Classes are being canceled all over the globe due to lack of signups. The reasons given vary: gas is too expensive, scheduling conflicts, too much work to drag a machine, too expensive, inability to plan ahead, and so on.

To combat those issues, I’ve teamed up with Echidna,Australia’s largest Brother dealer, to provide a monthly embroidery lesson and accompanying project. Since the training is all downloadable, there’s no issue with time or travel.

And, since there’s no time or travel, the training is very affordable—especially when you consider the value you’re getting with each month.

And if you think it takes you a long time to make the project, try taking photos and notes of every step as you work and then writing up instructions when you’re designing the project from scratch and not following some other guide!

The project does give you a way to put into practice what you’ve learned in the lesson. The lessons and topics are designed to be “real world” uses of embroidery and include a focused look at that month’s topic.

If you print out the PDFs that come with each month’s P.I.E., you’ll end up with a big fat binder of valuable embroidery information all right at your finger tips. Already my binder has an inch high stack of double-sided instructions and that doesn’t include any of the templates or design worksheets.

Some months have over 50 pages of content not counting the templates and color sequences!

Each month’s Echidna P.I.E. slice includes a lesson, a project, plus designs (7 to 20 or more)—all for only $9.95.

For this year we’re working with designs from the Birth Month Flowers of the Year series. Most months include two flowers, such as January’s Carnation and Snowdrop, while other months only have one flower. The original designs were based on a block of the month appliqué design for 200 x 200mm sewing fields and morphed into the current presentation.

JANUARY’S FLOWERS: CARNATION AND SNOWDROP

One of the goals of the Echidna P.I.E. series is to teach you to move beyond “plop and drop” embroidery or simply replicating the design exactly as it was produced. One of the simplest ways to do that is to use different colors.

With the designs in this series, you have many ways of adding color and we’ve looked at a few ways with the appliqué versions. But how much can you do with a single color redwork design? You’d be surprised—and it happens to be one of my favorite choices!

Month 1, July: Larkspur/Delphinium—How to Appliqué
Appliqué is amazingly versatile, adding textures and patterns that aren’t possible in a thread-only design. Appliqué also works well in situations where a fully stitched design may not.

In this lesson, we’ll learn several methods of appliqué and create a design using the July birth month flower, Delphinium, also know as Larkspur. We’ll also discuss hooping and stabilizing for creating a block using quilt-weight cottons that can then be incorporated into a quilt, tote bag, pillow, or wall hanging.

• Month 2, August: Gladiolus—Perfect Placement 
  The first thing noticed about an embroidery design is its placement. In this lesson, we’ll learn how to use templates to get accurate placement.
  
  This is especially helpful for this year’s series if you have a sewing field smaller than 200 x 200mm since all the designs are optimized for that size and split for 130 x 180mm sewing fields. Even with the largest hoops, perfect placement is vital. Placement for garments will also be covered

• Month 3, September: Aster—Rearranging the Pieces 
  All of the designs in this series are provided as full-size blocks and smaller pieces. In this lesson, we’ll use customizing software to work with the pieces and create new combinations.
  
  We’ll also discuss adding lettering and when to use color sorting.

• Month 4, October: Marigold—Sheer fabrics 
  Sheer fabrics can be tricky—they are often slippery, shifty creatures. However, layering them can create some interesting effects with appliqué. 
  
  Some fabrics may create too much thickness or weight when piling up layers in appliqué but shears are less likely to do so. In this lesson, we’ll experiment with sheers as a base fabric and as appliqués. Discover how to stabilizer and tame these fabrics.

• Month 5, November: Chrysanthemum—Redwork/Quilting 
  In this lesson, we’ll look at redwork designs and how best to use them for quilting. If you’ve ever used an embroidery design for quilting, you know the back looks less than pretty.
  
  We’ll discuss ways to minimize that, compare different thread weights, and how to hoop and stabilize for quilting in the hoop.

• Month 6, December: Poinsettia & Holly—3D Flowers 
  Make a Christmas poinsettia corsage with the central motif for this month’s featured design. Embroidered corsages are easy to make and you don’t always need a 3D design to do it.
  
  In this class we’ll use customizing to separate the pieces we need for out flower, stitch out the layers and then combine them with a decorative button in the center. We’ll also look at different fabrics for the corsage and some other non-embroidery embellishments to enhance our project.

• Month 7, January: Carnation—Adding color with other media (inks, pencils, paint) 
  In this lesson, we’ll expand on non-embroidery embellishments and add color to our project with other media including inks, colored pencils, and acrylic paint.
  
  I’ll demonstrate with both the appliqué version as well as the redwork version of the this month’s flower. Colored pencils are especially easy, inexpensive and no mess. I personally love adding a touch of color this way!

A WORD ABOUT SPECIALS, SALE PRICES & COUPONS

Please pay attention to post dates and any specials listed in posts. Special pricing is for a limited time and may be repeated at some point.

Specials, sales, and freebies are always announced in the newsletter. Signup to get notifications of specials, new items, and freebies.

Additionally, shop wide coupons may be available to apply to any regularly priced items.

Coupons generally only apply to regularly priced items, not items already marked down. If your coupon doesn’t work, this may be why.

Echidna PIE Update Notice

• Please note the dates on this post.
• This Echidna PIE series is now complete and is available as a single download that includes:
  • 12 lessons and projects (412 paged PDF book)
  • 220 embroidery designs
  • templates for appliques
  • plus a bonus project
• All for only $99