Yesterday on QUILTsocial I shared with you Lynn Swanson’s 8 essential tips for embroidering free standing lace. Today we’ll start working on the Easter door banner.

Here’s the design I made up using an Easter bunny applique Embroidery design that came with THE Dream Machine 2 from Brother. The flower design was also pre-loaded on the machine, but the eggs and lettering were a design that I downloaded from the internet.

I wanted to use this selection of Jungle Friends Fabric from Northcott, but before stitching I wanted to preview how my design would look embroidered on the white polka dot fabric. With THE Dream Machine 2, this is an easy thing to do – just follow these steps:

Step 1 – Set the fabric thickness sensor

Go to Settings Screen page 9 and set the fabric thickness sensor to OFF if you’re using light to medium weight fabrics.

Step 2 – Hoop and scan

Hoop the fabric to preview in one of the embroidery frames. The only frame that can’t be used with the built-in camera is the small one. Press the Fabric Scan Key.

THE Dream Machine 2 scans the fabric in the embroidery hoop so that it can be displayed behind the design on the screen.

Step 3 – Set Background Image Display

Next, turn on the Background Image Display option by accessing page 9 of the settings screens.

When you go back to the embroidery screen, the embroidery design is now displayed with the actual fabric as the background! How cool is that???

Now that I know what my design will look like on the polka dot fabric, I’m ready to start embroidering!! Join me tomorrow as I use THE Dream Machine 2 to do an applique embroidery – I can’t wait!