Gertrude Alice is all dressed up

After almost 2 years of promising myself I'd do this, it's finally done. The dust cover for my Bernina 440QE is finished.
She has the following features:

• Her name embroidered on one side
• My initial appliqued on the other
• One-seam 3D flying geese comprise the rest of the design
• The geese have had their edges turned down so it looks like they are curved

Even though there are many areas in which my execution or technique could be improved, I'm still as pleased as punch. The design was simple, the colors are exactly what I wanted, and I got a chance to really use my embroidery machine to make the decorative work.
I'm as pleased as punch.

440QE Machine Cover progress

Slowly but surely, the cover for my Bernina 440QE is getting close to done. At the Bad Herrenalb retreat, I got the top assembled, sandwiched and stitched in the ditch.
A few days ago I machine-stippled the KO applique part.
Tonight I used my embroidery module on my 830 to embroider a stipple fill around the name Gertrude Alice. My top wasn't exactly square, so I went back and touched up a couple of places. Then I basted around the outside.
That means there are just 3 things left to do:

1. Add the ribbons (still on their way from stoffe.de)
2. Bind the edges
3. Tack back the geese so they will have a curved look. 
4. Ok, and add a label. I rarely remember the label is a step, too.

Getting excited!

Stitch Sampler - a long drink of water

I have been using a Bernina 440QE for several months now, and I LOVE it. It makes so many things easier than I ever imagined. For example, I just sewed a tabbed curtain for my dear daughter, and dear Hubby said I should sew buttonholes and buttons, rather than just sew both ends of the tabs to the curtain. I went into autoimmune mode, not able to imagine sewing 30 buttonholes on the 10 tabs.

When I got to the machine, and started thinking about it, though, it occurred to me that maybe the Bernina (her name is Gertrude Alice) could do buttonholes more easily than I was used to. So I took the time to learn how to do buttonholes with my nifty automatic buttonhole foot.

It was like magic! I measured the button, then sewed the first side of the buttonhole. Then I pressed the reverse button, and the machine stitched the rest of the buttonhole for me!

THEN I learned that I only needed to press the "Add to memory" button, and it would be ready to go at that exact size. Well that also worked perfectly, and my 20 (didn't need the last 10) buttonholes just flew onto the fabric. I was very impressed.

Anyway, that story has nothing to do with the picture. Early last spring, I decided to stitch out every one of the 181 stitches the QE440 has. I chose to do it on both black and white, and I chose to test out several different embroidery threads.

Daughter is holding the full thing, all 2 meters of it (she is over 175 cm herself), and here are some closeups as well. I've hung the finished piece up in my sewing room so I always have a reference to choose stitches.