Aircraft Carrier with Flag Machine Embroidery Design

Always do a test stitch out.  I'm glad that I did.  Essentially the designer plopped an aircraft carrier design atop a flag design.  The entire flag was stitched out first, then the air craft carrier was stitched over it.  Lots of wasted thread and time.  The design ends up being very dense.  The ship is stitched over the stars and you can see the bumps from the stars behind the ship. The stars are very dense and every time that I stitched over them in placing the ship, the machine needle went "plunk."  Finally it broke.  The tower of the ship has the same color value as the blue field of the flag and so it disappears into the flag.  The entire ship needed to be outlined with black to set it off from the flag behind it.  The flag itself is laid down with an entire stitching of white.  The red stripes and blue field are then stitched over it, but with just one stitching--meaning that you can see the white background through the stripes and blue field.  It gives the flag sort of sheer appearance.  Because the design is so dense in spots, it caused my Madeira thread to shred.  2 hours, 66,000 stitches, shredded thread, 1 broken needle and 1 exasperated gal.  I like the idea of the design but it was not well thought out in terms of stitching or contrast.  I plan to put my own outline around it to make the ship stand out against the flag.