bunch of stoopid n00b questions about embroidery, which I'll post later.)

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ETA: Sale includes the E-line!!!!!!  I'll be heading over after lunch.  :D

Comments

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Yaaaaaay!

I'm currently hanging some shelves so that I can put my sewing machine supplies up out of the way so that I can clear the table surface so that I can get back to my sewing projects. It feels SO GOOD.

I think I need a bias tape maker. I have all these adorbs fabrics that would make great edgings.

[amethyst73.livejournal.com]

You're fortunate to have a permanent space for sewing. Our house is tiny, so I set up and take down on the dining room table (which fortunately doesn't get used for anything else except cat-holding, but I obviously can't leave my stuff out there 100% of the time).

Huh. Is there a foot that would let you do binding with regular fabric? (My old Singer has a piping foot, which I've never tried to use, but that's different from the binding foot, which I've also never used.)

[onyoukai.livejournal.com]

My personal experience with embroidery threads in the machine:

I've used Madeira, Robison-Anton, and Coats & Clark. My favorite of the 3 is Madeira.

Madeira has a LOT of types of thread. I've used Polyfil and Rayon for embroidery, and Aerofil for regular sewing.
- Aerofil can be used for both, but it's really strong and makes a great sewing thread - and it's matte, not shiny, which is totally awesome in my book.
- Rayon is really pretty, but it is a weaker fiber in general and you have to take more care of a rayon thread than a polyester thread. If you just toss an embroidered garment with a rayon design in the washing machine, the thread in the design may come out frayed or damaged.
- Polyfil looks pretty much just like Rayon, except it's made of polyester instead of rayon fiber. This means it's stronger and less prone to damage or breakage.

Robison-Anton is SHIT. I have SO many problems with it breaking in the machine or, worse yet, actually knotting up on the underside and forming these huge rat nests that get caught in the feed dogs and bobbin race. At the minimum, I find the top thread breaks several times during the course of a project and I have to rethread the machine over and over again. At worst, I have to cut out giant knots from the bottom and pick out a LOT of thread from the top and go back 200 stitches to try again. I have to seriously babysit the machine whenever using this brand, and just in paranoia I find myself stopping the project every so often just to carefully peek underneath and make sure there are no knots yet. Avoid this thread like the plague. I never had NEARLY so many problems with Madeira.

Coats & Clark embroidery thread is very thick compared to most other embroidery threads. While it didn't knot up really badly like Robison-Anton, I still had trouble with it stitching nicely on top. The final result just didn't look as nice or as classy to me as a finer thread does. On the other hand, if you want a "hand-sewn" look, you can achieve that with this thread because it's larger. (I do use Coats & Clark embroidery thread for regular sewing sometimes, though - specifically, when I need to topstitch on shiny fabrics. You need an embroidery needle though or it WILL constantly break on you.)

I've used Sulky for hand-embroidery and wasn't impressed. I kept having problems with the thread untwisting. But, I can't say from personal experience if this problem would persist when using it in a machine.

For bobbin thread, I use Finishing Touch. I used to use Madeira Bobbinfil, but I switched to Finishing Touch on the advice of coworkers at the sewing machine store. Apparently Baby Lock machines are calibrated specifically for Finishing Touch thread (or, at least the Ellegante is). I noticed a huge improvement after I switched.

[amethyst73.livejournal.com]

Thank you VERY much for the advice! I think my machine came with a roll of Finishing Touch, and I see I can get it on Amazon, though I'll check prices vs my dealer to see who's cheaper.

I ended up with a pack of Mettler polyesters. Perhaps my dealer had more Madeira than rayon for colors, but rayon was basically what I saw for Madeira. (They did have an Aerofil board, actually, which I'll have to buy a spool off for class in a couple of weeks.)

[onyoukai.livejournal.com]

If you find a thread you like working with, it's totally worth getting a color card. I have a Madeira Rayon color card somewhere. It has actual thread samples of every single Rayon thread Madeira makes, so I can see a full range of colors and thicknesses. This means I can actually shop online for thread and get the type I like. Madeira isn't carried as often by retailers compared to other brands, and the mom-and-pop shops often don't even carry the entire color spectrum or all the specific thread types.

[amethyst73.livejournal.com]

Ooo, that sounds really useful! (Note to self: one source for reasonable $$ here (http://www.redrockthreads.com/thread-charts/), but they don't carry Madeira.)

Eddie's looked like it had an excellent collection of the Mettlers, though I don't know whether it was exhaustive. (Oh yeah - I also picked up three metallic threads because whoa, the pretties. Not that I'm ready to use them anytime soon, but 20% off sounded like a Good Thing for something I know I'll eventually want. Heh - I already have my first custom embroidery project in mind, and I haven't even started using the patterns that are _already_ on the machine!)

So for the most part, it's okay to throw polyester embroidery through the laundry (presumably on delicate)? Even big, fairly solid patterns?

[onyoukai.livejournal.com]

Make sure you get needles marked as "Metallic" for working with metallic threads. I've never worked with metallic threads myself, but Sionna has and could give you more input there.

Yes, I've put garments with polyester-thread embroidery in the washing machine on a delicate cycle with cold water and it's come out fine. You may get a little puckering with some fabrics, but that can generally be solved with some very careful ironing from the reverse side and gentle tugging.

I wash all my cosplay garments in cold water. Some things I hand-wash and some things I'll machine-wash on delicate. Some things I let drip-dry, and other things I'll put in the dryer.

With regards to embroidery in particular...

I've put Byakuya's haori in the washing machine. All the designs are sewn in polyester thread, and the rokubantai crest on the back is roughly 9" x 6" (I think). I've actually made that garment twice, and the first version was embroidered with rayon thread. When that garment got ruined (and by ruined, I mean unexpected and unsalvageable blue tie-dye), I tossed it in the washing machine in desperation. It did not fix the color issue, and I also noticed some damage to the embroidery. Consequently, I hand-wash anything that's been embroidered with rayon thread.

I always drip-dry when embroidery is involved and never risk tossing it in the dryer.

[amethyst73.livejournal.com]

And.. ordering the thread card this weekend. Because, as you mentioned, the mom-and-pop store (that I otherwise really like) doesn't have all the colors. And I wanna do patterns (like this! (http://www.urbanthreads.com/threadList.aspx?productid=UT6603)) that require, um, MOAR COLORZ.

[onyoukai.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is, I haven't done any multi-color designs yet. It's just happened that almost everything I've needed to do at this point has been single colors. There were a couple projects that I wanted to do in multiple colors, but I ran out of time and had to resort to a cheater method to finish at all. (Instead of doing fills, I did satin-stitched linework in a single color on cotton sateen fabric and filled it in with Lumiere metallic fabric paints. It was way faster than testing all those complicated fills, and the texture creates an optical illusion that looks like embroidery from a distance.)

Depending on how next year starts looking, I may dive ahead and order a Madeira Polyfil card to go with my Rayon card. I have a couple of potential projects that will probably end up with embroidery, but I need to find out if they're actually going to happen first...

[amethyst73.livejournal.com]

Your embroidery needs are different from mine, at the moment. :) (Everyone's getting tote bags for Xmas, and a few people are getting them as hostess gifts when we visit in November. I'm using either designs that came with the machine or awesome designs I find online.) I'm not sure that I would put these designs on clothing, because they're big and impressive.

[onyoukai.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of those big and impressive designs are "meant" to be put on tote bags, pillows, or maybe the backs of jackets, where the embroidery design itself is meant to be the feature element.

I really wish I had a reason to use some more elaborate, colorful designs. I actually have a CD somewhere of a ton of Japanese motifs that look really cool.

[hoshikage.livejournal.com]

I don't have the time for a full comment right now, but the short version is that I use Sulky rayon basically all the time and rarely have problems. If Sulky doesn't have quite the right color I use Gutermann rayon and that usually works fine too, I use their regular thread for sewing 95% of the time. Coats & Clark was/is RIGHT OUT because Starlet, diva that she is, flat refuses to ever work with it, and Robinson-Anton too. Sulky works 95% of the time even in the Enterprise, which is much harder on its threads than either Starlet or the Pfaff ever were. I also haven't noticed any trouble with machine-washing embroidered designs with Sulky rayon either, unless the design already had some stitching issues from the start (why yes Pfaff-run Kongiku kimono, I AM looking at YOU) but I never wash anything costume-related in anything other than Cold and Gentle/Delicate cycle, so maybe that's it? Maybe it's washing-machine-specific? Dunno. Anyway, basically as always YMMV. :P

(Darn it, there was one other thread brand I tried recently, highly reviewed too, and it turned out to be awful and broke all over the place until I pulled it out and went back to Sulky in frustration. What was it? Bah, I'll edit this comment when I have a chance to dig it out... if it's Madeira like I think it might be, I'm going to laugh myself sick at how C and I obviously get completely opposite results with like EVERYTHING EVER.)

[amethyst73.livejournal.com]

My first thought on reading this: You have the Enterprise?? Woah.

I think I'll just have to try the threads I've got and see what it does in the Esante. :) I maybe shouldn'ta bought a multipack straight off, but... well. That's what I did. Perhaps over the long weekend I can try playing a bit with embroidery as well as the regular sewing.

Geez. Wanna sew. Also wanna come and see you and get a closer introduction to your machines, but that's going to have to wait till next year...

(Sorry for not calling you btw - the week has been more hectic than I imagined!)