theothermarion wrote:
The only thing not included with the R. of S. Accuquilt set is a die for the stems. DH Mike bought the Accuquilt at MQX and when he asked if there were any dies I specifically wanted, I asked for the Rose of Sharon. Everything else is his.

Well that makes sense. On their website, they are calling the blanket stitch their tack-down stitch. I figured this was what they did. Your solution works perfectly but requires more time.

It is possible to have an actual tack-down stitch and have a blanket stitch and make it look very nice with no show through but a lot of digitizers don't take the time to do it because it requires many sample stitch-outs to get it perfect. My personal opinion is that for $100, I would have expected better. My commercial customers would fire me if I gave out a design that required more work than necessary. Home embroiderers are much less demanding.

I have the Rose of Sharon embroidery designs also. I don't have the accuquilt. On the applique sections, there is a placement line and a blanket stitch. . When I work with the designs, I will stitch the placement line, glue a rough cut piece of fabric down with Roxanne's or Elmer's, back the stitch-out up & repeat the same placement line for a tack-down, then cut the fabric against the stitching with scissors, then stitch the blanket stitch outline. This is the way many applique designs are digitized. The Rose of Sharon digitizers left the tackdown out, possibly because there may be offset problems with the blanket stitch, allowing the tackdown to show through the blanket stitch. This could be fixed in embroidery software.

One of my friends bought the digitized embroidery designs and the accuquilt go dies, and encountered problems. If I remember correctly, the embroidery designs are too big for most sewing machines and the dies are not a complete set. she had to spend a lot more money to get things to work right, and they still are not complete. Before I bought those, I would contact Sharon Pederson and Accuquilt and get more information.

JudithLee wrote:
Wow! You certainly do know a lot about this stuff. I will try this again tonight when I get home from work and get back to you, if that is okay.
Thank you for your help!!!

Judy

ladyquilter wrote:

I searched and found the designs you have hoping to be able to see a close-up of the embroidery. The pictures really do not allow me to see hardly any embroidery but I did look at the stitch-outs. It appears that they set up the designs to:

stitch the outline where you are to place the applique
then you place the fabric inside the area just stitched
it then says it stitches the 'tack down' stitch

I believe their 'tack down' stitch may be the actual decorative stitch that is the finish stitch. I say this because the next step they mentioned was the next outline stitch. I may be wrong, but I didn't see that they went back and stitched anything over the tack down stitch. If I am correct, then you will want to really make sure that your applique is secured to the background fabric well. If it is not and the tack down is say a pretty flower outline, then the normal stitching of the embroidery will 'push' the fabric around and may a registration hiccup. I would have purchased a block so I could look at it, but they don't allow the purchase of just one block.

okay, I understood everything you said and it sounds like you did everything correctly (I probably wouldn't make my applique shape so stiff however). You said "then you stitch the rest of the design." When you did this -- did the design start off by going around with a zig zag or a straight stitch and actually tack down all of the applique piece before doing any of the regular stitching or did it just start off doing say a satin stitch in one area and then moving to the next area?

I'm happy to call you to discuss if you would like to email me privately your phone or you may call me if you'd like. My number is 503.756.1426.

"I have not seen the embroidery designs, but when you say you traced the template -- was there a template that you could print off that gave you the applique pieces or did you actually stitch the outline of the applique on paper and use that to cut your applique out? Making sure you get the applique exact is very important.

Also, once you cut it out and stitched the outline, how did you go about placing the applique piece on in the area? Did you place it there and try to hold it with a bamboo stick or did you use a little bit of Elmer's glue underneath so that the applique didn't shift.

And, one more question (sorry for the flurry of questions) -- after you placed the applique piece down and you told your machine to start stitching, what happened next? Did the machine do a tack down stitch all around the applique before it started doing the pretty stitching?[/quote]"

I starched the fabric first with very heavy starch that I mix myself from the big bottles of concentrated liquid starch. Then ironed it stiff as a board.
I printed off a template for the applique shape, and put it on my light box, with the fabric on top, and then the template shape directly onto the fabric over my light box.
Then I cut it out with scissors.
Then I hooped my background fabric with OESD cutaway stabilizer.
Then the design stitches out a placement guide for you to place your applique shape on.
I was concerned that rubbing glue-stick on the back of the fabric might distort the shape, so I chose to turn the shape upside down and spray a little temporary adhesive on it - just enough to be sticky but not enough for the fabric to get wet and distorted.
Then you stitch the rest of the design.
The applique stitching would look okay on most of the sides, but leave a little background fabric between the applique shape and the digitized embroidery stitches.
Hope this makes sense.

I am interested in your reply to this as I bought the Rose of Sharon embroidery designs but haven't started the project yet.

JudithLee wrote:
Judy,

I have not seen the embroidery designs, but when you say you traced the template -- was there a template that you could print off that gave you the applique pieces or did you actually stitch the outline of the applique on paper and use that to cut your applique out? Making sure you get the applique exact is very important.

Also, once you cut it out and stitched the outline, how did you go about placing the applique piece on in the area? Did you place it there and try to hold it with a bamboo stick or did you use a little bit of Elmer's glue underneath so that the applique didn't shift.

And, one more question (sorry for the flurry of questions) -- after you placed the applique piece down and you told your machine to start stitching, what happened next? Did the machine do a tack down stitch all around the applique before it started doing the pretty stitching?

Judy,
I think your best best would be to contact both Accuquilt and the manufacturer of the embroidery designs.

Has anyone tried using the Rose of Sharon Accuquilt Go! dies with the new digitized Rose of Sharon embroidery designs.

I bought the Rose of Sharon embroidery designs, and tried a few of them by tracing the template and cutting the applique pieces of fabric out, but I get some gaps between the applique pieces of fabric and the digitized embroidery designs. I want the embroidery to stitch out right on the edge of the applique fabric. Hope I am explaining this half-way clearly.

I wondered if I bought the die set for the Rose of Sharon, and cut the applique pieces out with Accuquilt Go!, if I would get accurate registration.

Judy Austin