JUBILATION!!! She's Sewing Again!

1927 Ticker Tape Parade for Charles Lindbergh's Transatlantic flight, photo from NPR

Well, I dropped my sickly 750  QE sewing machine off at my Bernina dealer yesterday morning, and told him that she was looping and could not get past the startup screen.  I asked him to go ahead and do the annual cleaning/maintenance and firmware update at the same time, and he indicated that it might be the end of the week before I got my machine back, which sounded more than reasonable to me.

 

Imagine my surprise today when the shop called to tell me that my machine was already finished and ready for pickup!  When I got to the store, my dealer explained that he ended up staying late last night to work on a number of machines and mine was one of them.  He also DID NOT CHARGE ME A DIME -- not even for the routine maintenance and cleaning, which I had been expecting to pay for, because it's the first one for this machine and he said the first "well-baby" visit is always on the house. 

 

I know that he won't always be able to service my machine and get it back to me within 24 hours, and not every service call will be free, but still -- how I feel about that big purchase, and how calmly I'm able to handle it when things go wrong with the machine, has so much to do with what a great dealer I have.  I don't have to panic because I know that whatever it is, he is going to take my problem seriously and resolve it fairly and as quickly as possible.  This dealer is conveniently located about 5 minutes from my home, in a busy upscale shopping center that I know for a fact charges hefty rents (so it costs my dealer more to do business there). 

There is another Bernina dealer located in the middle of nowhere, about 45 minutes away, and I know that her prices are lower than my just-around-the-corner dealer, but that initial purchase price isn't everything.  Some people on the Bernina 7 Series Yahoo users' group have reported that their dealers are charging them $100 or more just to do their firmware updates, which my dealer does at no charge.  Some dealers tell customers that their problems are all "user error," or that they are just too picky, or they are using the "wrong" thread, etc.  Some dealers honestly don't seem to know what they are doing and seem not just unwilling but UNABLE to diagnose and correct the issues that can crop up with high-tech machines.

I would like to remind those who are in the market for a new sewing machine that you should evaluate the dealer as thoroughly as the machine under consideration, whether you're looking at a Bernina or at another brand.  Sewing machine dealerships are independent businesses and they are not all the same.  Some just sell you a machine, while others throw in a tremendous amount of service, education, and knowledge as a value-add.  The difference between an outstanding, knowledgeable dealer with great customer service versus an inexperienced or indifferent dealer can make all the difference in the world in whether you love your new machine for years to come or end up feeling like a fool for getting suckered into buying it.

 

We all have a tendency to tell everyone when we have had unsatisfactory shopping experiences.  I think it's just as important to spread the word and let others know when you receive outstanding customer service.  So, for those of you in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, my wonderful dealer is Berry at Creative Sewing & Vacuum in the Stonecrest shopping center, Ballantyne area.  He also has locations in Shelby and in Hickory.  :-) 

Thanks, Berry, and happy stitching, everyone!

The Princess and the Prius

Mercedes ML500 just like mine, but without the smeared up windows and crumbs,

So a week or two ago, I was suddenly seized with passion for the environment mixed with outrage over the high cost of gasoline.  Now that I'm on sabbatical and no longer need to fit 54" bolts of fabric in my car on a regular basis, perhaps my gas-guzzling SUV was no longer necessary?  My father had been gloating about how his new Lexus hybrid CH200h hatchback gets 42 miles to the gallon, whereas my Mercedes ML500 gets, um, well -- somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-18 miles to the gallon.  And of course, the Benz is a picky eater who only eats PREMIUM.  I entertained fantasies of saving hundreds of dollars in fuel costs every month while flaunting my Holier-and-Greener-Than-Thou attitude in a stylish, luxurious Hybrid of One's Own. 

Lexus CT200h Hybrid, just like my Dad's

In a fit of inspiration, I drove over to the Lexus dealership to look at their luxury hybrids.  I quickly came to my senses about the CT200h as I mentally packed my sons into the back seats, with their bookbags, piano music, school projects, and my purse piled on the front passenger seat, a violin and a trombone in the little trunk area, and the groceries and giant sacks of dog food -- where, strapped to the roof?  Then the nice Lexus man showed me the Lexus HS hybrid, a 4-door sedan with more head room for back seat passengers and space for more junk in the trunk.  The HS hybrid gets 35 miles per gallon of fuel, though, not quite as good as the CT, and when I went home and told Bernie about it he complained that there were plenty of cars that got 30 miles to the gallon without being hybrids.  He humored me by going to the Lexus dealership to test drive the car, then (loudly, embarrassingly) proclaimed "You will HATE this car, and I will have to hear about how much you hate it EVERY SINGLE DAY.  No!!"  The car salesman meekly offered his opinion about the "peppiness" and "driving pleasure" of the hybrid sedan, and my darling husband ticked off the flaws I had overlooked in my own test drive: the much slower acceleration, the increased road noise interfering with my classical music, the jarring jolt of every bump in the road...  He even complained that the door of the car didn't feel heavy enough.  Who needs a heavy door?  Me, apparently.  "She's used to driving a rocket ship that's built like a tank  -- Hey, what's this one?" His eyes had alighted on an even bigger hybrid sedan with even lower gas mileage (and a much higher price tag), some LS or GS something or other that looked like it should be packed full of men in suits on their way to a business lunch.  Nope; not the car for me.

We drove home, Bernie victorious, me sulking ever-so-slightly.  Then Bernie talked to his sister, who sang the praises of her Toyota Prius.  Bernie said, "If you really want great gas mileage, you should at least test-drive a Prius."  Oh, fine.  So we went to the Toyota dealership.

First off, the Toyota dealership is on a separate planet from the Mercedes and Lexus dealerships.  It's in another galaxy, far, far away, populated by salesmen named Vito (I am not making this up!) who shoo you into a little cubicle and insist on "getting some information first" before they will show you the car you came to see.  Then, when you protest that you are pressed for time and really just want to take a quick look at the car, Vito enthusiastically declares, "I can sell you a car in FIVE MINUTES!!"  Oh, goody!  The girl at the reception desk of the Toyota dealership is playing with her phone and never greets us or even makes eye contact.  No one offers me a complimentary beverage or snack.  It's like the difference between shopping at Nieman Marcus and shopping at Target, except that Target has much better customer service than the Toyota dealer. 

The UnSexy, Uninteresting Toyota Prius V

Bernie asks Vito to skip the formalities and let me drive the Prius V, because it's the biggest Prius model and, when you are 6'8" tall like my husband, you firmly believe that BIGGER IS BETTER.  I open the driver's door to this car, and immediately I smell the weird chemical smells of pleatherette upholstery.  I ask Vito, "Is this real leather upholstery?"  Unbelievably, Vito launches into a nonsensical spiel about how "you can't get real leather upholstery anymore unless you're buying a Rolls Royce."  Whaaaa?!  Do I look that stupid?  Whatever -- I told Bernie I'd drive the car, so I get in.  The Prius V drove a lot like the Lexus hybrids, which makes sense since they are all part of one big, happy car family.  Now that all the burled wood trim and posh interior detailing of the Lexus was stripped away, I was much more aware of the difference between how these cars feel to drive versus how my big SUV drives.  Ugh -- Fine, Bernie, YOU'RE RIGHT.  Once the giddy new-car excitement wore off, I would be very unhappy with a car that didn't take off like a bat out of hell when I stomped down on the gas pedal.  And yes, I DO need to stomp, because I like to drive like the Batman on the interstate.  Ah, Prius V, how did I hate thee?  Let me count the ways: 1. Your stinky fake leather upholstery and chemical fumes.  2. The lack of instrumentation near the steering wheel.  Why did they stick everything in the middle like that?  For the benefit of backseat drivers?  3. Your overwhelming stripped-down station wagon vibe.  4. The horrible Toyota dealership, which I will happily never set foot in again.

Inside the Toyota Prius V

See that weirdness?  There is no spedometer, no displays whatsoever anywhere near the driver.  Everything is in the middle and you have to crane your head to the right just to see how fast you're going.  I'd be zooming down the road, and my kids would be scolding me for speeding and I'd just have to take their word for it and turn up the radio to drown their protests.  And they're calling this the Mama Prius?

Inside the Mercedes ML500

Toyota, take note: This is what the inside of a Mommy Ride is supposed to look like.  Pretty wood trim on the console, doors, and steering wheel.  Spedometer located sensibly where only the driver can see it, because the passengers should mind their own business and quit telling Mommy how to drive. 

This princess can't tolerate the Prius, so I'm keeping my Benz.  I'll just have to make up for my planet-trashing SUV by buying organic produce and bringing reusable shopping bags with me when I go to the store!

The Beast Has Been Basted! Onwards to the Quilting!

A Sea of Safety Pins

There are about 730 size #1 safety pins more or less evenly spaced throughout my 70" x 105" Drunken Dragons quilt now.  I tried to be careful to keep the layers perfectly smooth, straight, and flat while I was pinning, ever fearful of ending up with those pleats and puckers on the backing side after machine quilting.  I even flipped Anders' Froggy Quilt of Many Colors over to try to get pictures of the pleats and puckers and knots that I'm trying to avoid this time, and you know what?  I couldn't even FIND them!  I know they're there, but evidently the "oopses" weren't as bad as they seemed at the time.  That's encouraging, right? 

Kwik Klip tool and Size #1 Curved Safety Pins

A quick word about pin basting: as far as I'm concerned, the Kwik Klip tool is absolutely mandatory for this task.  It costs about $7, and it's a wood handled tool that looks sort of like a blunt awl with grooves around the metal end.  It's used to lift the pointed end of the safety pin away from the fabric and close the pin without scratching and poking your fingers.  Even if you managed not to stab yourself closing pins without the tool, you would still have extremely sore fingertips after so many hundreds of pins.  This tool is worth its weight in gold, and you can get one here if you can't find one at your local quilt shop.  I use curved, nickel-plated, rust-proof size #1 safety pins to baste my quilts, and I try to evenly space them about 3" apart throughout the quilt.  I was careful not to put pins too close to the seam lines between blocks, because I'll be quilting "in the ditch" right along those seams lines with my walking foot to stabilize the quilt before I do any other quilting.

I'm also planning to attempt quilting in the ditch along the curved circle seam on each block, but that's going to have to be done free motion, with the feed dogs down, so I don't have to wrestle with turning the quilt 360 degrees for every circle. 

Variegated Machine Quilting Threads I will NOT be Using, YLI & King Tut

Which brings me to the Thread Question.  This is going to be my first quilt using nylon monofilament "invisible" thread in the needle.  I briefly considered some of these lovely variegated machine quilting threads that I had in my stash, but then I noticed that they were all 40 weight threads and I remembered all the reasons I had opted to go with invisible thread this time:  Heavy decorative threads might look great with my fabrics, but they will draw attention to every quilting hiccup or oops, and I'm very much a beginner at free motion quilting, so there are bound to be plenty of them.  Also, as I discovered on past projects, the fancy quilting designs that are digitized to stitch automatically with my machine's embroidery module tend to look bulky where the design backtracks to get from one place to another, and you can get little bumpy knots on the back of the quilt at points or places where the design stitches over itself too much.  I usually prefer natural fibers, and had an initial aversion to invisible "plastic" thread -- but Harriet Hargrove and Diane Gaudynski, arguably the most accomplished machine quilting experts around, both have used the invisible nylon monofilament thread in their award-winning quilts, and they recommend it for beginners.  If it's good enough for Harriet and Diane, it's good enough for me!


In my research on this thread, I found that most quilters use invisible nylon thread in the needle only, and recommend a 60 weight cotton embroidery thread in the bobbin.  I have heard wonderful things about Aurifil Mako 50 weight cotton thread for both piecing and quilting, which is supposed to be combine the benefits of 50 and 60 weight threads, but none of the shops local to me carry Aurifil and I wasn't about to order it online since I want a color that will virtually disappear on the Scrabble label fabric (I appliqued the label to the quilt backing prior to layering and basting so it will be quilted in and never come off, but I don't want to see contrasting quilting thread running all over the scrabble tiles).

Boring Threads I WILL Be Using: SewArt, YLI, Bottom Line & Mettler

I went to my local Bernina dealership, and I bought both a 60 weight Mettler cotton embroidery thread and a 60 weight polyester thread, The Bottom Line, that Superior Threads developed for machine quilter Libby Lehman.  I really just wanted the 60 weight cotton, because that's exactly what Diane Gaudynski's book says to use in the bobbin with invisible thread in the needle, but the two salesladies at the dealership are also quilters and they were pushy and insistent about the polyester thread.  They were trying to be helpful, but they made me feel like I was disrespecting my quilting elders if I didn't opt to do it their way, and the same ladies gave me attitude when I came in to buy more #1 safety pins after I ran out of them earlier this week.  You know, the raised eyebrows and the barely audible sniff of disapproval as they checked me out.  Apparently THEY use the larger #2 pins and they work just fine for them.  Maybe they use a thicker, loftier polyester batting instead of the thin batts I use, who knows?  The thing is, there is no one "right" way to do any of this.  Some quilters prewash fabric, some use it straight off the bolt.  Some starch, some don't.  There are raging debates about every marking product out there, and each quilter needs to try different things to find out what works best for him or her (yes -- there ARE he-quilters out there, too!).  The way I navigate the minefield of conflicting options is to seek out those quilters whose work I most admire, and find out what products and techniques they are using.  I didn't mind buying both threads this time, because it's possible that my sewing machine will prefer one over another, and what doesn't get used on this quilt can go into my stash for a future project.  But I have had similar experiences in several other shops, where the mostly older salesladies who have been sewing for decades were not able to set aside their own values and preferences in favor of the customer's needs and the profitibility of their employer.  When I was shopping for fabric for my very first quilt, the quilt shop ladies tried to talk me out of buying the more expensive (and exciting!) batiks that I was drawn to -- they felt that I should be shopping in the clearance fabric section until I was more experienced, and told me so!  My point in mentioning all of this is that there is a huge opportunity for quilt shops and machine dealerships to improve their profitibility with some basic sales training for their staff.  If I had the option of another shop nearby, I wouldn't go back to this one at all.  Okay -- off my soap box!

Another note about sewing with the invisible thread: On the advice of my experts, I did lower my needle tension when I used this thread for my invisible machine applique.  I put a lightweight cotton embroidery thread in the bobbin, matched to my background fabric, lowered the top tension by one, and used the built-in invisible applique stitch on my machine, with some minor length and width adjustments.  I also put the invisible thread on the thread stand attachment that I bought for embroidery threads, instead of using the horizontal spool holder on the machine.  Using a free-standing cone thread stand would be another option, but this thread benefits from a little extra breathing room as it comes off the spool and travels to the tension disks to prevent it from kinking up and misbehaving.

My espresso machine is fixed and running smoothly again, thanks to my "handy" husband, so all is well again in my caffeinated world.  Today I've got some errands to run and phone calls to make, and Anders has his first Suzuki violin lesson this afternoon.  I'm hoping to sneak in 30 minutes of sewing time either today or sometime tomorrow.  I'll post more pictures once the quilting adventure has begun.  Have a wonderful weekend!