Stitching, Stitching

Part 1: Starting and Ending Coordinates for 9mm designs

By Glynda Black

Here’s another exercise which will familiarize you with a little more about the PCD_win 2.1 program and
how to use it.

First Scroll: Repeating Outline Scroll

Open up the scroll.pcd program that comes with the software. You will find it in whatever drive and directory you have the PCD program in. Zoom out so that you can see the whole scroll. (Zoom in and out as you need to in this lesson.) If you hit “home” on the keyboard, you’ll see that the starting stitch has a y coordinate of 20, but if you hit “end” on the keyboard, the last stitch has a y coordinate of 18, so right away, we see there’s a problem with this design. The starting and ending y coordinates should be the same.

To see what the difference is, click on the Maxi screen, and the scroll will pop into that bigger screen. Now go to Edit/Select All or hit ctrl-M, and Edit/copy or ctrl-c. Hit “end” on the keyboard, and Edit/Paste or ctrl-v. The repeat of the scroll comes in at the end of the design, but notice that the scroll ends overlap a bit. This may or may not be a problem, depending on how well balanced your machine is. Since this isn’t an easy kind of design to stitch well anyway, the overlap probably doesn’t matter a whole lot in the actual stitching. (TIP: An outline that runs in an oval pattern; that is, out around a design and back to the start, is much harder for the machine to stitch than a design that runs straight forward.) For our purposes, we want it right, so let’s correct it. Delete the second scroll; that is, hit the UNDO tool.

With one repeat of the design on the screen, hit the “end” key, and you should see stitch #48 has a y coordinate of 18. Hit the move tool (it has 4 arrows on it) in the toolbar, and move the last stitch up with the keyboard arrow keys and to the right until the coordinates read x72, y20. Hit “enter”. Leave the last stitch highlighted and do the select all, copy and paste again. Now, do you see how the scrolls interlock better? Okay, point made: starting and ending y coordinates need to be the same. Delete the second repeat by the use of the UNDO tool in the toolbar, but leave the corrected end stitch in place. Move the design back into the .pcd screen by selecting the 9mm mode at the bottom of the screen. Save as scroll2.pcd so that you will have a corrected version of this scroll pattern to use in your sewing.

Second Scroll: Repeating Satin Stitch Scroll

Then while the single design is on the screen, continue with the lesson in the maxi screen. We want to fill this scroll with Fill A. Not only will it be a prettier design, but it will stitch better than the outlined scroll. Find the start of the pattern by hitting the Home key on your keyboard. Then run through the design with the forward arrow -> key to see how the program stitches. You will see it goes all around the design to the start and then starts back on the underside of the scroll till it gets to the last stitch.

The reason the program is written with the outline completing the scroll and then tracing back up the underside is so that the scrolls will interlock. If that underside line wasn’t there, your machine would simply stitch over and over in the same place; you would never get a line of scrolls. We don’t need this underside stitching on the design, though, for our satin stitching is going to carry the design forward by itself, and we’ll connect them another way. So delete all the stitches from the end of the design back through stitch #39 so that the stitches trace around the scroll only once and stop one stitch short of the same place the design started. Your scroll will not have the ends meeting on the left of the design. There will be a gap between the first and last stitches.

Now, we’re going to fill it with Fill A. (TIP: Fill A does not require a closed design like Fill B does.) Hit the fill stitch tool in the tool bar (4th from the right), click on fill A, .3 density, no center stitch or base stitch, and ok. You’ll get a little crayon icon on the screen. Hit Home to get to stitch one. Starting with the #1 stitch highlighted, hold down the shift key and press the forward arrow key until you get to the stitch before the right point of the scroll; this is stitch #19. (The Actual No. box will tell you what stitch you’re on.) Hit “enter.” Now, forward arrow past #19, and with the cursor at #20, highlight with the shift and forward arrow until you get to the last stitch in the design, stitch #38. (The segment of stitching between stitches 19 and 20 is NOT highlighted.) Hit “enter.” The scroll will fill automatically; accept the stitches. Now, you have a satin stitched scroll; however, it’s not quite ready to stitch yet.

Did you notice how I started filling the scroll from the ends of the scroll which were extending beyond the companion stitch on the other side of the scroll? For instance, stitch #38 is further right than stitch #1. Also stitch #20 is further to the right than stitch #19. So I start the fill with #1 and go to #19, skip the space from #19 to #20, and then I fill from #20 to #38; the sides of the scroll are slightly offset from each other, and that causes the fill to tilt slightly to the left and makes the fill follow the flow of the scroll. If you have a leaf, you’d also offset the sides of the A fills for a tilt to the fill. Also, this technique makes for a sharper point than if you clubbed off the end of the leaf or a scroll with parallel lines which ended directly across from one another. The way the stitches slant also affect the shine of the thread. This is used in making a leaf look like it has two sides. One side of the leaf has thread slanting one direction, and the other side of the leaf will have the thread slanting another direction.

Getting back to our scroll, we need to add a few stitches to this scroll so that the scrolls will stitch like an twisted rope, somewhat like stitch #167 (7500 series) or #90 (1475). (This scroll will look different from those, though.) With the last stitch of the scroll highlighted, hold down the ctrl key on the keyboard and with the arrow keys on the keyboard, move the new stitch to x72, y20. There will be a long line between the last stitch of the scroll and this new point we’ve added. Now, with the last stitch of the design highlighted, hold down the “shift” key and with the reverse < - arrow, highlight one stitch back. That long stitch will be highlighted.

We’re going to break this long stitch up into smaller ones and then move them into place. While the long stitch is highlighted, go to Tools/ Stitch Length. A dialog box will appear, and the length of the highlighted stitch will be in it. Mine was 10.47mm. Change that to read 2.5mm and hit “enter.” You’ll see several stitches pop into that long line. Deselect them by clicking somewhere on the screen. Now, we want to move them into position. The last stitch is already in place, so go back to the first in the long line, and click on it. Hit the MOVE tool (4 arrows), and with the arrow keys on the keyboard, move the stitch point until it is just inside the edge of the scroll. Highlight the next stitch, and move it into place the same way; try to keep the stitches evenly placed. You just want to see the tips of the zig-zag stitches beyond the straight stitches we’ve just put into place. If the straight stitches are outside the zig-zag stitches, the line will separate from the scroll; if it’s just slightly inside the scroll, it will snug up to the scroll just right. Now, hit “home” on the keyboard. You should see that the y coordinate is 20. Hit the “end” on the keyboard, and you’ll see that the y coordinate is also 20. Change the screen to the 9mm screen. Save this stitch as satscrl.pcd.

Part 2: Starting and Ending Coordinates for 9mm Designs

By Glynda Black

Third Scroll: Satin Scroll and Circle

Would you like another version of this design? With the satin scroll design you’ve just done showing on the 9mm screen, hit “end” on the keyboard, and remove the stitches we just put on the end of the scroll. We’re just getting rid of the straight stitches that go back up the scroll. Now go to Machine/Insert Stitch Program, and choose #165 for the 7500 series or #127 for the 1475. This will pop a satin stitched circle into the program at the end of the scroll. We need to clean up the circle a little, though. Hit “end”, and delete the last stitch of the circle pattern. Then click on the last stitch of the *scroll*, and delete all the next stitches which are piled on top of one another as well as the traveling stitches for the satin stitched circle; there will be a single slanting stitch connecting the scroll and circle. Click on the last stitch in the *scroll,* not the last stitch of the design. The coordinates should be x133, y35. Now, what we want to do is bring the circle in line with that last stitch of the scroll. So we need to move the circle so that its first stitch is lying at x133, and then we want to lower it.

With the highlighted cursor on the first stitch point of the circle, hold down the shift key and click on the last stitch of the circle. Did you see that the whole circle is now highlighted? You didn’t have to run the cursor through all the stitches to highlight the circle. Hold down the shift+ctrl keys or hit the move tool in the toolbar (four arrows) and with the reverse arrow key < -, watch the x coordinate reading as you move the highlighted circle back toward the scroll. When it reaches x133, move with the down arrow key until the circle sits on the bottom of the screen, and hit “enter”. The scroll will join smoothly to the circle.

Now, we need to insure that the design stitches straight. I’ll show you why we’re going to do the next step. Click on the Maxi screen to bring the design into it; highlight everything you see in the screen with a ctrl-M or Edit/Select All, and then copy it with a ctrl-C or Edit/Copy. Hit “end” on the keyboard, and hit ctrl-V or Edit/Paste. You will see the second repeat of the design come into the screen, and it will be highlighted. Don’t deselect it. Notice what happened to the design at the bottom of the screen. Do you see how it’s slanting up? If you leave the design like this, that design will slant up just like that as you stitch it. What caused this? It was because the first and last stitches of the original pattern were not on the same width (y) coordinate. Now, while the second repeat of the design is highlighted, hit delete or UNDO, and you will be left with the original pattern.

As I’ve just showed you, you need to get the ending point of the design on the same width (y) coordinate as the first stitch. Well, what was the y coordinate of the first stitch? Hit “home.” There it is, y20; you can see it in the coordinate information at the bottom of the screen. Now, hit “end” on the keyboard. Do you see that the end stitch is on the y27 coordinate? We need to change that to y20. What we will do is add a stitch at the end of the circle to y20. So hit “end” on the keyboard and hold down the ctrl key and the down arrow key until the coordinate for that last stitch is y20. Now hit “enter”.

Okay, let’s check what we’ve done. Edit/Select All or hit ctrl-M; do a copy with Edit/Copy or ctrl-c. Hit “end” to highlight the last stitch in the design. Hit ctrl-V or Edit/Paste to paste another repeat of the design in the pattern screen. Do you see that now the design lies along the bottom of the screen evenly? This design will stitch straight. Delete the last repeat, click on the 9mm screen, and save the design as scroll3.pcd.

Fourth Scroll: Variation on Scroll 3

Now, what if you want to vary the way the scroll and circle combine? With one pattern of the design we’ve just completed in the maxi screen, highlight all the design, copy and paste it to the end of the design. Forget how? Look back at the last paragraph. Okay, now you should have the first repeat on the screen followed by a highlighted second repeat. They both lie along the bottom of the screen, and it looks like the scrolls angle through the first circle.

While the second repeat is highlighted, hit the mirror key in the tool bar. That’s the 6th tool from the right. The second repeat, the one that’s highlighted, will mirror itself vertically. Now, you see that the scrolls seem to travel across the top of the first circle instead. Now, how would another repeat work? We know the first stitch was on y20, so hit “end” on the keyboard and see where the last stitch of the second repeat lies. It’s on y34; the last stitch of the design is highlighted, so hold down the ctrl key or hit the set stitch key on the tool bar (second blue key from the left) and with the down arrow key, add a stitch. Move the down arrow key until the coordinates read y20. Hit “enter.” Now, highlight all the stitches, do a copy, and paste it at the end of the current two pattern repeat. A second two repeat pattern will appear in the screen. Do you see how much more interesting the design is now? The first two scrolls pass through the top of the first circle, and the second two pass through the bottom of the second circle. While the second two part pattern is highlighted, hit delete or UNDO to remove it. We only brought it into the screen to see how the design would connect as you sew it. You need only one repeat for this to sew correctly. Okay, this version of our design is ready to save and stitch. Save it as scroll4.pcq. This one is
a .pcq design (Maxi) because it’s too long to go into the 9mm screen. You have created two variations of this design, the single repeat version and the double repeat version.

Now, try stitching them all out. Aren’t they pretty? When you’re hot, you’re hot!