A couple months ago my husband did some computer work for some acquaintances of ours.  Knowing that I was somewhat crafty, she offered him her old embroidery machine in exchange for his work.  My husband doesn’t know much about these sorts of things, (nor in fact, did I) but she seemed eager to get it off her hands.  (I don’t think she’d used it in quite some time.)  It is an older model Brother machine, introduced around 2001.  At the time it was a top of the line home machine.  Now… well, it’s main method of receiving  files is a 3.5 in floppy drive…  In addition, the only manual that came with it was in Italian.  To say that I was daunted was an understatement. So the machine sat and waited, and my husband began to feel that he had gotten a bad deal.

Then two things happened.  A good friend gifted me with a large quantity of embroidery thread that doesn’t work well in her machine, and the end of the school year rolled around.  I am not usually the sort of parent that gets or makes extravagant gifts for my children’s teachers.  At this age in particular I usually figure that the gift of mid year school supplies is more practical.  As a teacher I was always surprised if I receive gifts from my students.  This year however, my daughter’s teacher really went above and beyond, and hey, I had this new machine just sitting there.  This winter I made a tote bag for a friend, and it was pretty easy, and not too fabric intensive, so off to the fabric store I went.

Here is the result: a reversible tote bag with a bright summer print for summer, and an embroidered quote about teaching (picked out by my daughter) for the school year.

All I can do for the moment is text.  The machine came with a few per-programmed designs, but nothing in my style.  I need to get either a Brother card writer or a USB floppy drive in order to purchase additional patterns.  I’m still researching how to create my own designs without spending a small fortune on software.  I’m sure I’ll be posting more on the subject at a later time.