hi this is Christy from OSD and in this video we're going to show you how to stitch a design on the belly of an embroider buddy the heart applique you see on the center of this embroider bunny is a special design that was created specifically to fit right in this area but you can use any of oh yes these beautiful designs or lettering or a combination of the both to create a really personalized and special stuffed animal let's look at how this is done embroider buddies have a special zipper and special stuffed pillows that allow you to get the animal very flat in order to stitch it so the first step is to unzip the zipper then you'll pull out the pillows here we've taken out the first pillow and now you can see both pillows there's one for the head and the body so now he's flat and ready to go we're going to loop a piece of the OES D stable stick tearaway this is a great stabilizer for this project here we've scored the paper backing with a pin and we like to just put a big X with the pin and then you can peel away each of the sections until the entire adhesive is exposed within the hoop next we're going to mark on our embroider buddy where we want the embroidery to go it's pretty simple to see where the center of that design is going to go but you may want to print a template of your design to make sure it fits in this area and it's going to have the shape you want it to have within that space so here I've just used a chalk marker to mark the center of where this heart design is going to go next we're also going to hoop mark on to the stabilizer in the hoop the center of that embroidery hoop so here you can see the crosshair that we've traced right on to the stable stick stabilizer now we're going flatten the belly portion of our embroider bunny as much as we can and align the center mark that we marked on the buddy with the center mark on the stabilizer and then smooth this out as much as we possibly can and flatten that area so that we're having as much of the embroider buddy fabric touching the stable stick stabilizer as possible now you'll notice that my bear is upside down you may find depending on how your embroidery machine is arranged that it's easier to work with your design upside down so that you can manipulate and hold the bear while it's stitching you might find it's better to turn it sideways just depending on how your hoop attaches to your machine in the case for my project I found it easiest to turn the bear upside down next we're going to place the hoop on the machine and we want to if necessary adjust the position of our design so that the center of the design is right over the center mark we made it should be pretty close because we aligned the embroider buddy with the center on our stabilizer but it's very possible it's off by a little bit so we're going to make that adjustment at the machine now remembering that I've turned my inverter buddy upside down so I also need to turn my embroidery design upside down so that it will be oriented in the correct direction to stitch on my panda bear depending on how you've placed your project on your hoop just want to double-check that your design is oriented the right direction the next thing you're going to do is to place a piece of water-soluble stabilizer over the top of your project and here you can see I've stitched the first color change which for this project is the placement line for my applique you do definitely want to use that water-soluble topping because these embroider buddies have a nice fluffy finish to them and we need something that will hold the fluffy nap down while we do our stitching to keep it from poking up through the stitching of the design now we've played our placement line one thing you want to watch out for as you're stitching any portion of the design is that you will need to hold portions of the design out of the way so here I've moved on a little bit in the design you can see I'm holding the head out of the way when I'm stitching near the head and when you're stitching near the bottom we're going to hold that bottom portion out of the way so it is important that you watch this design as it stitches even though we're able to flatten the project because being able to remove the pillows we still need to keep an eye on it because there's a chance with that extra bulk that it could fall under the needle if we don't keep an eye on it so now back to where we were in our design after we've stitched to the placement line we're going to place a piece of applique fabric over that placement line if you want to you can spray the back of that fabric with the 5:05 temporary adhesive spray and then place it down over your water water-soluble topping making sure it's completely covering the placement line then you'll place the hoop back on the machine and stitch the next color change which is going to be the tack down and cut line that you see here notice that it's a double line and that is so that you can cut very close to that cut line on the outside but you still have a tack down that holds the fabric in place so you don't have to worry about the shredding of your fabric next we'll take a pair of in the hoop applications and trim them as close as possible trim this applique fabric as closely as possible to that cutting line then we'll replace the hoop on the machine and stitch the remaining color changes so in this project it's got a inner detail that will stitch next and then the satin stitch cover is the last color change here you can see we've finished stitching the design and we still have the water-soluble topping on top in most cases you can tear away almost all of the water-soluble topping if there is any little bit left on your project you can simply dab it away with a wet washcloth next we'll tear away the excess stable stick tearaway stabilizer you'll find that this stabilizer is very sturdy and perfect for holding this project in place but it also tears away very easily now we simply replace the pillows stuff the head first and then the body do pay attention as you stuff the pillows back into the bear as they do have a direction to them so you want to make sure that the pointy parts are pointing into the areas they need to to give your animal the shape it's supposed to have different animals will have slightly different shapes depending on which animal you choose we know you're going to love stitching personalized designs on your embroider buddies