The Cheater's Ultimate Guide to Quilting With Your Embroidery Module

Decorative Quilting the Easy Way: Quilting "In the Hoop" with an Embroidery Module

They say that it takes, on average, 80 hours of practice to learn free motion machine quilting.  That's what "they" say.  I say that it's like learning to draw all over again -- with your feet.  Still, it's a skill worth learning, because free motion quilting allows home sewers to quilt just about any design with almost any domestic sewing machine, in a fraction of the time that hand quilting would require.  The method I'm going to describe today is totally cheating -- like reading the Cliff Notes instead of reading the book -- but for me, it's a good way to get complex decorative quilting designs on my quilts NOW while I'm still working through the FMQ learning curve.  I have about 79 more hours of practice to go...  ;-)

Disclaimer:  I do not claim to be an expert on quilting, embroidery, or Bernina machines.  I'm going to share what has worked the best for me, but as they say, "your mileage may vary."  If you know of any tips or tricks that I haven't mentioned, or if you have a better method, please share in the comments!  I'm always willing to learn more. 

Speaking of learning more (from quilters who actually know what they're talking about!): Check out Wendy Sheppard's "Pretty Pillow, Quilted Heirloom" article in Bernina's Through the Needle magazine, Issue 28 from November 2008; I highly recommend it.  Wendy's pillow project is small and manageable, and it combines decorative embroidery module-stitched designs with begginer-friendly free motion quilting for stunning results.  Another resource I consulted was Jennifer Gigas' and Marlis Bennett's "Quilting In the Hoop" article for Bernina, and you can get a full PDF of that article right here.  Again, I consulted that article, but I did not follow their recommended method (they say to hoop just the quilt top with the batting, before adding the backing fabric, so the decorative quilting motifs are not stitched through all three layers of the quilt sandwich) because it wouldn't have given me the finished look that I wanted for my quilts, and because quilting with exposed batting underneath would create a lint nightmare for my sewing machine.

Artista 730E with Embroidery Module Attached, photo from Bernina USA

In order to quilt "in the hoop," you need to have a computerized sewing machine with an embroidery module.  Mine is a Bernina Artista 200E, upgraded to the equivalent of the current model Artista 730E.  However, any embroidery machine can do this technique.  With the embroidery module attached and a digital design file loaded into your sewing machine, exquisite and flawless decorative quilting designs are as easy as snapping a hoop onto your quilt, threading the machine, and pushing the start button.  The embroidery module, guided by the sewing machine's internal computer, moves the quilt around beneath the needle to ensure perfect placement of every stitch, every time.  It's so easy that I almost feel guilty!

Actually, it's easy NOW because I have finally worked the kinks out of my method. 

• First of all, ideally, you should plan your quilting at the very beginning, before you cut the first piece of fabric for your quilt top.  Why?  Because you will not be able to stitch out an embroidery-assisted quilting design that is larger than the maximum stitchable area of your machine's largest hoop.  Most quilt blocks are squares, which means that the maximum WIDTH of your largest hoop is going to determine how big your quilt blocks should be.  For my machine, the biggest round or square design I can stitch in one hooping is about 5 1/2" x 5 1/2".  So, next time I'm planning to quilt by embroidery module, I'll keep my block sizes 6" or smaller so I won't have to fill in and improvise to fill the rest of the space.

Planning Pays Off: This design fits the block properly in "Anders' Froggy Quilt of Many Colors," 2006

•  This method only works for small to medium quilts -- do not attempt this on a King or Queen bed quilt!  My Drunken Dragons quilt is 70" x 105," and thankfully, the quilting design I chose was non-directional so that I never had more than 35" of quilt crammed to the right of my needle under the sewing machine at once.  I feel like that was the outer limit.  Why?  Because the embroidery hoop moves when the design is stitching out, and when the left-most portion of the design is stitching, the right side of the hoop is almost touching the inside part of the sewing machine, leaving nowhere for all that 35" of quilt to go.  I had it sort of rolled up and bunched above the hoop during stitchout of the motifs in the center of my quilt, and had to be very careful to keep the excess out of the way of the needle and the moving hoop.  Quilting "in the hoop" will work well for throw or crib sized quilts, table runners, and other small or narrow items.
• Choose your quilting design carefully.  Sources for professionally digitized quilting designs include your machine dealer, where you can purchase design collections such as OESD Crafter's Collection #007, Quilting Whimsy by Diane Gaudynski, as well as online sources such as Amazing Designs or Oklahoma Embroidery Supply & Design (although OESD doesn't have a category for quilting designs, so you'll have to scroll through lots of not-what-I-wanteds before you find what you're looking for).  Anita Goodesign has some beautiful quilting designs as well.  If you own embroidery design software, you can easily digitize any design your heart desires -- it's just an outline stitch, after all.  Personally, I've had the best results with continuous designs that don't have any backtracking (sewing over a previously-stitched line to get to the next place in the design).  In the picture below from my 2003 "Celestial Double Nine Patch" quilt, the first time I quilted "in the hoop," you can see how the backtracking didn't always land exactly on the previously stitched line.  Could I have corrected this with better hooping and/or stabilizing?  Perhaps -- but for less headaches, just choose a different design!

Even if the second line of stitching had landed right on top of the other stitches where they belonged, the variegated thread I was using would have drawn attention to the backtracking because it always ends up being two different colors of thread.  This quilt is also a great example of What Not To Do because my quilt blocks were much bigger than my maximum embroidery hoop could stitch the designs, and I ended up with too much empty space around the designs. 

The nine patch blocks and borders of this quilt were grid quilted (crookedly) with a walking foot, and I was terrified of free motion quilting so I added some lame looking straight lines radiating from the corners and center points of the design, to meet the batting manufacturer's guidelines for how far apart the quilting lines should be spaced.  Yuck!  One of these days I'm going to go back and add more quilting to make that look better.  It will count towards those 80 hours of practice, and I couldn't possibly make it look any worse!

My "Celestial Double Nine Patch" quilt for Anders, completed in November 2003

[UPDATED March 4th, 2014: After writing this post and looking at that quilt again, I DID finally go back and fill in the blank space around the embroidered motifs with some free motion squiggle quilting.  It's wobbly and imperfect, but it looks a lot better than it did before.]

Celestial Double Nine Patch with FMQ Filler Around Embroidered Design added in 2012

• A Word About Tension: As soon as you snap that embroidery module onto your sewing machine, your machine tension is automatically altered to deliberately pull the loose needle thread underneath to the tighter bobbin thread.  If you were doing a regular embroidery design with satin stitches, this is exactly what you would want to ensure that none of your ugly black or white bobbin thread showed on the top of your embroidery, especially along the edges of narrow satin stitched columns.  This is why Gigas and Bennett recommend adding the backing afterwards, to hide the ugly unbalanced tension on the back of the quilt, which can look like this:

Unbalanced Tension, Backing Side

Who wants to see that ugliness on the back of a quilt they've worked hard to create?  Fortunately, the solution to this problem is simple.  Just manually change the needle tension back to normal before you stitch your design.  On my machine, with the threads I've been using on the Drunken Dragons quilt, I get perfectly balanced stitches with tension set at 4.0, but the tension drops down to 2.0 when I engage the embroidery function.  I just have to remember to change the tension back to 4.0 in the Edit screen before I stitch the design, and then the back side of my quilt comes out just as pretty as the front.  I put a Post-It note on the front of my sewing machine to remind myself to check the tension every time.  If you don't know how to adjust the tension for your machine, check your owner's manual or pester your sewing machine dealer until they show you how.  That's what they're there for!

• Speaking of thread, the first couple of times I quilted "in the hoop," I used heavy 40-weight YLI variegated machine quilting thread in the needle as well as in the bobbin.  For the Drunken Dragons quilt, I experimented with a much thinner 60-weight Mettler 2-ply cotton embroidery thread in the needle and bobbin, and found that the quality of stitching on both sides of my quilt look much better with the finer thread.  I can use a #60 Sharp or #75 Quilting needle with this fine thread, which makes for a very tiny hole in the quilt.  Moreover, there are some pretty short stitch lengths in the tight curves of these intricate designs, and the heavier thread just looks too thick and clumsy for my taste.  The bulk of any backtracking and tie-offs in your designs will be much less obvious on the back of the quilt when you're using a finer thread, too.  Quilting thread is a subject of murderous contention, though, and every quilter will savagely defend her favorite brand to the death, so I suggest you try different threads in secret, see what works best for you, and then quietly use your favorite one no matter what other people tell you!
• In my meager experience, using embroidery stabilizer was not necessary as long as I hooped the quilt (rather than hooping tearaway stabilizer, basting the quilt to the stabilizer, and then tearing the stabilizer off afterwards).  I used stabilizer for that first quilt, and it didn't stop the design from shifting slightly -- but it used up a LOT of stabilizer, and that stuff isn't cheap!  It also took longer to fuss with the extra steps of basting and removing the stabilizer, and as I'm thinking about it now, it's also possible that when I pulled the stabilizer off the back of the quilt, it exaggerated the tension problems by pulling the threads even more out of whack.  Now I'm just hooping the quilt "naked," (naked quilt, not naked me!) and I'm getting much better results.
• Hooping gets easier, I promise!  The hardest part of quilting "in the hoop" is getting the quilt hooped nice and straight, with everything lined up properly so the design will stitch out exactly where you want it to on your quilt.  My sewing machine can stitch out one of these quilting motifs in under 2 minutes, but at first it was taking me 15 minutes to get the hoop in place prior to each stitch out.  The good news is that I got faster and more accurate with my hooping as I worked my way through the quilt, until I was finally able to get the hoop in place almost as quickly as my machine was stitching the designs.  Use the plastic gridded template that came with your hoop and line it up with seamlines in your quilt top, if possible.  Draw horizontal and vertical center lines on your block prior to hooping (with chalk pencil or something else you know you can remove easily) if you have to.  Once you have the hoop attached to your machine, check the center point of the design (my machine has a button that will move the needle to the center point of the design).  Use the on-screen editing features of your machine to shift your design slightly if needed so that it is perfectly centered on every block.  Note that, if your hoop has hit anything that impeded its movement while stitching, it could have been knocked out of alignment like mine was when I started embroidering quilting motifs on my "Drunken Dragons" quilt.  I was able to go into my Embroidery Settings screen and recalibrate that on my own after a quick, panicked phone call to my Bernina dealer.  If you are sure you have centered your block perfectly but your design is still stitching off-center, look in your owner's manual and try recalibrating your hoop.

Hoop in Position, Quilt Block Perfectly Centered Using Seamlines and Gridded Template

So, what's next for Lars's "Drunken Dragons" quilt, now that all of the "in the hoop" designs have been stitched out?  Since I did not follow my own advice to plan the quilting designs at the beginning, I ended up yet again with skimpy little designs that do not adequately fill my blocks. 

See all that "dead" space around the fancy quilting design in the center of the circle?

That's okay, because I'm going to add some REAL free motion quilting around the designs I stitched with my embroidery module this time.  It won't be perfect, and I'm going to have to experiment to find something that looks good with the existing design AND isn't so difficult that I can't execute it successfully.  Wish me luck!

"In the Hoop" Quilting with the Embroidery Module

...And we're off to the races!  Here you can see I've secured my hooped quilt into the embroidery module of my Bernina Artista 200/730 sewing machine.  Notice the way I have the bulk of the quilt piled up around the sewing machine so the embroidery module can move freely without the weight of the quilt creating drag that would result in distortion or misalignment of the design.  I've also checked and double-checked that no part of the quilt is stuck UNDER the embroidery hoop, which would be truly disastrous!  

40 wt YLI Variegated Machine Quilting Thread

I'm glad I tested out a couple of different thread scenarios.  Although the design stitched out beautifully with the SewArt monofilament nylon thread in the needle and 60 weight Mettler cotton embroidery thread in the bobbin, I felt like my efforts would be wasted on all these fancy quilting designs if I couldn't see them on the top of the quilt.  I went back to those beautiful variegated YLI and Superior Threads machine quilting threads, but since those are much heavier 40 weight threads, I had to switch from a 75/11 quilting needle to a 90/14 needle that left a bigger hole, allowing the bobbin thread to show as little dots on the top of the sample quilt and the top thread to show up on the backing side.  The starting and stopping points in the outline quilting design were also quite pronounced, as you can see in the photo at left.  That's because the machine takes several tiny stitches at the beginning and end of each "ring" of the design to prevent the stitches from pulling out after the thread tails are snipped.  With this heavier thread, those stitches sort of pile up on top of one another, and they jump out at me even more because with the variegated thread it's usually two different thread colors coming together at the point where the two lines of stitching meet.  The knotty thread bumps were even worse on the back of the sample:

Backing Side, 40 wt in Needle, 60 wt in Bobbin

YUCK!!!!  Granted, I could have improved my results with the 40 weight thread by using the same weight thread in the bobbin and tweaking the tension, but that wouldn't make the knots go away.  With 60 weight thread, you can't see where the knots are and you can't even feel them when you run your hand across the back of the design.  Ultimately, I just thought the heavier 40 weight thread looked clumsy compared to the elegance and precision of the 60 weight thread with the tiny needle. 

Top Side, Sample Stitched with 75/11 Needle and 60 weight Cotton Thread

So for the next sample stitch out, I went back to my 75/11 quilting needle and threaded my needle with a light blue shade of Mettler 60 weight cotton embroidery thread, using the same thread in the off-white color for the bobbin.  I overrode the machine's embroidery tension setting and set it at 4.0 since I want balanced stitches and I'm using the same thread top and bottom (most of the time with embroidery, you want UNbalanced stitching with the decorative needle thread pulled slightly to the backing, since embroidery bobbin thread just comes in black or white). 

BACKING side, 75/11 Needle and 60 weight Cotton Embroidery Thread

This combination of needle, threads, and tension settings produced near perfect results on both sides of the quilt sample, as you can see on these red and yellow tractor fabric samples.  Isn't it amazing what a difference the thread makes?  Scroll back up and look at the ugliness I got with the 40 weight thread on that brown tractor fabric.  Same design, same everything, the only difference is heavier thread and the larger needle required to accommodate it. 

So, once I'd nailed down the needle/thread/tension particulars, I snapped a hoop onto one of the circles at the center of my quilt, trying to use the block seamlines to make sure the hoop was centered.  This is actually a lot more difficult than you'd think, especially due to the size and thickness of the quilt.  My first try wasn't centered as well as it could have been, but it's not noticeable from a distance so I decided not to rip it out, since that would leave needle holes in the batik fabric that might not close up completely when the quilt was washed.  I'll try to do a better job of lining it up on the next one. 

First Decorative Quilting Motif Stitched Out

Ta da!  The cotton quilting thread is just a bit more visible against my fabrics than the grid quilting that I stitched earlier with the invisible nylon monofilament thread. 

First Motif Stitched, Backing Side

As you can see from the back side, I still have a lot of space to fill in with free motion background quilting once I get all of these "in the hoop" quilting designs stitched out on the quilt.

It only takes two minutes for my sewing machine to automatically stitch out this design, and unless the quilt gets caught on something during stitching the design comes out perfectly every time.  Again, it would be nice if I could have enlarged my quilting design to 10" diameter to completely fill the big circles on my quilt, because then I wouldn't have to go back and add free motion quilting around every single motif.  (The Jumbo Hoop, available for the Bernina 830LE machine, has an embroidery field of 10" x 15 3/4").  However, free motion quilting is a skill that I really want to master, because then I could quilt any design I wanted without having to first find or create a digitized embroidery file or wrestling to hoop an unwieldy quilt.  That reminds me -- I really need to call that quilt shop in Concord and reschedule my free motion quilting class!

Garden Surprises, Class Cancellation and BSR Revelations

Surprise!  Forgotten Perennials Popped Up in My Garden

Happy Friday!  I had planned to be in an all-day machine quilting class up in Concord today, but fortunately I called yesterday to confirm before packing up my sewing machine and other equipment and driving all the way up there -- the instructor had to cancel due to a water problem at her home, and the quilt shop did not have my phone number.  This is just as well, because I had to help Anders with a persuasive essay last night and by the time we'd read our latest chapter of the Sherlock Holmes classic A Study in Scarlet and I'd tucked the boys in bed, I was pretty tuckered out myself.

At least I was able to meet with Cynthia at the Bernina dealership yesterday afternoon to figure out why I'm having so much trouble using the BSR Bernina Stitch Regulator.  The mystery was solved in about 20 minutes. 



BSR Foot, photo courtesy Bernina USA

The instructions for the BSR say that you can push the "Start/Stop Button" on the front of your sewing machine to start or stop stitching.  I though that must be the button with the curved arrow that looks like an umbrella handle (you can that see it in the photo at left), but I was wrong.  The Artista 200 and Artista 730 machines do not have a start/stop button!  No wonder I was having trouble controlling the machine, since I was pushing the Quick Reverse button that doesn't do a darned thing with the feed dogs lowered.  Duh...  Cynthia recommended using BSR in Mode 1, operating it with the foot control, and using the needle stop down feature to make it easier to reposition your hands as you're working.  Then you just tap the foot pedal with your heel to raise the needle when you're ready to stitch again, and you're exactly where you left off.  Cynthia says you tend to get a big, ugly starting stitch with Mode 2, which is why she doesn't use that one, and I remember having that problem when I was practicing as well.  So I'll be putting these suggestions to work the next time I get a chance to work on Lars's quilt (hopefully today, if I can tear myself away from the computer).  I'll let you know how that works out.

Another Boring Post About the Drunken Dragons Quilt and Invisible Monofilament Nylon Thread

Are you sick of this Drunken Dragons quilt yet?  I know my father-in-law is.  Dad #2, feel free to stop reading right now, because I'm going to talk about invisible thread again.  This is for my own benefit, so I can remember what worked and what didn't work the next time around.  Anyone who never plans to attempt machine quilting, or who already knows how to do this well, will be dreadfully bored by this post.  Read on at your own peril!

As you can see, quilting is in progress (SLOW progress) with the walking foot.  First I was just going to stitch in the ditch (through the seamlines) vertically and horizontally, but then I read in Diane Gaudynski's book that she recommends stitching all the straight vertical lines first, then all the straight horizontal lines second.  Harriet Hargrave's book tells you to stitch the center vertical first, then the center horizontal, and then go back to quilt the rest of the vertical horizontal lines, but Diane's snow plow analogy won me over -- I've had the experience in the past of "snow plowing" fabric across the quilt until it hits the "brick wall" of the center seam.  So my quilting plan is:

1. Ditch quilting with walking foot on all vertical seam lines (done)
2. Quilt additional straight lines with walking foot, using width of the walking foot as a spacing guide (currently in progress)
3. Ditch quilting and additional straight lines with walking foot on all horizontal seam lines
4. Free motion quilting in the ditch with BSR function on all circular seam lines
5. Fancy quilting with embroidery module and hoop, center of each circle
6. Free motion echo quilting with BSR function around fancy motifs

Quilting "In the Ditch"

What's "ditch quilting?"  All of my seams are pressed to one side, which elevates the fabric on the side where the seam allowances stack and creates a lower "ditch" on the side without seam allowances under it.  When you're stitching "in the ditch," you're trying to stitch right along the seam on the lower side, with your needle rubbing against the raised side, but all the stiches laying on the lower side. 

All these straight lines with the walking foot are mind-numbingly boring, and it feels like I'm not accomplishing anything because of the invisible thread.  The invisibilty factor is nice when I mess up and the stitching line veers crooked, like this:

See how the quilting stitches that were supposed to stay on the black fabric, accidentally went up onto the red fabric briefly?  That would be obvious and unattractive in a regular thread, but with invisible thread you can barely see the boo-boo up close.  From a distance you can't tell there's any stitching there at all:

But even though I KNOW the quilting is important for holding the whole thing together, the invisible thread is bumming me out because, no matter how many lines of stitching I complete, the quilt looks just like it did when I started.  It's so much more fun to quilt with thread you can see!  I'm hoping that I'll get some shrinkage and puckering when I wash this quilt the first time.  In fact, I ran out of bobbin thread and had no idea -- just kept sewing nothing for ages.  I don't think I'll use this thread again, once this project is complete.

Back side of quilt: First line of quilting crosses the Scrabble label, color is a good match!

The 60 weight cotton thread I'm using in the bobbin is looking pretty good on the back of the quilt, though.  I chose the color so that it would "disappear" over the Scrabble label I appliqued to the backing, and I was nervous about how the off white color would look on the blue backing fabric, but I like how it's turning out.  Again, any sane quilter would have TESTED THIS OUT ahead of time on scraps of the backing fabric, but I am impatient, so I live and sew dangerously.

A few quick notes:

When all else fails, read the instruction manual!  The pre-programmed quilting straight stitch on my machine is #1324, and it doesn't work the way I thought it did.  With this stitch selected, you start sewing and the machine automatically takes five tiny locking stitches and then increases to 2.5 or whatever you have it set for.  Then, about 1/2" from the end of the seam, you're supposed to hit the little purple Quick Reverse button (looks like a U-turn sign) that's just above the needle on the machine, to signal that it's time to go back to the tiny locking stitches again.  Then I press the little auto thread cutter button and the machine clips the top and bobbin threads for me (I still have to trim them again later, but at least the thread tails are short enough not to get caught in subsequent quilting).

One more thing -- my locking hemostat tweezers are an absolute godsend for grabbing hold of the pesky monofilament nylon thread at the beginning of each seam, and for pulling up the bobbin thread so it doesn't tangle up on the backside of the quilt.

Taking the Terror Out of Invisible Nylon Monofilament Thread: Best Practices Borrowed from the Experts



Set up and Ready for Machine Quilting

Welcome to my sewing studio, bloggy friends!  No, I haven't started quilting yet, but I did spend some time in the studio yesterday, clearing the mountains of fabric, rulers, sewing magazines, tools, and mending off this folding table so I could move it in front of my sewing cabinet.  I would have moved the table even closer to my chair, except the back end of the table is already hitting my mammoth cutting table and that's way too heavy for me to move.  I already had another folding table set up behind my red sewing machine cabinet (which is a Bernie-Built exclusive, in case you're wondering), so now the weight of the quilt will be supported on all sides while I'm quilting.  It's really important that the quilt isn't hanging onto the floor, so you don't have to fight the force of gravity while you're trying to quilt.  My sewing machine is lowered so it's flush with the top of the cabinet, with a clear acrylic piece filling the gap between the machine and the table top.  I ordered the acrylic insert from one of the major sewing machine cabinet manufacturers, made to fit my machine make and model, and then I had Bernie cut the hole in the cabinet top to fit the acrylic insert.

Nylon Monofilament Thread on Thread Stand

I wanted to share some tips for working with nylon monofilament "invisible" thread, since so many people seem to struggle with it.  Because I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others whenever possible, I did a little research into the best practices others have come up with for working with this thread.  Most of what I'm about to tell you came out of either Harriet Hargrave's Heirloom Machine Quilting book or out of Diane Gaudynski's Guide to Machine Quilting.  I strongly recommend both books.

I'm using a high quality invisible thread from SewArt International, which is always the first step towards success.  Cheap thread is never worth the grief it causes, and neither is old, brittle thread.  Second, I've put the invisible nylon thread on a silly thread stand contraption that hooks onto the back of my sewing machine, the Multiple Spool Holder accessory.  The thread stand is silly only because it holds a ridiculous number of thread spools, and the sewing machine only has one needle -- at most, you might use three spools at once with a triple wing needle.  It's supposed to facilitate machine embroidery work, and I bought it thinking that I would line up different color threads in order of stitching for embroidery designs, but in reality, I rarely ever embroider designs with enough color changes to warrant the stand.  So the Multiple Spool Holder is overkill for quilting, but I'm using it so the nylon monofilament thread can sit vertically on the stand and, although it comes off the spool kind of curled and kinky, the thread has plenty of opportunity to relax and learn some manners as it travel up to the loop at the top of the thread stand, then back down to the machine and its tension disks, preventing the snarling and kinking problems that can sometimes happen with this thread. 

Photo Courtesy Clotilde

If you don't have a funky thread stand like mine, you can get a simple cast iron cone thread stand online here from Clotilde for less than $10, and just set it on the table next to your sewing machine; it will work just as well.

Invisible Nylon Thread in the Guide Attached to my Sewing Machine

Next, one of my books recommended taping a little safety pin to the edge of the sewing machine as an additional thread guide for monofilament nylon thread.  Lo and behold, my Bernina Artista 200E/730E sewing machine already has a little metal guide loop already attached in exactly the right spot!  Never noticed that before!  I love it when my sewbaby is one step ahead of me!  So my invisible thread is going straight up off the spool to the top of my thread stand, down to the little metal loop guide on the right side of my sewing machine, just above the hand wheel, and from there it follows the regular thread path.  My horizontal spool pin is holding the Mettler 60 weight 2-ply cotton embroidery thread that I'm using in my bobbin.  Remember, if your machine doesn't have this extra thread guide, just tape a small safety pin in the same spot on your machine and use that as your thread guide. 

As I'm editing photos for this post, trying to adjust the brightness so you can actually SEE the invisible thread, I feel like one of the bogus tailors in The Emperor's New Clothes.  It's the most beautiful thread in the world, but alas, fools cannot see it...  ;-)  Don't feel too bad -- I can't see it, either.

Okay, now for the tension samples!  Did you think you could thread your machine up with magical invisible nylon thread and sew beautiful stitches without having to make any tension adjustments?  Think again, sister!  Invisible nylon thread stretches as it goes through the tension disks of your machine, so you are going to need looser needle tension than the standard setting, which is calibrated for sewing with regular weight cotton or polyester construction thread in both the needle and the bobbin.  I can't tell you exactly what setting you should use, because the tension numbers are completely arbitrary and vary widely by machine, even within the same brand.  The only universal tension truths are that higher numbers equal tighter tension, and nylon thread is going to need looser tension than whatever your standard setting is.

Monofilament Tension Sample, Top Row is Normal Tension, Gradually Reduced to Bottom Row at 1.25

When I used the invisible nylon thread a few weeks ago to blind applique the Scrabble quilt label to the backing fabric, I just dropped my needle tension down to 3.0 and that seemed fine.  So I thought 3 was my magic monofilament number, until I started stitching parallel test rows down a sandwich of backing fabric and batting scraps.  The bobbin thread on the back of this sample is very easy to see and looks great at every setting.  It's really tough to tell what you're looking at on the invisible nylon side, though.  I couldn't get this to photograph well, either, but I finally determined that I needed to reduce my needle tension all the way down to 1.25 with this thread.  With higher/tighter tension, the nylon monofilament was laying in a flat line across the top of the fabric, pulling the bobbin thread all the way to the top to lock and form the stitch, instead of meeting the bobbin thread halfway in the middle.  When my needle tension is too tight, the invisible nylon looks really shiny because it's a straight, unbroken line of thread reflecting the light.  When I reduced the tension sufficiently, the shiny effect was greatly reduced because the nylon thread was bending between each stitch and disappearing into the quilt sandwich instead of laying tautly across the top of the fabric.  Does that make sense?  If your monofilament thread looks too "shiny," which is a common complaint from those who don't want to use it, I suggest you lower your needle tension until you can tame the shine.  You can keep reducing needle tension as long as the bobbin thread still looks good on the back.  If you start to have a "line" of bobbin thread on the back instead of individual stitches, you'll know you've gone too far.

Another point about the bobbin thread: Looking back at my sample stitches again, I can see a tiny dot of bobbin thread between each stitch on the top of my quilt sandwich.  This effect was more pronounced when my needle tension was too tight and pulling the bobbin up to the top, but it doesn't completely go away even once my tension is balanced.  I'm using a #60 sharp needle to make the smallest hole possible, and that should help, but it's a good reason to select a bobbin thread color that will blend with fabrics in your quilt top instead of a thread color that only looks good with the backing.

I also happily discovered that my sewing machine has a built in quilting straight stitch programmed with 5 tiny little stitches at the beginning and end to lock off stitches.  I don't think I've used that in the past, I've just manually turned the stitch length adjuster at the beginning and end of each line of stitching.  I'm not sure if I'll use the built in stitch or not -- it's nice at the beginning of the row, because you just tap the "pattern begin" button on the touch screen and start sewing, and the machine automatically increases to the correct stitch length after locking in the stitches without having to take your hands off the fabric.  The annoying part is at the end, when my foot is on the pedal and I reach up to hit the "pattern end" button to tell the machine to go back to the tiny stitches to end the row.  If I don't tap the button just right with my fingertip, the machine keeps sewing the longer stitch length while I tap it again and again, waiting for the chime that means "yes, Master" in Sewbaby Speak.  We'll see how that goes.

So much for the "quick blog post" I planned to write this morning!  Hopefully next time I post, I will have made some progress with the actual quilting. 

UPDATED February 18th, 2014: I did some quilting with monofilament nylon on my Bernina 750 QE for the first time a couple of days ago.  She handled it beautifully, with cotton thread in the bobbin and top tension reduced to 2.0.  I did place the monofilament nylon on my thread stand behind the machine and did everything else the same way I did on my previous Artista 200/730 E.

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.

Machine Embroidered Quilt Signature: Using V6 Bernina Software with the Artista 200/730 Machine

Machine Embroidered Quilt Label

Today is a busy Saturday for us, but I wanted to get this down quickly while the details are still fresh in my mind.  If you've missed my previous posts about Lars's "Drunken Dragons" drunkard's path quilt, you can catch up here. 

As you can see, I've machine embroidered the name of the quilt, my name, and the year on the front of my completed quilt top.  I suppose I could have put this information on the back, where I appliqued the Mommy Loves Lars Scrabble label, but I decided to put it on the edge of the quilt top, a few inches away from where the binding will be.  I'm planning to quilt this project with invisible monofilament nylon thread, so the quilting stitches can go right over both labels without detracting from them. 

This is the first time I've used my Bernina Artista Embroidery Software since upgrading from Version 4 to Version 6 a few months ago, and when I first sat down to do this label I ran into annoying technical difficulties.  Here's what happened.

Printed Template of my Quilt Signature Design

First, I created this simple embroidered text design in my software program on my PC.  The template printout shown above is useful in positioning the embroidery design on the quilt.

USB Stick Plugged into Artista 200/730 Machine

Next, I saved the embroidery design to a Sandisk USB stick that I have successfully used many times (before upgrading my embroidery software) to transfer design files between my PC and my sewing machine.  (Note: My embroidery software lives on my PC, in my first floor office, and my sewing machine lives in my second floor sewing studio, by the way -- if I had a PC or laptop sitting right next to my sewing machine, I could connect the two with a cable and send the designs directly from the computer to the sewing machine). 

New Design, #17, Won't Preview on Sewing Machine

However, when I scrolled through my USB stick designs on my sewing machine screen, I could see all of my older designs, but the new design I'd just created was just a blank square without a preview.

When I selected Design #17, I got this error:

-- Which is ridiculous, because the machine hasn't opened any designs yet, and the one I'm trying to open is an itty bitty design with less than 4500 stitches.  My sewing machine can handle much larger, extremely complex designs -- it doesn't make sense that my little text design would max out the machine's memory.  I tried shutting down and restarting the machine, but I got the same error every time I attempted to open my new design.  When I touched the red circle with an X, I got the following additional information about the error:

Hmmm...  "Design not loadable?"  My Version 6 embroidery software is the latest and greatest version available from Bernina, but my sewing machine (an Artista 200E that was upgraded to the equivalent of the newer 730E) is about 10 years old now.  I know, I know -- our mothers and grandmothers sewed on the same machines for 30 years or longer, but today's computerized machines are more like our laptop computers, cell phones and televisions.  I began to suspect a compatibility issue between the sewing machine and the new design software.

I went back downstairs to my PC and saved the design again, this time paying attention to the file format that the software was defaulting to. 

v6 Software defaults to save every design in the newest .ART60 format

Aha!  Instead of saving my design as an .ART file, it was saving as an .ART60 file, the newest format.  I'm sure the newest machines can read this format, but my older sewbaby was choking on it! 

Selecting .ART type for Bernina A730/A200 designs

Sure enough, there's an option to save designs as BERNINA A730/A200 designs (*.ART).  Once I saved the file in the correct format for my machine, it popped up on the sewing machine screen with no problems and it was smooth sailing after that.

New Design Previewed in square #15; #16 is a file in the wrong format for my machine

Here we go!  Now that I finally had my design loaded on my sewing machine, I threaded the machine with Isacord 1301 and black embroidery bobbin thread.  I used an organ embroidery needle, the straight stitch throat plate, and attached my embroidery module to the sewing machine (it's a separate unit that locks in place and plugs into the sewing machine with a cable, allowing the sewing machine's internal computer to move the embroidery hoop in all directions beneath the needle according to the programming in the embroidery design file to create the desired embroidery design). 

Quilt Top Basted to Stabilizer in Oval Hoop

Most of the time, you hoop your actual project fabric between the two rings of your embroidery hoop to hold your fabric taut and secure for stitching, but I was leery of the possibility of getting a hoop "ring" creased into my quilt top that I might not be able to iron out.  My little text design was not incredibly dense, so I decided to hoop a single layer of tearaway embroidery stabilizer, which I then sprayed lightly with 505 Spray and Fix temporary Spray Adhesive.  I carefully positioned the quilt top over the sticky surface of the hooped stabilizer, using the gridded hoop template to ensure my quilt top was straight, and then I used a preprogrammed automatic basting "design" to stitch the quilt top to the stabilizer just inside the hoop.  These automatic basting designs are available for every hoop size and can be downloaded free of charge from the Bernina web site.

On-Screen Editing Tools Used to Precisely Position Embroidery Design

Next, I used the on-screen editing features of my sewing machine to reposition the embroidery design at the edge of the hoop, instead of centered in the middle of the hoop.  I could have done this in my embroidery software before saving the design, but by doing it on the sewing machine screen I can position the text more precisely on my project.  I wanted it near the edge of the quilt top, but far enough away that it wouldn't get covered by the quilt binding. 

Now, I should mention that at this point my husband poked his head in and said, "You are going to test that on another piece of fabric before you do it on the quilt top, aren't you?"  Duh...  Everyone knows you should always test your embroidery design with your planned fabric, stabilizer, thread, and needle combination before you stitch it out on your project in case you need to make any adjustments.  So, that's what I should have done, and that's what you should do.  I scowled at my husband and ignored his advice.  Full speed ahead! 

Ta Da! 

So here's the finished design, after trimming the jump stitches between letters and tearing away the stabilizer from the back of the quilt top, and carefully removing the basting stitches.  The basting stitches left holes in the fabrics, especially the batik fabric on the left, but I was able to easily scratch them out with my fingernail.  My husband is right; I should have tested the design on a scrap first.  There are many different fonts built into the embroidery software and you can also automatically convert any True Type font that you have loaded on your computer to stitches, but some fonts work well in small sizes and others work better larger.  After stitching this out, I realized that the font I chose this time has little jump stitches within the letters that are simply too tiny to snip safely without risking cutting actual embroidery stitches, so it looks a little sloppier than I'd like if you put your nose right up close to it.  I suppose I could use my stitch eraser (like an electric shaver) to cut out all of the embroidery stitches and start over, but I think it's better to leave it the way it is than to risk accidentally cutting a hole in the quilt top and really screwing things up. 

Now that I've got the quilt signature embroidered, I can give the quilt top a final pressing with plenty of starch, and then either mark some background grid lines (if I decide the grid quilting should be diagonal) or else skip marking and move on to layering and basting the backing, batting, and quilt top (if I do the background quilting grid straight instead of diagonal, I can use the piecing seams to guide the quilting so marking won't be necessary).

Children's Signatures Embroidered on Craft Aprons as Teacher Gifts

Idea for a future quilt label: I could scan in my handwritten signature and use my embroidery software to digitize an actual embroidered version that I could stitch out on a project.  I did something like that several years ago using children's signatures.  I had each child sign his or her name in magic marker on a white sheet of paper, scanned the signatures and then embroidered them on readymade craft aprons as end-of-year gifts for Anders' preschool teachers, who had worked on name writing with the class throughout the school year.  I just used the "magic wand" tool in the embroidery software to instantly assign stitches once the artwork had been imported, and the only downside was that the software can't tell it's working with lettering when you import a scanned signature, so the satin stitches don't automatically slant along the letters the way that they do when you are working with a computer font.  I ended up using different fill stitches for some of the kids' signatures and was able to make it work for the apron project, but if I was going to embroider my own signature on a quilt I would spend the extra time to manually angle the satin stitches for a more professional end result.  Perhaps this is easier to accomplish with the Version 6 software instead of the Version 4 software I was using when I did these aprons four years ago.  I'm looking forward to finding out when I take my software mastery classes in April!

Meanwhile, I have a quilt top that needs to be pressed.  Have a great weekend!