Quilters who are not already a machine embroidery enthusiast just may find themselves engrossed in the craft once they realize they could incorporate machine embroidery into their quilting.

Embroidery is a traditional way to add special decorative touches to quilts. Whether by hand or machine, a quilter may accent his or her creation with embroidered flowers or other accents. But today’s machine embroidery – for those willing to try it – can make quilting quite different.

For instance, a quilter may use a simple embroidery design to let the machine “quilt” the project. Simple designs that can be stitched in one color work best, especially for the beginning machine embroidery quilter.

If you want to give this a try, look for an embroidery design that’s simple – one that you can visualize stitched into a quilt. Some redwork inspired designs work well. Other simple designs like flowers, circles, sun/moon, houses, hearts – there are all sorts of designs to choose from – can work well as quilting stitches.

Be sure to keep the quilt on top of your mind. We all know love and beauty of traditional double wedding ring quilt. While the quilt top is beautiful with a variety of colors, the quilt back is just as simple as the stitching that follows the design for the top.

What if you used an embroidery machine to quilt hearts into the quilt design? That one unexpected touch would truly make your quilt unique.

Have you ever needed to throw together a quick blanket? Many quilting professionals to laugh at the idea, but sometimes we need to give a quick gift and want it personally. Lap quilts and baby quilts are very easy to create an embroidery machine.

Simply hoop your top fabric, wadding and backing fabric into a hoop. Choose a design and get to work! Even if you quilt fabrics are one color, you can make a quick, beautiful quilt with the embroidery machine complete in no time!

Some ideas for a baby blanket for a boy would be to use outlines of footballs, airplanes, trucks, trains, etc., for your quilting pattern. The hardest part of your job will be re-hooping fabric and pushing the “start” button!

Ideas for a baby blanket for a girl include outlines of flowers, baskets, dolls, kittens, etc.

The method above uses machine embroidery on relatively small quilts. Larger quilts can be done the same way or may be quilted with machine embroidery by individual quilt blocks. Experiment to decide which method is easiest for you and remember that the machine embroidery quilting method may change with each unique project.

If you can not find your favorite model has the embroidery file, make a digital, to help you create one. Digitizer is the kind of person who needs line drawings, clip art and fonts of the artistic image, and change them to become a needle mode. So, if you want for your family tree wall hanging quilting patterns must be a tree, a digital you can create one.

Be sure to let your digitizer know you plan to use the image for quilting. The digitizer will need to plan stitches accordingly.

Quilting is rich in tradition and therefore many true-blue quilters do not like the idea of using machine embroidery to quilt their projects. Isn’t it great to try new ideas and techniques? Remember, not to long ago quilters refused to consider machine quilting at all! Embroidery machines will never take the place of quilters, but it can be a fun and rewarding sewing technique to try from time to time.