Monday, January 20, 2020

OmniStitch for FreeMotion

Quilting has been taking up much of my time, if not actually sewing at least in my head. I love the design process, learning new skills, practicing until I can get it right (or at least better but who am I kidding, at least until it can be shown in public), along with the best sewing machine for this new skill. After piecing the top of a quilt I'm somewhat at a loss for how to actually quilt the top, batting, and backing together. Trying to stitch-in-the-ditch or outline blocks has been my past efforts but sometimes I long for the longarm machine quilt finish. My sister had one and did up a huge king size quilt of mine that I use for a bedspread but she lives in Michigan and has since sold her machine. I have looked into having a service or individual do up my quilts but it's pretty pricey. Here's what I have tried with some success.

Quilting Frame
Parts of a quilt frame
What started me down the road to free motion quilting was watching a video where they used a frame to keep the quilt taunt and for ease of manipulation. Even though the video used a Flynn Frame and I wasn't going to spend $150 on one, I did find a frame at a thrift store and for $10 I figured I could try to use it in some fashion. Well, it was "some fashion" and I found out the limitations and parts I must be missing. I needed some other parts to keep rolling up the quilt as I finished but it did show me how it could work.


OmniStitch
OmniStitch OS-1000
The sewing machine that I figured out would be the best for this kind of work is a no-feed dog type, meant for embellishing items with yarn or ribbon. It came to me via a thrift store for under $10 and I have only spent money on DBx1 needles so it was worth the experimentation. Mine came with only one attachment for feeding the yarn/ribbon so that wasn't going to work too well but I could use it for free motion.
No feed dogs, just a single needle opening
 This has worked for me before so I got it all set up with the quilting frame to discover I needed to remove the presser foot and needle to get the frame under the arm. This was a pain but maybe I would only need to do this a few times. I started to quilt on a simple block pieced baby quilt made of flannel, something I got at the River Rats TOGA last fall. I have three of these quilt tops and one came with backing fabric so that's where I started. Adding one layer of batting and getting it all into the frame, I was ready to stitch. I decided to try out a different design in each square to make this a sampler in free motion quilting and this turned out to be a good idea. The frame only allowed me to go about 6 inches into the quilt before I needed to roll it up and that was the part that was missing. I took a stab at trying to use it with another bar to hold the unquilted pieces together but it finally sorta collapsed so I took it out from under the arm of the machine.

Now I was up for the real deal, free motion just holding the quilt layers in place as I went. Thank goodness it was flannel because they really stuck together well even without basting! It was fun to try out different free motion patterns to see what worked, what was too much work, and how to control the speed and movement to get a good result. Here's my first attempt:
Flannel baby quilt with different patterns in each block
I ended up using some left over rayon blanket binding just to get it finished off since it was not going to be sold or even given away: it was for practice only. Next up I tried another one and this time I decided to use a wave and circle pattern at random to stitch in an all over pattern. I was surprised how little time it took, maybe over an hour for a 32" by 40" size baby quilt. Using safety pins to hold things together, I started in the center and moved out, smoothing and removing pins as I went. No basting! Here's how it looked:

All over stitch pattern
and then with green blanket binding with an ombre look of a light to dark fading out of the color:
Almost done with the second of three baby quilts in flannel
 I'm getting better so I'm ready to start the third flannel quilt top with a blue flannel backing:
Blue backing on pieced blocks
This has been a good learning time and I'm glad to have the pieced tops already presented so all I needed was to do the finishing up by learning free motion quilting. I sure didn't want to experiment on something I spend hours and hours on cutting, piecing, plus the cost of the fabric only to then botch the free motion quilting. Do I feel ready to work on one of my "dream" quilts? Not yet, but I have several sets of quilt blocks from the TOGA and others I can still practice on before I put the needle to a fancy quilt top. It's all about practice, practice,and more practice!


Monday, January 13, 2020

When Close is Close Enough

Friday:
There has been quite a run on Bernina's lately and that could be because I have been recommending them more. When people I have sold sewing machines to come back for another machine, many times they ask for something that is really "the best" sewing machine for (fill in the blank here). If it's the best stitches and they want more than straight stitch, I frequently have to recommend Bernina's. Their tension is perfect, stitches are ramrod straight, and these machines have definitely stood the test of time. So I continue to recommend but sometimes get caught in a situation where I have no more machines and that has been my dilemma lately.

Everyone wants the Bernina Record 830, a very top-of-the-line machine before the real electronics came to dominate sewing machines. I know, they have electronic in their name on this model but they are primarily a mechanical sewing machine. Much to my delight, I have two of them, one complete with red carrying case, extension table, full set of accessories in a red box, new power cords and foot control. The other one has the same except no carrying case and no extension table. Everyone wants that extension table and they are hard to find! The search will continue until I sell both machines but one is getting picked up this weekend and we shall see about the other one: maybe someone wants it so bad they are willing to try to pick up an extension table later.

Here's the real dilemma: next up is the Bernina Record 730 and I also have two of them but both have issues. One came with the green suitcase and has the attachment compartment in green that fits onto the back of the machine, the other one came without a case. So what's the problem? The model with the case has a broken cam gear, very common, and the other one uses a knee control instead of a foot control. I have been looking for that knee control for four months and they keep getting away from me until this week when I found one and now it's mine! As far as the gear replacement goes, that's another sage but I'll summarize.

I bought the replacement gear some time ago but without a buyer I wasn't too motivated to actually replace it. After watching an excellent YouTube video on how to do this right with all of the subsequent adjustments, I dove in. Here's a little aside about an oil pad under the can mechanism: the video said to just throw it away but I could see the machine with the decent gear also had a decent oil pad so I switched them out:

Deep inside the machine where the oil pad was removed

Let's throw that oil pad on the left away and replace with the super clean one on the right
The problem comes with these aftermarket gears that are just slightly off in size so there is a bit of a hitch in their giddy-up. For the most part the stitches were great and then there was the occasional misstep but it was unpredictable when it would show up. I put everything away and checked back two days later. Now I had another thought: I have a 730 as a parts machine so maybe I could use that camstack gear! I took it all apart and, wouldn't you know it, it was the same measurement as the new gear! Is my micrometer off?
Broken gear, older gear on camstack, new replacement gear on camstack
 I don't have anything to lose so I go ahead and take the old but not broken gear off the camstack. I try to anyway but one of the screws is not loosening up so I decide to use the whole camstack with gear because, after all, aren't they the same model? It all goes together just fine so I stitch it out but find the stitches are not in the right order. Some of the patterns are all together different. What's going on here? Then I look at the stitch selector for each machine and see there are different stitches and a different order between them. What do I do now? The easy way is to print off a new list and tape it to the machine:

But then I get the idea of switching the top lid:
Original order
Replaced camstack order
I think this might work so I'm relieved for now. Neither of these machines have the extension table but I did find one only to discover it did not match even one of the three 730's I now have. Time to investigate the part number so I can get the correct one when I find another one. I still have two more Bernina's to show but I would like to have all of them in working order. It appears my work is never done but it's oh so enjoyable! Happy sewing...

 Sunday:
It was quite a whirlwind day on Saturday and things didn't turn out as expected! A quilting friend from Cambridge came down to look at the Berninas and bought the 830 without the case or table (since the other one was already spoken for). I told them about the 730 table that didn't fit as I had it on the kitchen table with all of the Berninas. Her husband, who was active in this whole discussion, said it looked like it was the same size opening as the 830 so we tried it and it actually fit the 830 a bit better. He said he was willing to shave off the extra with a file to make it fit and it was sold! All three of us were happy as she loaded up the car with her new-to-her-sewing machine.

Before the next Bernina sale I managed to squeeze in Harlan who wanted an Elna for some basic sewing. The SU62C was not behaving well and I couldn't sell it yet so I sent him some photos of a few Kenmore's. He called Saturday morning to see some of them and I figured I could set them up for his perusal. He ended up with a Kenmore 158-17741, a very nice machine with built in stitches as well as cams for decorative stitches. Upon leaving he said he would still like to have a go at the Elna if and when it was ready to go as he was taken up with the Swiss manufacturing and watch reputation.
Kenmore 158-17741
Julie came for her Bernina Record 830 and we plugged it in and it didn't sound very good. What happened? We figured she must have sewn on the other model and not this one. Then the stitch length lever wasn't behaving well so she said she would either wait for this one to get worked on or might even look at a different Bernina. I do have a 910 coming this week so we shall see. Last night I took the 830 apart and checked the motor, cleaned out stray pins, put it all back together and with another oiling it now sounds like it should. The stitch length lever was cleaned out and adjusted and now it works according to the manual. I'll let Julie know it's fine now but she might want to wait until I have the 910 up and running. We shall see.

And finally, Freeman was back with his restored bentwood case and looking for an exact fit of those strap sets I sell. There was an extension table with his case and he wondered if we could somehow accommodate it with the straps but nothing seemed to work. Then my husband had a brilliant idea: how about making a carrying pouch that attaches to the back of the carrying handle for the extension table? That sounded like it would work so I even produced some Singer logo fabric to give him inspiration. All was well, everyone went home happy, my reputation is still intact. 

Four visits in one day: that might be a record but I don't want to do that very often. Now I'm off to sew a new Hawaiian shirt for my husband (we have to do something to avoid going out in the snow!)