I received another titillating email from Bernina about the 8 Series this morning. This one says:

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.

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I did a small bit of machine quilting today, and I thought I’d share some quick tips to make machine guided grid quilting easier. I’m making a small background quilt to display Inchies, so all I needed was some straight line quilting to hold the layers together and create some visual interest.

On a small quilt sandwich with unpieced bali fabrics on both sides and Hobbs 80/20 Black batting in the middle, I used a ruler and a hera marker to mark the straight quilting lines on the sandwich. A hera marker is simply a piece of plastic with a nicely tapered, curved edge which, when pressed on the fabric, compresses the fibers and leaves a mark that is fairly easy to see. Note that this particular model by Clover is the one I’ve had the best luck with; the others that I’ve tried have been made of softer plastic and didn’t make as nice a mark.

I marked the lines on the quilt sandwich in one direction only, meaning all the lines that are parallel to each other in an up and down direction. If you mark all the grid lines in both directions before you start quilting, you may find that when you mark the second set of lines across the first, the first set of lines will have little waves or points where the second set crosses them, and it will be difficult to quilt straight lines later.

When I’m quilting a grid, whether it’s big or small, I always start with a line of quilting close to the center of the quilt or space, and then work outward to the right and left. I always begin quilting at the top of the piece or area, and quilt toward the bottom, which means rolling up the bulk of the quilt to fit under the machine head when working on the left side. Even with a walking foot or IDT/dual feed, the layers of a quilt sandwich will shift; it’s just a fact of life.

Starting each line of quilting at the top will prevent diagonal wrinkles from forming on the quilt top or back from stitching lines in both directions. Remember this “top-to-bottom” stitching technique the next time you’re putting down stitch in the ditch between rows and blocks on a large quilt, too, as the same idea applies and the same diagonal wrinkles can happen, just on a larger scale.

Once the first set of gridlines was quilted, I marked the second set perpendicular to the first. The second set of quilting lines needs a bit more attention to detail than the first. When you start adding quilting lines that cross other lines, you can run into trouble when the fabric starts shifting. As you come up to a previous line of quilting, you may find that the top fabric of the quilt sandwich starts to form a little hill, which will become a pleat if you keep sewing.

The solution is to slow down and pay special attention in this area. You can use your fingers on the top of the quilt to gently nudge the top fabric toward the presser foot, essentially forcing the top fabric to feed more quickly into the machine to reverse the negative pushing effect that the presser foot is having on the quilt sandwich. Not just for grids, this little nudging technique is infinitely useful whenever I do any kind of machine guided quilting with a walking foot or IDT/dual feed.

A few simple techniques made quick work of this little display quilt, so stay tuned for pics!

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Ok, I’ll just say it: There is a part of me that’s a little bit obsessive-compulsive about some aspects of quilting, or certain projects. Here is the latest conversation with my OCQ (Obsessive-Compulsive Quilter) self after quilting one of the motifs in the setting triangles of the current project with some Valdani 35wt (very thick) variegated thread:

Me: This is looking pretty good. See?

OCQ: Hmmm, I’m not so sure about this fat, variegated thread for this quilting design here. I can’t quite decide if I like it.

Me: No, no it’s good, it really is. Isn’t it? I mean, I like the texture of the fat thread, and the cool variegated colors, and I even got the tension to behave so that there aren’t too many spots on the back where the top thread is showing. So it’s all good, right?

OCQ: Well, maybe if the design wasn’t so dense and detailed, it would be better with the fat thread, but for this design, some thinner thread and a color that didn’t show so much would look better. That blue-green variegated is just too much for the quilt, dear.

Me: Ok, maybe you’re right, and it would look better with different thread, but you know, this isn’t for show, it’s for LittleOne’s room in the new house, and it’s just a “get it finished” item off of the Creativity List anyway. It’s not like Quilter’s Newsletter is going to show up at the door for a photo op or anything. I’m using the thread I started with and you just get to live with it.

OCQ: Hmfph. (goes off muttering and mumbling) Read the rest of this entry »

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