It’s a great machine for piecing and quilting, and general sewing as well. It’s programmable and has all the bells and whistles like a low bobbin warning, stitch memory, decorative stitches, lettering stitches, (...)
Read the rest of Parting Ways–Pfaff 2054/2056/2058 For Sale (262 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments
Post categories: Featured, Machines, Quilting
Tags: free motion quilting, machine quilting, Machines, Pfaff love

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If you think the others have more space… you haven’t seen anything yet.

Hmmm. More work space. Must mean a longer/larger throat area, and that just might be worth having at some point. That would mean much easier machine quilting when working with larger quilts, and would cut down on pain and fatigue caused by muscling a large quilt through the machine. It would also probably mean a larger maximum machine embroidery size right out of the box without purchasing aftermarket oversized hoops.

Damn them anyway, I did not want to be tempted. Though it depends on how high the price is whether I’ll really be tempted, I’m sure. I heard rumors of many thousands of dollars, which might negate any serious temptation they can create for me.

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2008. | Permalink | 12 comments
Post categories: Machines, Quilting
Tags: Bernina 8 Series, Bernina love, machine embroidery, machine quilting

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Many years later, I was quite surprised by how many people I saw doing just that in classes, and wondering why the threads were all jammed up and they couldn’t get the fabric out of the machine. I guess they missed that part of the lesson? More recently, I’ve (carefully) risked my mother’s wrath by turning the handwheel on my Pfaff backwards just one half of a complete turn, to get the needle to come back up without completing the stitch if I’ve taken just that one stitch too many (or the stitch landed in the wrong place) when I’m machine quilting. (Theoretically my mother wouldn’t care anymore, since it’s not her costly machine I’d be breaking, but do me a favor and keep my malefaction between you and me!)

One half of a complete rotation of the handwheel doesn’t seem to damage the machine, but frequently it will tangle the threads, so sometimes the technique works and other times it doesn’t. If it works, I’ve saved myself taking out a whole line of machine quilting because there’s one wrong stitch at the end. If it doesn’t, sometimes I can keep stitching (and ignore the little jig of the misplaced stitch or try to work it into the design somehow) and other times the threads are so tangled that stopping and restarting is the only option. It’s a 50-50 chance with the Pfaff.(...)
Read the rest of Bernina 440 - My favorite “feature” (512 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2008. | Permalink | No comment
Post categories: Machines, Quilting, Tips
Tags: Bernina love, free motion quilting, friends, machine quilting, Machines, sharing, techniques

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I made them a set of eight placemats to go with the table runner and the napkin rings that I’ve made in previous years. I was a bit worried as I was making them, since they seemed to be a bit “floofy” and weren’t laying flat after they were quilted. I think I should have used a thinner batting. I decided to toss them in the washer and pray to the quilting goddess for a boon. Since fabric placemats need to be washable anyway, I also figured it would be better to get it over with now in case the machine embroidery didn’t survive.

The embroidery came out fine, and after a bit of judicious steam pressing, the mats are wonderfully flat! I guess the quilting goddess figured it was my turn or something. Whew! I’m probably going to have to think of something else entirely for next year, since I’ve used up most of the green fabric for the embroidery, and I’m not sure what else to make anyway. Napkins?? Hmmmm…

I got a little bored quilting the placemats (okay, really bored!), so I decided to do some Pfaff vs. Bernina experiments with my machines. If I’m going to do machine guided quilting, I usually use the Pfaff because it has the built-in dual feed, so I started quilting the placemats with the Pfaff 2056, my favorite machine until the Bernie came to live here. When the quilting wasn’t turning out so well, I thought I’d see what the Bernina 440 had to offer with the walking foot. (...)
Read the rest of Christmas gifts and Pfaff vs. Bernina experiments (860 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments
Post categories: Machines, Quilting
Tags: Bernina love, gifts, holidays, machine embroidery, Pfaff love

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For years I was happy (and so was my back) with my Pfaff 1475 machine. Then when I bought the new 2056 model, I noticed I had a harder time seeing the needle without hunching down farther in the chair, and then I had more back pain, especially when machine quilting. Here’s the side by side shape comparison:

On the left is the 1475, and on the right is the 2056. As you can see, the head of the 2056 is wider, and the needle is set back farther from the front of the head. (...)
Read the rest of Quilting and the shape of your head (518 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | 14 comments
Post categories: Machines, Quilting, Tips
Tags: appliqué, cool tools, machine quilting, Machines

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The uncut version: Kloster Schöntal is about one hour from my house, the last 20 minutes or so through little towns and scenic curvy roads. The Black Forest Quilt Guild has held it’s spring Quilt Retreat there every year for the last three, I think, and it’s just wonderful. The monastery has been modernized of course, but not to the point of losing it’s essence. We had a giant well lit room for quilting, and single or double rooms for sleeping. They feed us five times a day (yes, FIVE!): breakfast, coffee and tea break with pretzels and savory pastries, lunch, coffee or tea break with sweet cakes, and dinner, and drinks are available anytime. There’s plenty of room for everyone to spread out everywhere, for relaxing, quilting, talking, quilt basting, Irish dancing (really!), whatever.(...)
Read the rest of Quilt Retreat: Quilt, Eat, Sleep, Repeat! (290 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | 3 comments
Post categories: Inspiration, Machines, Quilting
Tags: Bernina love, free motion quilting, machine quilting, quilt days, quilt guild, quilt retreat, UFO's

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The foot on the Bernina sits lower and closer to the quilt than the free motion foot on the Pfaff…

I ordered a Free Motion Supreme Slider to hopefully help with the drag. I thought maybe just the difference in the machine bed texture and angle could be causing me some adjustment issues. Got the Slider, love it (the Supreme is way better than the first edition, BTW, since it has the self adhesive back, you have to get one of these things!), and things are better, but free motion quilting is still a drag in spots. What is this??? I’ve finally realized today that the problem is the free motion foot! The foot on the Bernina sits lower and closer to the quilt than the free motion foot on the Pfaff, and the Bernina foot catches on thick seam allowances sometimes, and creates way more drag on the whole quilt. I’m quilting along just fine, and then the drag starts, and I get smaller stitches. Then when the foot finally makes it over the lump of the seam allowance, the whole quilt jumps and I get a giant stitch before I can compensate. Even on wide open spaces, I also notice the fabric being pushed around by the foot more sometimes than it ever was on the Pfaff, just from the thickness of the batting. What to do??

I begin to wonder if the people who design and engineer these machines ever actually make a real quilt with them. Do they have real quilters test them out at all? If they did, wouldn’t this kind of thing have been noticed before? (...)
Read the rest of Bernina 440 - Free motion foot is a drag (507 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | 14 comments
Post categories: Machines, Quilting, Tips
Tags: Bernina love, free motion quilting, machine quilting, Pfaff love

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Part of the problem is that in Paducah, I was doing a completely different type of quilting than I usually do (which is why I took the class in the first place!). So now, when I’m home and working on quilting in my (mostly) normal style, it’s proving more challenging than I thought it would be to produce the same quality work on the Bernina as I can on the Pfaff. I say “mostly” normal style, because I did decide to quilt the Irish Chain quilt with silk thread in the needle and Aurifil 50/2 in the bobbin, so I’m making smaller stitches than I usually do, and that’s undoubtedly contributing to the problem a bit. When I’m making smaller stitches, it’s not the rhythmic sound of one stitch at a time from the machine that I’m listening to and trying to coordinate with, but the pitch of the motor at a certain speed. Totally different ballgame here. Maybe I’m trying to get used to too many things at once.

I’m beginning to feel like a beginning machine quilter again! Aaack! (...)
Read the rest of Making friends with the Bernina 440 (445 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | No comment
Post categories: Machines, Musings, Quilting
Tags: Bernina love, free motion quilting, machine embroidery, machine quilting, Machines, UFO's

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I’m officially in LOVE with this sewing computer. Right now, as I type this on my laptop computer, the machine sits here stitching away on a nice little bird embroidery design, and it’s the laptop computer that’s controlling the stitching. This embroidery unit that goes with the Bernina 440 works hand in hand with the Bernina Embroidery Software EditorLite on the laptop. I opened the embroidery file (which I just purchased online this morning!), changed the thread colors in the design to match what I had on hand here and wanted to use, and told the software to write to the sewing computer. Another program called the PC to EC (Personal Computer to Embroidery Computer) opens up automatically, and makes the link to the embroidery unit which is hooked to the Bernina 440.

At this point, you can move the design in the hoop, zoom in or out, (...)
Read the rest of Bernina 440 LOVE! (453 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | 4 comments
Post categories: Machines, Quilting
Tags: Bernina love, fun, machine embroidery, show quilts, software

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What was especially funny about this? We were probably both thinking “The meeting is fun, but I can’t wait to go home and play with my new Bernina!” Each of us had just purchased the Bernina 440 (me that very day, her exactly three weeks before), but we had not had any time together to share the news when this picture was taken! Nadine stopped by the blog to read the latest the day after the meeting, and was so surprised to hear that I bought the Bernina, that she said, “as we say in German - had problems to close my mouth again…”

Nadine took my machine quilting class a few years ago, and bought the Pfaff 2056 in December partly because I had it, and because of some of the features the machine had. She never fell in love with it for machine quilting, but I didn’t know it. So she made the decision to buy the Bernina 440, and she is now happy with both machines. I think I will be the same: using the Bernina for machine quilting, especially the free motion, and using the Pfaff for piecing and machine guided quilting since it has the IDT (or dual feed). I also bought the embroidery unit for the Bernina, to replace the Pfaff 2124 sewing/embroidery machine that I sold!

So, 2 Nadines + 2 Pfaff 2056 machines + 2 Bernina 440 machines = 2 great minds thinking alike!!

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | One comment
Post categories: Machines, Quilting
Tags: Bernina love, free motion quilting, guild, machine quilting, Machines, Pfaff love

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