Embroidering again

A few days ago I started taking lessons on my Husqvarna Viking Designer Diamond, which I have had for over a year and understand the rudiments of, but realized that I owned a very expensive piece of machinery that was definitely not being used maximally.  Then one day, a glitch occurred that required me to travel hours to have repaired, and while I was waiting for the work to be done (can you believe it -- done while I waited?!) I talked to Sherry, a computer whiz who teaches the Diamond for the shop where I had my appointment for the repair.  One thing led to another, and I have become her student.

She lives in the same locale that I do!  So she came out to the house (a house call!!!  what a wonderful world!) for two hours the other day and began my education at the beginning, going over the embroidery part of the machine, starting with the design screen.  Each function was explained and then I had a series of exercises I had to do while she downloaded all the updates that I had not been able to figure out how to do.  Not surprising, since my security system on my laptop was keeping the download from occurring but not letting me know.  She, however, being a master at back doors and wrestling the wily computer to the ground, was able to get everything done, and voila!  My machine is now up to date.

Because I can only stand just so much of artificial practice exercises, I decided to make blocks from the Dakota Collectibles American Quilt disk that I've owned for about 10 years and have never opened.  I used her exercises to position, scale, combine threads, etc.  Everything fell into place.  It all downloaded perfectly onto my USB stick.  The stick then downloaded into the embroidery machine.  The stitch out was beautiful.  You can see three of the blocks above.  I stopped at five because I just want to make a table runner in time for the 4th of July.  

HAPPY FOURTH, everyone!

PS  We ate the tomato.  But never fear, another one is rapidly ripening even as we speak!