Embroidery Experiments

My two goals yesterday were to finish the serger table runner and to experiment with embroidering on the 700 PRO. I finished quilting the table runner yesterday morning—after I tackled the mountain of paper on my desk—and made and attached the binding. I sat down at the 700 mid-afternoon. Right away, I ran into a problem. The machine and the embroidery module appeared unable to communicate with each other.

The embroidery module looks like this:

Those pins at the bottom attach to slots on the left side of the machine. The crossbar has a flange that holds the embroidery hoop. The crossbar moves the hoop in all directions underneath the needle as the machine stitches out the design. It is a very clever design but also a bit terrifying to see it in action, LOL.

I called the store to get some advice. Bernina issued firmware updates to all their machines in July and I had dutifully updated the 880. However, I had not had the embroidery module attached to the machine during the update. I’ve never actually used the embroidery module with the 880. (I have to completely re-jigger the cabinet setup in order to do so because I have the 880 set up as a flatbed machine and it sits down inside the cabinet.) The tech suggested I attach the embroidery module to the 880 to make sure that machine could communicate with it.

After re-jiggering the cabinet setup to accommodate the module, I attached the module to the 880 and turned on the machine. Immediately, a screen flashed up saying, “Embroidery module updating.” Apparently, the module needed a firmware update, too. I need to remember that because we sometimes do firmware updates in the mastery class. (I did wonder why the 700 didn’t apply the firmware update to the module when I attached it to that machine . . .)

After that, the module and the 700 had no trouble communicating. I got a piece of fabric and stabilizer that I had prepared for Monday’s mastery class and pulled out a spool of Isacord thread. Just for fun, I tried some alphabet letters:

Fun—but as I said, a bit terrifying. The module moves very quickly. We were told at Bernina University that the machines are designed and engineered to embroider at very high speeds and we shouldn’t be afraid to set the speed control to the highest setting. I’m not there yet.

I have some actual project instructions printed and may try one of them today. Bernina has lots of small project tutorials on their We All Sew website, including embroidered pincushions.

After dinner, I sewed down the binding on the table runner. It’s finished and will go to the store tomorrow. I love how it turned out:

The binding is a silver glittery Christmas fabric.

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I know there has been a lot of discussion around the topic of tariffs. I am not going to offer an opinion here. I am going to suggest that you all listen to the latest episode of the Stitching Tales podcast. Johanna Lundstrom and Malena Hjerpe live in Norway and Sweden, respectively. I give them mad props for doing a podcast in English, because I certainly couldn’t do a podcast in a foreign language. Johanna used to be a journalist and she did a wonderful job explaining tariffs and their impact on sewing from the standpoint of someone living in another country. I think it would do all of us good to get out of our US-centric headspaces and hear from people living elsewhere in the world. My takeaway, after listening to her commentary, is that rarely is there a situation when government intervention—on either side—makes something less costly or more efficient. 🫤