Free Embroidery Designs

It is a New Home Model 609. Says CHAIN STITCH on upper left. Probably from the 70’s. It has 29 stitch patterns + buttonhole stitch settings. It is a nice machine. Obviously it must lockstitch, I don’t know. I’m confused. I read about chain stitches and lockstitches. Still confused.

Chainstitch ability is relatively rare among home machines (though it’s now found on a serger fairly commonly). I suspect one of the stitches the machine is capable of is a two-thread chainstitch, which can be useful for something like embroidery or basting. The other stitches are probably standard lockstitches.
You may need an adapter of some sort to get the chainstitch.

Try out the stitches. You’re looking for one that looks like straight stitch on top, but the bobbin thread makes a chain on the bottom:
check figure 1 here: http://www.sewnews.com/library/sewnews/library/aamach22.htm or you’re looking for a 1 thread chainstitch like this, done by a chenille machine:
http://www.chholderby.com/Embroidery/chenille.htm

Here are some chainstitched examples from an old Willcox & Gibbs treadle:
<http://www.thetreadlersvillage.com/Chainstitch_Machine_Projects.html> Farther down the page is a piece of a Kenmore manual showing converting a lockstitch capable machine to a chainstitch. Some of the older machines did a 1 thread chainstitch.

Lockstitch looks like the diagram on this page– same top and bottom:
<http://www.moah.org/exhibits/archives/stitches/tech.html>

My MIL’s clothes, when she was a girl, were made on a Willcox and Gibb chainstitcher she now owns. When she wanted to get sent home from school, she’d unravel part of her dress. She found the chainstitch very helpful in that endeavor. <g>

You might try asking questions specific to your machine in the yahoo group "wefixit" — it’s a group of sewing machine "shade tree mechanics" and includes a number of professional machine repair people. There is a tremendous collective knowledge pool in that group, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find someone might be able to tell you exactly how to set up your machine for chainstitching.

I have been asked to transfer and embroidery by hand an image and some lettering on to work uniform of a cousin of mine, this is the first attend at embroidery and actually getting the image of what she wants and the adding the extra words of her workplace is stressing me out, has any one any really simple put affective ways of achieving this project, I have a simple sewing machine and have also have been looking up how to free embroidery by machine, I have the wooden hoop, and nothing else, i.e. water water-soluble stabilizer or pencils etc.. I also have no idea how to place the design on her work tunics and tops. Please help a complete novice. Any tips or ideas would really be appreciated.

If this is your first embroidery project, then tell your cousin to find a professional embroidery shop and have it done. Beginners can very rarely make professional looking embroidery by hand… it takes months and years before you get to the point that you can do lettering in a professional manner, for instance. Lettering by free motion embroidery is almost as difficult.

And in the meantime, practice. But not on someone’s uniform.

Best book I know of on free motion machine embroidery: Fanning and Fannig: http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-Machine-Embroidery-Creative/dp/0801976480 Hand embroidery is a much broader subject: I’d probably start you with one of Erica Wilson’s books, and then move you to Royal School of Needlework Embroidery Techniques by Saunders, Butcher and Barret.

In answer to your question: how would I do the transfer? I’d either use a heat transfer pencil, a perforated stencil and chalk, direct drawing with a soft lead pencil, or basting. Depends on the substrate being embroidered.