Sunbonnet sue wrecked it all

I was looking at my neglected Sunbonnet Sue blocks from the RSC16 and I had to do some digging to find the colors and alternate colors, but then I saw why I had stopped, some of the secondary colors didn’t make sense to me and some were the same, so I focused on the primary colors AND then I dug out my pile of solids for the background and started matching up colors close to the RSC16 colors for the most part and some times I did something completely different.

These Sunbonnet sue blocks were done on the embroidery machine and I couldn’t tell what file #s either, so I kind of guessed and marked them and then thought I’d pick 4 of them because those didn’t require arms or hands cut out to keep it unified and then I could stitch out 3 of each!

Of course I was dying to try my new mini iron too!! (the whole reason why I dug these out!)

After the first block, I was SOLD, I LOVE this little iron, it gets HOT FAST!!

If I hooped something like this and just did the outline placement stitches, then plugged in the iron, it was ready by the time the stitching finished…

I used Marjorie’s tip for lining the square in the hoop right, I marked the corners of this plastic template that comes with the hoop and marked onto the stabilizer, then the same on the background fabric and then put pins thru the center and those spots and used spray adhesive first on the stabilizer and then pinned thru and pressed it all flat (and removed the pins)

Here’s the blocks I did

Lime on white

white on dark green

red on blue (just love this one!)

Grey on light green

turquoise on red

Yellow on Orange

Brown on pink (old)

blue on purple (old)

orange on brown (old)

purple on yellow (old)

pink on grey ( I love this one too)

I was working on the last one and then something happened!!!!

It game me a bad error message and sounded awful and stopped working – Main motor encoder error!

Hubby to the rescue!!

“we” took it apart to see if it was lint by the bobbin- after looking online that it might be the cause. it wasn’t…

Then took the back off, nothing broken but the belt did kind of seem old and stiff, so we’ve ordered a new belt to see if that will fix it. Actually doubt it, but worth the wait and $15… otherwise I don’t know…..

WE got the belt Saturday and hubby put it on but it was still tight, he then took the other belt off – big mistake, it threw off the whole timing of the machine, where the top needle lines up with the bobbin carriage…. After emailing a person on FB (tony’s embroidery- super nice BTW! )they recommended taking it in for repairs, but I knew that we could figure out timing! after all I’ve done it a few times on my old Voyager, so I managed to find a manual online and read it a few times- the area about timing, and it was nerve wrecking… having to go into the bios of the machine, a menu I’ve never seen before, but it was actually easier to time than the Voyager, as that had a needle with marks on it on where to line it up, here the manual showed digitally where to line it up on the screen and we did it and loosened the bobbin area and set it back in place and crossed our fingers!

and guess what??

it worked!!

I was able to finish the Sunbonnet Sue block!

I even tried another owl pincushion file and it worked great too!

So, I really don’t know WHAT the problem was, we do think that it was oiling the bobbin area, which I thought I did enough, but maybe not… it works now and hopefully it will for a long while still.

I’m THRILLED that it’s working!

meanwhile I’ve finished attaching all the hexagon flowers, now there’s only the white left!