Bernina Class Lessons Learned

Today I finished the second part of my Bernina I class.  This is offered free by my Bernina dealer and can be taken as many times as you like.  Case in point - the woman next to me bought her machine ten years ago!  I took this class when I first bought my machine two years ago, and am embarrassed to say that even having taken it before, I learned a TON of new things this time around!  This has now firmly instilled the belief in me that it's good to take a machine education class if you can, no longer how long you've had your machine.

I kept a running list during class of all the new things I learned (or incorrect things I unlearned!)  Maybe some of these are things you can learn from as well. BTW I have a Bernina Aurora 440QE.

• I was threading incorrectly when winding my bobbin, by not going around the back hook before looping around the little circle on top of the machine
• I learned how to easily unattach the board that snaps on to give more quilting area.  I knew there was some trick to it, but usually I would just tug until it came off and hope it wouldn't break!  I learned you put your thumb in the little thumb indentation and curl your fingers around the board to get it to pop right off.
• This is pretty obvious, but if you step with your heel on the presser foot, it raises or lowers the needle.  It's even drawn right on there! 

• Your bobbin is supposed to spin clockwise.  I didn't learn this until I was trying to figure out my tension problems last month.  
• Believe it or not, I was putting my thread on the spindle incorrectly.  See photos below.

No foam thingy behind the thread, and even though in this picture there's no stopper, I was using the medium stopper.  This is bad for big spools like aurafil because they aren't evenly sitting on the spindle.

You're supposed to put that foam thing behind it for support.  And I learned what the littlest stopper is for!  It fits perfectly into the aurafil tip so it sits properly on the spindle.

• We also learned how to take off the stitch plate and clean out our machines.  Last time I took this class I think we just briefly discussed it, this time we disassembled everything together and actually used our little cleaning brushes (an item I didn't know the use of) to get it looking good as new.
• The bobbin case has a little eyelet (pig tail or something?) that you can thread through to increase tension for satin stitching.  I wish I'd known that before I stitched all those animal alphabet letters!
• Raise the presser foot when threading the machine so there's no tension
• Finally, a clever trick for plugging in the BSR:  You can see the green spot reflected in the stitch plate so you don't need to stick your head under there to see where to plug it in!

click to see a better version

The class was very fun and I'm glad I went.  In the meantime, I've finished quilting my animal alphabet quilt except for the border, which I am having difficulty selecting a design for.  Photos soon!

Free Motion Quilting Insights

I've been free motion quilting my animal alphabet quilt...my first machine quilted quilt!  Previously I've machine quilted wallhangings and a vest.  I'm already noting a lot of insights from quilting this project.

• On the recommendation of many, many blogs, I bought a sewslip.  Throughout quilting I've been taking it on and off at intervals to see if I can tell a difference.  I definitely!  Without the sew slip, the movement of the quilt after each stitch is choppy/stilted/jerky.  With it things move very smoothly.  HOWEVER, I have been having trouble with the edges of the sewslip catching on my quilt and creating a lot of drag.
• The quilt does not move nearly as easily or smoothly as my practice swatches and wallhangings have.  There's a lot of resistance and I'm actually working out my arms shoving it around.  I think this might be partly due to the flannel backing, which grips more, and partly due to the increased heft of this project.
• I can't figure out how to use the BSR 1 function on my machine!  Luckily we will learn this in my Bernina class on Wednesday (more on the class in another post...it has also led to many insights about my machine).  For now I'm just sticking with BSR 2.

So far I've mostly managed to avoid lumping by carefully planning out my stitching direction and periodically smoothing out the quilt on the floor to make sure everything looks flat.  I've had a few small lumpy spots, but not bad!

I originally was just going to outline the animals to minimize the amount of quilting because I want the quilt to stay fluffy.  However, I also wanted a continuous line so I ended up loop-the-looping between animals so I wouldn't have to start and stop.  This looked weird with only a few loop-the-loops, so I went back and now the whole thing is looped.  I just hope it's not too stiff to be comfortable, because using fusible web adds stiffness too.

Along those lines, I'm still trying to figure out how much/little to quilt a quilt that I intend to use.  This one was hard because there's narrow space between the animals, so unless I wanted to stitch over them I needed to do a pretty narrow quilting design.  Maybe for future baby quilts I'll stitch with patchwork so I can do wide/broad quilting to keep them soft.

Also, an insight carried over from hand quilting, is that the animals pop more if you quilt around them with a gap (like an echo) instead of just stitching in the ditch around them.  So of my animals ended up with wider stitching around them than others.

Tension, by the way, has been fine!  I think my tension problems from earlier were related to a number of threading errors (which I learned about in my Bernina class) and the fact that I was using BSR to applique a single layer of fabric, when it's more programmed for a quilt sandwich.

Anyways, the top is looking on track to be finished today!  Luckily the recipient probably won't notice all of the errors I've made, I just hope it's soft and fluffy enough for her to enjoy it.  Nobody likes a stiff quilt!

Tension Troubles!!

Machine is still having tension problems....arrrrrrg. I took it to the shop and got everything reset, and yet as soon as I had it home the same old problems happened!!! This is why I haven't been posting any updates, I am busy tearing my hair out over this machine!