Finishing A Quilt On The HQ Capri18

I am so happy and relieved that the new machine arrived. I had not realized how much I was used to having the capability of these machines to make my life easier in terms of finishing off a quilt. 

I thought I do a little post about how I go about finishing a quilt

I usually pin-baste my quilts which takes an enormous amount of time as I have to take it easy otherwise I do in my back! Once that is done, depending on what I have in mind for the quilt, I baste my quilt with the basting function. Now this new model has more basting options than the Sweet 16.  It's got 5 different settings in the 'manual basting mode', i.e. the machine does a stitch every 0.5 sec, 0.75 secs, 1.0 secs, 1.5 secs and 2.0 secs. On top of that, there are 4 different basting stitch options in the regulated mode, i.e 0.5in, 1in, 2in and 4in baste. I used the non-regulated basting option at 0.5 secs, i.e. the machine does a stitch every 0.5 secs. Very smooth on this machine. I think I probably would use the regulated mode if I was to look at basting a grid, but for this little quilt I just meander basted all over it to be able to take the pins out (as I was going to use a ruler and the pins would have been forever in the way presenting a bit of a hazard if you are not careful).

This is what that looks like...did not even bother with the pins, just noodled around them as I had good visibility...once done, I take them all out again and  am almost ready to quilt.

0.5sec Basting Stitch

Lastly, I secure the edges of the quilt also using the 0.5 sec basting stitch, but this time using the help of the trusted Versa tool to keep it nice and straight, stitching about 1/8in from the edge. For some reason I prefer the Versa tool for this job above all others...maybe because it is a bit wider, hence easy to hold and it keeps the edge of the quilt very flat while I go around the perimeter of the quilt. Handiquilter has brought out a square foot last year which could be used for this as well, but I must say I do prefer doing this with the ruler.

Then I obviously go ahead and quilt the quilt, in this case I tried out the Multi Clamshell ruler to stitch some spirals across the quilt as outlined in previous posts. Once done with this I also attached the binding on this machine, again using the Versa tool. Obviously this is a smaller lap sized quilt and I had no problem with the bulk of the quilt as I have the extension flaps on either side. This works really well for me and bonus I can use the ruler to make the stitching stop exactly 1/4in from the edge of the quilt with that little notch at the end of the straight part of the Versa tool, something which always ends up a bit sloppy when I am doing this on the DSM.

Seems a bit long-winded but having to do some of this on the DSM the last few months really showed me how much I had become used to the convenience of these machines. It is making the job so much easier and quicker!

Karin