Meandering With the Q20

I pulled out the stack of things needing to be quilted, which included a wallhanging made from leftover hourglass units. The wallhanging needed a border, so I found half a yard of fabric for that, then basted the whole thing together with a piece of leftover batting and backing from the same quilt project that generated the leftover units.

[I have the luxury of having enough space and resources to have accumulated a small craft store here in my house. Part of what makes me so productive is the fact that I don’t have to make a trip to town with a list every time I need something to work on a project.]

I pulled out the appropriate thread—Signature cotton 40wt for the top and Aurifil 50wt for the bobbin, which is my favorite combination—and sat down at the machine. The Q20 has a feature called “kickstart.” The foot pedal can be depressed toward the front like a normal sewing machine pedal. It can also be depressed toward the back with the user’s heel. This took a bit of getting used to. (Some of this can be custom programmed, but for now, I am using the factory settings.) One press of the heel backwards on the pedal makes the needle go down and up once, to bring the bobbin thread to the top of the work. Pressing the heel backwards on the pedal a second time makes the machine take four stitches to secure the threads.

Here is where it got tricky. When I quilt on the Janome, I use the pedal to control the speed of the machine and thus the length of the stitches. It’s a complicated dance of keeping the machine sewing at a consistent speed that produces even stitches of the right length while moving the fabric. If the machine moves faster than the fabric, the stitches will be tiny. If the fabric moves faster than the machine, the stitches will be long. If both those things happen over the course of the quilting, the stitches will be uneven. I know where the sweet spot is on my Janome foot pedal and how fast I need to move the fabric, so the stitch length on my Janome is relatively even.

With this machine, however, there is no controlling the speed with the pedal. The length of the stitches is regulated by the machine, which uses sensors in the throat plate to adjust the speed of the machine based on how fast the quilter is moving the fabric. Move the fabric slowly, and the machine quilts slowly. Move the fabric faster, and the machine speeds up. I was getting some skipped stitches in the first part of the quilting, and it was because I was unconsciously trying to speed up and slow down the machine with the pedal. Once I figured out what was happening, I made an effort to break myself of that habit. By keeping the foot pedal depressed completely, the skipping stopped. I believe there is a way to program the machine so that it isn’t necessary to use the foot pedal at all except to begin and end the quilting.

And, of course, this thread combination required a different tension setting than the Signature/Mettler combo. This machine has memory for several user profiles, so once I get different settings dialed in, I’ll be able to save them.

Even using an unfamiliar pattern—I practiced quilting swirls again—I did that wallhanging in record time. I trimmed it and went in search of some binding. Whenever I bind a quilt, I usually make extra binding and keep it in a large plastic bin. I had exactly enough (6” left over) black binding. The husband went to fire training and I sat by the fire and sewed the binding down and now that wallhanging has moved from top to Finished Object:

I quilted swirls in the center and defaulted to loops in the border. The swirls look okay, but my loops are much smoother. I still need to stitch in the ditch between the border and the center. I’ll have to do that on the Janome, however. I confess to a bit of frustration with Bernina’s sales model. They only sell through independent quilt stores, which I applaud, but if the store doesn’t have the item I want in stock—and our store doesn’t, because they have just started carrying these machines—they have to order it for me with no clear indication of when it will come in. It could be a week or it could be two months. Right now, I am waiting on a ruler foot to do straight lines. I would also like to have a dust cover. I found a pattern for one and might just make it myself.

I could work on another couple of wallhangings or I could jump in and quilt that cream/white Candy Coated. I’m trying not to get too hung up on choosing patterns for these practice projects. Some people make lots of tops and never quilt them because they can’t decide on the “perfect” quilting pattern. Finished is better than perfect, in my opionion.

I’ve got this book sitting next to the quilt table and it’s a great reference:

It’s basically an expanded version of what we learned in the class with Angela in Spokane. I aspire to this.

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The husband and I had a discussion about the fact that I am capable of attending to multiple issues simultaneously. He said that he didn’t want to disturb me while I was quilting to ask me a question or let me know that he was going out to the shop. I said that as long as he didn’t walk up behind me and scare the living daylights out of me, it was perfectly fine for him to interrupt my quilting. All I have to do is take my foot off the pedal and the machine stops. I pointed out that while I was quilting, I was also watching the flock of welfare turkeys running back and forth past the office door to the porch, because it was about 3 o’clock and they were looking for their daily ration of scratch grains.

Women’s brains are wired differently than men’s brains. That’s not a judgment, just an observation.