Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 17 - Christmas fused quilt

Stitching through the multiple layers of the fused fabrics proved no problem for the Sweet Sixteen. Even more exciting was that I had no tension issues with the multiple color changes involved. I used both Isacord and Sulky threads on the top and Bottom Line on the bottom. This was the first outing for the Bottom Line, and it performed very well. The dealer's tip about tying the new thread onto the old and pulling the new thread through to the needle proved invaluable with the many colors I used. I would have hated to rethread from scratch every time!

Detail of stitching 

 My favorite spiderweb stitch on the star

A pillowcase finishing and1-2-3 done.

Fused Christmas quilt

I haven't done such a quick project in ages, so satisfying. I was just feeling quite pleased with myself when the chemist came by. Hmmm, she said. The tree needs ornaments she said. ^&%^$%# I said. 

These beads look a bit like presents, but they will be so much work to sew on. I am over this project now. 

Bigger beads draw too much focus.

These might work, but w-a-a-y too fiddly.

 Silver to echo the star? Ooh, look, I meant to make earrings with some of these silver beads! Focus! Attention span of a gnat, I swear...

Large and echo the colors and the stitch pattern on the tree. Done deal.

If Santa doesn't get the hint it won't be my fault!

Detail shot with beads in place.

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 16 - Christmas fused quilt in process

So far all my Sweet Sixteen experiments have been with pieced tops. Now I am going to fuse a top and then quilt it on the Sweet Sixteen. I wonder how different that will be?

When I am between projects, or stuck during a project, I sometimes fuse my scraps. So, today, when I want to fuse a Christmas tree, I can pull out my supply of pre-fused scraps and dive right in. 

I am assembling my Christmas tree on release paper. Laura Wasilowski has a couple of great fusing classes on Craftsy if you are interested in learning the basics. The brown stuff behind the white release paper is a goddess sheet, which is basically a pressing sheet designed to allow you to peel the fused project off it after ironing. I like to add as many protective layers as possible as 1. I am a klutz and 2. I hate cleaning fusible off things they shouldn't be sticking too, like my iron and my ironing board. 

A mixture of leftovers from batiks and hand-dyes. Once I have the rough shape blocked out, I will give it a good press and then cut it out. 

The background is some white on white print that I dyed. The printing stays white and the background white cotton takes the dye. I must have scrunched it as it is mottled. 

I stabilized the tree on release paper while I assembled the shape. The presents are very simple shapes, so they are ironed straight on to the goddess sheet awaiting their ribbons. The great thing about the goddess sheet is that when the ironed shapes are removed from it, the backs are very shiny. This is helpful as it is sometimes difficult to tell which is the front and which is the back. 

When fusing on the ribbons I am using another smaller goddess sheet between my iron and the fusible. The ribbons are very thin and it is really hard to see if they are the right way up. 

Sure enough I got one the wrong way up. Without the goddess sheet that sucker would be stuck to my iron about now. Luckily, I can peel it off the goddess sheet and start over. 

Fused Christmas tree ready for stitching!

Ready for stitching! With the pre-fused fabric, that didn't take long at all!

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 15 - bearding

So I knew batting sometimes had a scrim, but (and here I may be the last person on the planet to find this out) cotton batting without a scrim also has a side that should face the quilt top and a side that should not. How did I find this out?

Urgh! Bearding city. 

Look at these puncture marks in the batting! The Sweet Sixteen doesn't mess about. It's no wonder it was punching those cotton balls out the back of the quilt. And yes, unpicking stippling is so much fun.. When you see these little black or brown speckles, which are apparently cotton seeds, these need to face your quilt top. The nice clean looking side of the batting, needs to face the back. A little counter-intuitive...

Also I still haven't got the tension perfect. I had blue on the bottom and variegated pink on the top. Look at all the blue that came through as soon as there's thread build up, and possibly when I slow down. I could spend the rest of my life getting the tension perfect...or...

put plain pink on the bottom and move along...

The variegated thread is a lot of fun. The same thread pops differently on different color backgrounds. These take a lot of concentration! I can do one strip of 7 a night and then I start to gibber. I'm not going for a mechanical exact duplication of the pattern, I like FMQ to look like a person did it, not an embroidery machine, but I do want my stitches to hit where I want them to hit. Still shaky on the travel stitching from time to time. 

I'm just excited that I managed to get my head around getting the swirls to go in the same direction on the actual quilt top. In the samples above I reversed direction, sewing both backwards and forwards, but my brain can't reverse the pattern. The only way I could get the swirls to go the same direction, without my brain blowing a fuse, was to rotate the quilt for each swirl, so that my starting direction was always the same. I am spatially challenged, what can I say...

Variegated pink thread on blue hand-dye

and on pink hand-dyes

This pattern is based on Leah Day's lollipop tree pattern.

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 14 - useful links

This post is very  link heavy because I intend it to be a reference page for me.

One of the great things about the internet is that education can be a marketing tool, and that is just fine by me! People add value to their products by giving away expertise. A company that has many useful "threads" is Superior Threads, they have everything from cheat sheets and trouble shooting, to really terrible jokes (which are clearly rubbing off on me). Also, great thread and good thread charts. If you buy thread online then get a thread chart. Computer monitors are not the best color matching tools, especially for variegated threads.

So here are links to reference tools specific to the HQ Sweet Sixteen:

Great basic chart on thread tension

Longarm needle guide

Longarm machine thread reference guide

This page allows you to cross reference what you find in the needle guide and the thread reference guide, so you can see which # needle to get for which thread

Brilliant trouble shooting flowchart

Videos by Dr. Bob

Type "Thread therapy with Dr. Bob" into Youtube, to find some informative stuff there too. I like  that Superior is not just trying to sell you thread, they also want you to have a good time using it. 

I really like Isacord too, but if you use it you are on your own. No information, no jokes! Sewforless has good deals, especially at Thanksgiving. For solid Isacord colors in humungous spools this is an amazing deal.

Thus endeth the links...





 

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 13 - threading tip

There are a LOT of places to thread on the Sweet Sixteen. Here's a handy tip from the dealer: When you want to change thread:
1. Snip the old thread at the cone 
2. Remove the old cone and put the new cone on the spool pin
3. Tie the new thread onto the cut end of the old thread and trim the knot. Don't cut it too close or it will come undone with the pressure of going through all the thread points. Ask me how I know...
4. Pull the thread at the needle until the new thread feeds through all the threading points and reaches the needle
5. Check that the thread is well flossed through the tension disks
6. Cut off the knot and thread the needle with the new thread
7. Check your tension if you are changing to a new thread type as opposed to changing color but keeping the same thread

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 12 - bobbin wind fail

I wound some new bobbins, plugged them in and began to sew. After a little bit there was that noise that lets you know the sooner you stop and do something about it, the less unpicking you are going to have to do. I pulled out the bobbin, and oh, the horror! I had to put the Christmas cactus in the shot, or it was just too depressing!

Jamie Wallen, who is my new guru, says the tension on the bobbin winder may be set too tight, so when the thread comes off the winder it relaxes and pools. Not sure why it wouldn't do that right from the start though. Anyone got a bright idea?

The M class bobbins seem terribly flimsy after Bernina's little sherman tank bobbins. I hear the M class are aluminium and can warp if overfilled. Oh joy....

Handi Quilter, if you are listening, I have a suggestion: Make the pin on the bobbin winder able to fit a bobbin as well as a spool of thread. How am I going to get this mess into a usable form again when I can't wind it onto another M class bobbin? I guess it is going to make Bernina bobbins now. Bernina spool pins fit bobbins and spools of thread. Hmmm, I wonder if I could put it on my external thread holder and then run it through the HQ bobbin winder tensioning? I will have to test that out.

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 11 - tension

I went to see the dermatologist this week. If you take your pale skin to the dermatologist and tell him you grew up in sub-Saharan Africa, you can actually see him picking out his next luxury car in his head, while he looks over your skin. I have two patches of dermatitis that bother me. I told him that when I stop using the cream he gave me, one of them breaks out, and if the cat rubs against the other, it breaks out. His advice? Use the cream and don't let the cat rub against your face.

Incidentally, Ms Twitch and I have morning love fests where she rubs her face on my chin and purrs like a tractor. It is so cute. Then the chemist researched it and told me the cat has scent glands in her cheeks. She is writing MINE, MINE, MINE all over me in indelible smells. I feel so used.

My point, yes, I do have one somewhere...Although I would like a magic pill to make my skin issues go away, what actually works is following a routine and avoiding obvious triggers. The same applies to the Sweet Sixteen. See? I got there in the end. It seems to me that most of my problems are going to come down to tension. So good tension routines may help me avoid aggravation. 

I am trying to get into the habit of checking the tension every time I change thread, and checking the bobbin tension every time I load a new bobbin. I also found in the blue sample above that changing fabric made a difference. The tension is terribly tight. This is a Legacy muslin as opposed to the grey Kona I had previously been testing with. In addition I changed the needle (so proud of myself...) and wound some new bobbins. Too many variables!

The bobbin tension is perfect. I am so relieved. I do not want to mess with the bobbin case! So to keep making samples, and keep adjusting the top tension. It is so helpful to have the numbers displayed so I am not guessing at where I am going with the tension, and I can take notes and then go back to the exact same tension point.

This Jamie Wallen youtube video gives very comprehensive advice on setting tension on a long arm.
                                          Back to the Kona to try to find a good tension. 

                             Still too tight, too much thread build up in the corners of the bow ties.

                                                                    Getting better

Trying out an echo inside the bow tie shape. This pattern will be good travel stitching practice too. I sew the kite string first as a wibbly wobbly line, then travel back over it, making the bows.


Eventually I seem to have a better tension and I can start making my kite strings on the actual top. I am getting more relaxed when it comes to the real thing. Practice, practice, practice!

The real deal. One thing I have learned is to pick a pattern that won't drive me nuts when I have to do it over and over. I love pebbles, I love the look, the texture, the pattern, but it makes me crazy to do them for any length of time. I find it stressful to keep staying in the designated area and making adjustments to keep the fill pebble shaped. 

Now I need to decide what to do about the solid color areas. That's a job for another day!

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 10 - storage

Don't you just love serendipity? I bought my great-neice some Doug and Melissa beads and they came in a nifty wooden box. Because she was flying home, I decanted the beads into organza bags to save suitcase space. And kept the box. It was too cute to toss. And now look how perfect it is for all my Sweet Sixteen paraphernalia!

Compared to the Bernina, there actually isn't that much associated "stuff". 

The first thing I bought were extra bobbins and needles. The bobbins could have been made for that long thin divider! I like to wind lots of bobbins before starting a project, so I don't have to break concentration and go wind bobbins. I'm always amazed at how many I get through, although these M type bobbins are great because they hold so much more thread.

Extra glasses, check. I only have nine pairs and still can never find them when I need them. Sigh...

Scissors, because there is no thread snipper on the machine. Seems like that would be an easy addition. I'm really missing it.

Cheater needle for burying threads. Fabulous things, the hole in the top makes them easy to thread even with a minimal amount of thread tie off. I try to bury as I go as it's just too depressing to get to the end of the quilt and have a mountain of thread ends to deal with. 

Seam ripper. As my mother, the cheer-leader, pointed out: a machine that goes that fast will mean l-o-t-s of unpicking if you mess up. Thanks, Ma!

Dust extractor, and boy does the lint accumulate in the bobbin area, even though I haven't even used cotton thread yet. Superior Threads very kindly sent along 4 spools of thread as part of a welcome package. So far I've used their So Fine, in addition to my usual go-to Isacord. 

Alternative hopping foot. Bernina has clearly brainwashed me. I find myself looking for additional cool feet. Nope. Two hopping feet come with the machine, one open toe and one closed. You can buy couching feet and that's it for the Sweet Sixteen. Of course Bernina has brought out their own version of the sit down midarm machine, the Q20, and all their feet are apparently interchangable on that machine. Pretty sure I would have to mortgage the farm first though! 

Lots of screwdrivers and allen wrenches. These are essential. With the Bernina I can tip it on its side to get to tricky angles. Not so much with this machine - it is pretty substantial!

Needles. Clever packaging, 10 needles per package and they are packed in twos with a resealable opening every two needles. Ever opened a package of needles and had them all fall in your lap because there was one opening for all of them? I need to experiment with different needle sizes too. My to do list grows...

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 9 - pattern practice

I know this is lame, but I find stippling really hard. I see patterns everywhere. I have an OCD personality. If I can't impose order on things I start to twitch. I saw an advertisment for a FMQ class which said that the participants must at least be able to stipple and my reaction was: why are they starting with the hardest part first? I worry that my randomness is insufficiently random!

I guess it comes down to practice again, but I also find it helpful to have a motif to work around, rather than a big empty space to fill. These cute little frogs pop a little more with stippling in the background. I'm working white on white so mistakes won't be a show stopper while I practice. I'm hoping it's not like cracks in the pavement; if I cross a line, no bears will get me! Hopefully the quilt police won't find me either! Click to enlarge. A great thing about the Sweet Sixteen is that it is so forgiving of stops and starts. With the Bernina, despite my best efforts, I would sometimes get a jag as I took off again after a stop. The Sweet Sixteen takes off smoothly and it is almost impossible to see where the stop was.

I do need to be careful of hovering in one place though. I've had a couple of nasty thread lumps build up because I am dithering about where to go next. Instead, I need to stop with the needle down and contemplate my options. The other thing I've  found is that if I make a stitch with no fabric in place the thread creates a knot in the bobbin area with the Sweet Sixteen. The Bernina just sighs deeply and brings the thread up again, in the hopes that I won't be a twit the second time around!

What does a frog need in the surrounding stripes? Some tasty snacks! I was going to do flies, but then I thought that might be kind of gross, so instead I have a flittery butterfly kind of thing. It was very forgiving to sew. The echoed wing meant that if I made the first wing too small, I echoed around the outside, and if I got it the right size then I echoed around the inside. 

Did I mention I love hand-dyes? The color variation makes for really interesting fabric.

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 8

Phew, still managing a post a day as part of this challenge. 

So yesterday I mentioned that the more relaxed I am, the better the stitches. A relaxed attitude is a little difficult to achieve right now as I am catsitting for the chemist, who is swanning around England on a business trip. Well actually she is laid up in a hotel room with stomach flu, but still.

Now the chemist is very health conscious. She even thinks tofu is food. But her cat makes Garfield look like an underachiever. Here is my very scientific cat measuring system.  This is the chemist's cat. She takes up 4 kitchen floor tiles.

Here is Ms. Twitch. She takes up 2 kitchen floor tiles.

You may quibble about angles and what not, but trust me, the one weighs close to 20 pounds and the other weighs 8. 

What does this have to do with the Sweet Sixteen? Well, the chemist's cat also likes to jump up. A lot. I was negotiating a tricky turn at speed, when suddenly my quilt went sideways as 20 pounds of cat arrived on it to see what I was doing. There were words. Not all of them were printable. I put her on the floor (I think I strained my back..). She jumped back. This went on until I convinced her to sit on the floor and sulk instead, but I then found myself stitching with one eye on the cat and one eye on the fabric. This is not a good look for me. I feel like Rodney Dangerfield.

I will be a more relaxed stitcher when the chemist gets back this weekend and takes her hippo home.

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 7 - visibility

The basement men have each, independently, asked me why on earth I need another machine. This from people who, between them, own four different kinds of power saws. 

However, I do have an answer for them. While I cannot deny that naked lust did play a role, my decision to buy the Sweet Sixteen was also motivated by logic and reason, and the reason comes down to visibility.

My sewing room is in the basement. There is no natural light. I was lucky enough to have lots of input in the way the room is laid out, since we finished the basement ourselves. I have nine different lights with daylight bulbs, which give a very good overall light, but I also need good light right where I am working, especially as my eyes are increasingly behaving like middle aged prima donnas.

When doing FMQ, you are working fast and moving around, so you need to be able to see where you are, where you've been, and where you are going. 

Both pictures below are taken on my phone, in the same light conditions, about 30 seconds apart to try to give an accurate picture of the differences between a regular sewing machine and the Sweet Sixteen. Both are taken seated in the spot where I would be if I were going to use that machine. Both fabric pieces are the same size.

Here is the view from my Bernina. Notice how much the machine itself obstructs the view, and the limited circle of very good light.

Here is the view from the Sweet Sixteen. There is so much more clearance between the needle and the machine that the view is unobstructed. Because the machine is angled away from me, and only the needle shaft is in front of me, visibility is awesome 360 degrees. The area that is really well lit is also so much greater.

I rest my case! Now remind me while you need all those saws??

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 6 - FMQ practice

When the chemist was little she desperately wanted to do ballet. Gradually she amassed the necessary equipment. She had the tutu, the leotard, the shoes, the tights. She lacked the hair, but that is another story! You never would tell from her long blond locks today, but she was a baldie for ages, poor child. She also had the imagination. You could tell that in her head the spotlight was on, while she swanned gracefully about the stage. Then she went to her first lesson.

What she learned was that putting on all the paraphernalia didn't mean she could do ballet. Not even close. She gave up almost immediately. Which was ironic, since she had one of those books with a cassette tape to read along with. The story was about a ballerina. It had a very unsubtle message that one day the lead ballerina will definitely break her leg at the critical moment, and because you have practiced diligently, you will be chosen to replace her in the end of term concert. We used to do a lot of very long car journeys to visit grandparents, and this story was a favorite. At one point I could recite it in my sleep. To this day we still quote Mrs. Kaye, the ballet teacher, who was always telling people to "Practice, practice, practice!"

Sadly, Mrs. Kaye was right. Good teachers and good equipment definitely make FMQ easier, but I find that to get better, I need to practice. I keep intending to have a stack of quilt sandwiches next to the machine and to do a little FMQ every day. Alas, I share a lot of genes with the chemist, and sometimes I prefer the scenes in my head where all my stitches are perfect, to the reality at my fingertips. In the real world I lose concentration, get tired, and sometimes need a lot more practice to get the designs on my fabric to bear any resemblance to the designs in my head!

Nice free-flowing stitches on the practice sample

After all the practice samples I had been working on, I was, frankly, getting just a little smug. I was fairly happy with the stitches I was making. So I moved on to an actual pieced top. And froze. My shoulders got stiff, my hands were moving more jerkily, I was forgetting to breathe. Oh the stress! Needless to say, the stitches accurately reflected all that loss of relaxation.

Much tighter and stiffer stitches - this is for real, eeeek!

More practice I guess...Right, Mrs. Kaye?

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 4 - FMQ sewing machine vs HQSS

When it comes to FMQ I would like to give a shout out to Leah Day. I learned to FMQ by watching her videos and taking Craftsy classes with her. She has a really great teaching style, and her designs are free on her website, along with "how to stitch" videos.

FMQ done on Husqvarna Emerald - Leah Day lollipop tree pattern

When I started free motion quilting I upgraded my Singer, bought a machine with feed dogs, read a book, and expected to learn how to do it fairly easily. How hard could it be? Well, hardish it turned out. Thread "bird nested" or "eyelashed", stitches were really hard to control, and I was either racing along at 80 miles an hour, or negotiating a tricky turn like an elderly chicken crossing a busy highway. My Husqvara also gave me endless issues with the free motion feet. Their design is a bit silly and the top of the foot would get a stress break really easily. At $50 a foot this was a big deal, and the dealer just shrugged and sold me a new one.

The one on the left works better than the one on the right!!

 Once I'd found Leah's site, I stopped buying feet and wound an elastic band around the top of the broken foot and it worked better than before. I also invested in a Supreme Slider, and that was a game changer. The silicone surface gave me sufficient "glide" that I finally began to feel I might be able to master this FMQ thing. I started using Bobbin Genies too, and they seemed to help with bird's nesting on the back. I never got to terms with gloves though. I have 2 different brands, and frankly, I can't quilt with either of them. I need to feel the fabric.

Then I bought a Bernina and, partly because it is such a great machine, and partly because I had been practicing, FMQ seemed to have a lot less thread issues etc. but I was still using the Supreme Slider. Actually it was my third, because I ripped one, and sewed through another one. When they say wash after each use, that is advice worth taking... I still struggled with visibility though. I always felt I was craning my neck to see what the heck I was doing.

FMQ done on Bernina 350 PE

And now I have the Sweet Sixteen. I know it's early days but I do feel a little as though I'd died and gone to heaven. No feed dogs for the up/down controversy. No peering around the machine to see my work area, no wondering how to get more light where I'm working. No need for a Supreme Slider, Bobbin Genie etc.

Now the only thing I have to get my head around is that all the controls are on the control panel. I do still find myself looking for the lever to engage the machine, and the hand wheel to drop the needle into the fabric! And I wish there was a thread snipper like on my Bernina.

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 3

So...at the lesson last night I found out that I had still managed to mess up the threading! I had gone through the viewing hole for the needle instead of the thread hole in front of the needle. I thought it looked weird... Which brings me to another point when considering a new machine: to buy online or from a local dealer. I did think about buying online, but after sales service is important to me, not least because I am clearly not that good at reading directions (ahem). Face to face trouble shooting is really important to me, and that's why I went with a local dealer.

Once I had rethreaded the machine for the third time, I got even better stitches. Still some pull back of top thread on the back of the work, but much, much better than yesterday's sample. What do they say about the problem with the machine generally being about 12 inches in front of the machine??

The lady who did my lesson attributed the front thread on the back on yesterday's sample to a tension issue. I looked at the tension on the dealer's machine and theirs is set to 175!!! Apparently each machine has its own internal consistency though. When I loosened my tension to 400, the bobbin thread came through the front, so I'm going to keep mine in the 400s for Isacord. 

I'm wondering if the thread pull through isn't due to stitch speed and density too. From the samples above you can see that the most thread pull though came in the heaviest stitching, and on the curves of other shapes. Where the stitches were most consistent, the stippling, there is no pull through, and on the little swirls on a stick, a stitch I am very familiar with, there is very little too. 

Testing tension on the same pattern

 Somewhere between 435/440 seems to give me nice consistent stitches. Still a little green showing on the top of the circle where the most thread build up is.

 And the more I practice the easier it gets - who knew?? 

When I stitched echo lines like this on my Bernina, I always got longer stitches going away from me. The greater visibility on the Sweet Sixteen makes it much easier to sew back and forth, not turning and always going in the same direction, and I can't really tell which lines were sewn coming towards me and which going away from me. I did find the needle and thread distracting when sewing away from me, they go so jolly fast! I think that's something that won't bother me for long though. 

So day 3 and still a fan. Now to find some patterns to use on a project.