New Machine

Well, I've done it! I upgraded to the Bernina Q20. Originally I was going to look at the new Q16 but then I saw the Q20 and thought that I might regret not getting the longer machine. 20in throat space which is really quite big and very nice to work with.

And here she is

I have never owned a Bernina machine and was initially quite intimidated by the machine as I literally knew nothing about the interface ( I am a die hard Pfaff person). So, I sat down to practice...initially I did some practice samples to get used to the back kick and the steps I had to take to get it to do what I wanted it to do. After a few runs I got bored and thought it would be good to do a quilt from beginning to end.

I pulled out a baby panel that I had, pinned it and then basted over it with the machine and then set out to stitch around all the shapes. 

I did chose to do this with Inviafil thread...probably not the most clever choice as you start out! I had a bit of shredding of the thread until I figured out what needle to use. The Bernina uses domestic sewing machine needles and I must say, I am a bit rusty on my knowledge of the different size needles to be used for what. But we got there in the end. For the background quilting I chose Aurifil 50/2 Mako cotton thread and that went without a hitch. Practiced a lot with the stitch regulators at varying speeds and also did a fair amount in manual to just get a feel for it. Good fun!

Finished that little panel today. Got a bit carried away though...saw a video from Natalia Bonner the other day about a scalloped border and decided to give that a try while I was at it. 

Came out really nice and almost looks like applique. Quilting is a bit sloppy in parts as I experimented with speed and regulation, however that does not matter that much, still pretty cute.

After this, I sat down and did a thread sample, not that you can see any of the details. But I basically went along trying different threads, getting a bit of an idea how the tension behaves. That was quite valuable as I also tried a number of different colours from Aurifil. While most colours gave me a

similar tension, some of the colours gave me a completely different value, something that I had noted in the past from time to time. The reason for that I believe has to do with the dye of the thread, although today I also came across an off white colour that was completely different to any of the other spools. No idea why.

Next on the agenda is a 'real' quilt, i.e. my Scrappy House quilt that I finished during lockdown. I am thinking to do an edge-to-edge design on it, but we shall see...not sure whether that is do-able as it is not a small quilt and I remember doing this before on a baby quilt which was quite arduous. 

Karin