Tension Trials and Tribulations - Part 1

I spent the last 2 days trialling a new thread on my Sweet 16. I have had the machine now for just about 6 months and after my initial meltdown over the adjustment of tension (see this post) have settled in to the new machine. It is starting to feel better but I am by no means as comfortable as I was on my DSM. Still struggle with speed, locking stitches in a tidy fashion and in general not being ‘in sink’with the machine.
But it’s getting better...I followed Jamie Wallen’s advice on one of his videos and stuck to just one thread for the last 6 months. Aurifil, of course! It’s the thread I love, I know how it behaves and I was able to get that to work most of the time on the Sweet 16. However, when I got the machine I also got a box full of thread from Superior...yummy colours, all sorts of types of thread, so I finally found the courage to give that a go. I chose Magnifico to start with...a 40/2 trilobal Polyester thread. The sheen on that thread is just out of this world. Very beautiful.

Looked on the Superior thread chart which gave me a Towa gauge number (find information about the Towa gauge HERE) to guide me in the right direction. Those numbers are measured with prewound Superbob bobbins. As I had some of those, tried that and got my first taste of how finicky that thread is...must emphasize that it is finicky to me and that is probably because I have only rarely used Polyester thread. Not sure I like the feel and how slippery they are.
I then used my (not prewound bobbin) Bottomline thread as I needed a cream colour for my practice wholecloth. Here is where the Towa gauge becomes particularly useful. My wound bobbin behaved quite different to the prewound one, i.e. I needed to tighten the bobbin severely on the one that I had wound on the bobbin winder (I did not question my bobbin winder as I feel it is set quite right - the bobbins are not spongy but also not super rock hard, so I did not adjust this as I feel the bobbins are wound correctly). So I started at about 200 on the Towa gauge...should have taken photos of the next steps but it was one of those slightly frustrating processes. However I got through that in about an hour...a huge improvement in contrast to my earlier experiences. It went something like this:

- bobbin thread poking through the top, so reduced top tension
- bobbin thread still poking through, so reduced top tension to a level where it was just too loose (was pleased as I definitely can feel that now by pulling the thread towards me above the needle)
- tightened bobbin tension, however still being pulled to top (how strong is this thread?)
- looked at my thread path; the Superior guide talked about a thread net-tried this but this increased the top tension even further
- decided to only guide the thread through 2 holes...now we were getting somewhere. Here is a bit of a practice run using the different colours (blue, cream and red Magnifico), but more on the colours later.

Can you guess which web site I have been looking at recently?

Over the next 2 days I did manage to get the tension acceptable and started my wholecloth with my new toys, the circle and arc rulers.

I must be the world's worst marker...a plan would have been good, but I am a bit hopeless when it comes to marking. Always start off really tidy (marked the main frame on the fabric and attempted to mark the arc in) and then the creative mind takes over and ...oops, this needs to be different, let’s just draw over this or even better, wipe away with some water etc...always end up incredibly messy and the need to put in special marks to work out where I am going. Hilariously annoying!

The wholecloth is a practice run for the different thread, but also to
- try out my rulers and I mean really try them out, i.e. explore the markings, look at how to best hold them and generally getting a feel for them
- work on a more puffy quilt scenario (used cotton and a thin layer of wool on this piece)
- continue to work on more tidy beginning stitches and backtracking over stitches when doing the feathers
- try to find a comfortable speed level for the feathers.
Maybe a bit too much all at once...maybe just a little😜

My rulers worked well, except I did not consider the puffiness and subsequent compaction. First learning! As I did stitch out the inner feathers after the first circle I had enormous problems with the next circle. Yep, pays to think this through a bit. Frame first, and then the filling in of detail!

This looks very much like one that Patsy Thompson had on her blog recently...did not mean to copy, sorry about that, but as I had not pre-planned the arc that I had wanted to do, it did not work out...should have made the inner circle a bit smaller for that, so ended up just doing a normal, straightforward arc around it. Haha...then realized if I wanted to make a channel, I should have stitched the inner arc first, then aligned the ruler and did the channel. Obviously did it the wrong way around and ended up with a tapered channel. Also looks good so I was not too worried about that. Here is a close up of the stitches.

Not too bad at all. I thought that the arcs would be difficult to do, but they went in quite easily. I stitched this with a needle size 14 even though the thread guide says to use a needle size 18. I figured that it probably needs a stronger needle when used on a longarm with high speed, but seeing that I rarely go over speed 20, I thought a smaller size should accommodate the thread just fine. A needle size 18 is just too big for me...I have stitched with a 70/10 or smaller needle on the DSM for the last 5 years or so, so that needle 18 looks like a big nail to me. Had no problem with shredding or breakage and while I feel I am making this up a bit as I go along, it seems to work, so why not.

This has been good fun until I changed to a different colour, but more of that in the next post...

Karin

More Rulerwork

I have been bitten by the ruler bug! After reading a number of blog posts over at Patsy Thompson's blog the other day, I went and finally got myself an arc ruler and a set of circle rulers. This was not cheap, however I did research this quite intensely and concluded that I was not going to get around spending a fair amount of money. I looked at all sorts of options, some of them in the US but also over here. I have tried the Westalee circles ruler before and while it did the job I thought that the circle rings that Handiquilter produces would be a better option for me in terms of holding the ruler and stitching around it, particularly for the bigger circles.

Circles Ruler - Gold Set 2" - 11"

Arc C Ruler

As you may know, my passion is wholecloth quilting and in the past I stitched out all my designs from a traced drawing on the DSM. That was fine, but very time consuming and particularly with circles and arcs very difficult to do. Stitching freehand is fine but as soon as you hit long curved lines you are bound to get little wobbles here and there. While this usually does not matter, in a wholecloth design this is usually the center design and becomes quite obvious and a bit annoying, particularly when you are on your last arc and messed it up. It's all possible but it just takes so much longer.

Part of the reason for the HQ Sweet 16 for me was to use rulers more and make my quilting a bit easier and faster, hence my intense practice with rulers at the moment. The motif that you see on the top of the blogpost is not traced or drawn but done after dinner in a couple of hours just using the arc and circle rulers. I began with Cindy Needham's Ultimate Round Stencil (best thing ever!) and marked this quickly on my fabric which gave me a skeleton to work from and then just went around using the lines to align my rulers.

This worked really well once I had figured out how to align the arc ruler to give me accurate echo lines (it does take me a while to figure out all the lines on rulers). Even managed to put it a 1/2" echo and then realized that the little circle ruler I have is 3/4" so I had to fill this in freehand. Obviously I would make my pebbles smaller usually so it would look a bit neater. The possibilities are endless in terms of shapes, size and how you fill this in and the prospect of laying this down in a couple of hours  is very exciting, particularly when coupled with background fillers and grids. So, don't regret my purchase, in fact should have done this a long time ago...such a time saver and relatively easy to do, just as always...practice, practice and more practice.

Already mentioned in my last post...Patsy Thompson is running a ruler workshop on her blog in January. If you are interested in ruler quilting have a look. She is a fabulous teacher and all of her videos are so informative...this is bound to be great. Can't wait.

Karin