This wall hanging was completed for a specific purpose. At the time I was an Educator for Baby Lock, and Designs in Machine Embroidery (DiME) asked those of us who were interested to participate in the 2019 Stitch Along Tour. I am particularly proud of this one not only because it appeared on DiME’s website, but I also received emails from other people in the industry commending me on my use of the features of the Baby Lock Solaris.

For this blog, I’m going to explain my process partly in writing and video. We were given one set of the preprinted panels from the Farmhouse Collection: Sentiments by Designs in Machine Embroidery (DiME). We had to use a few designs from the collection and have fun giving it the Baby Lock touch using the built-in features of our machines.

I used the included wood grain embroidery design for the background, the floral spray and heart. Then I used IQ Designer to create an embroidery design of “The Gathering Place” and the stitching in the border.

I felt like the panel needed some color in the center and that’s where the creative energy started flowing.

It’s kind of hard to write this all down, so take a look at this short video below to learn about my design process.

Next task was to add some pizzaz to the plain black border I had sewn on. I scan the fabric panel in IQ Designer as a background image and “painted” it with a decorative fill. Below shows the first section stitched out and how I had to work in sections, because I was restricted by the size of my embroidery hoop.

Once the design was “painted” I could export it to another section of the machine as a bona fide embroidery design. Below is actually the last section of the border.

A close up of the embroidery along the border. It really is all stitched!!!

Check out what others participants did with their panels for more inspiration here!