Taking a Break From Longarm Tension Tantrums -- Because I Needed a Win

I needed a break from playing Sherlock Holmes with the longarm machine over the weekend, and APQS Tech Support was closed anyway, so I dug around my studio looking for a small victory, something I could cross off my list easily without pulling out any of my hair or screaming profanity.

Remember This Quilted Machine Cover for My Bernina?

I started this quilted machine cover for my Bernina 750QEE back in 2014, and you can read about how I made it in this post.  The fabric was heavily free motion quilted on the Bernina (this was before I was even considering purchasing a longarm machine), then the monogram was machine embroidered on the Bernina.  I added some bead bling by hand.  Unlike the (boring gray) cover that came with the machine, my cover was designed to fit the machine when it's recessed into my cabinet, and I incorporated a cutout at the back to slip around my multiple spool holder.  

No, This Is Just Not Cute Enough For Me

But I didn't like the way it gaped at the back opening, so I ordered a vintage 1950s frog closure from an Etsy seller...  and, when it arrived, I realized I had NO IDEA how to attach it to my sewing machine cover!

Well, after four years of not using this machine cover at all because it wasn't finished, I decided to go ahead and just DO IT on Saturday afternoon.  First, I hand basted the edges of the opening together with huge slipstitches, plain old all-purpose polyester thread, and then I basted the two halves of the frog closure in place with the same thread, using big, ugly stitches and trying to keep them away from where the "real" stitches would go.

Tacking the Frog In Place With Embroidery Floss

I found the right shade of turquoise DMC cotton embroidery floss in my stash, and just tacked the frog in place at the inside and outside points.  Two strands of floss at a time, three stitches at each point.  It's not going anywhere.  It sure felt good to FINISH SOMETHING!  

YAY!  I Finished Something!!!

You know, there are so many people who love to sew but shy away from trying any kind of hand stitching because they think it's too hard, it takes too long...  Well, when your machines are throwing tantrums and you're contemplating chucking them out the window just to watch them smash when they hit the lawn, there's nothing like the total control of hand stitching to clear your head and fill your confidence bucket again.  The needle goes exactly where I want it to go, every single stitch.  The tension is perfect, every single stitch.  No thread nests.  The worst thing that can happen in hand stitching is a knot, and the solution to that is simple -- cut a shorter length of thread next time!  

Yes, It Matches My Chair...

I also cut, joined, and pressed binding strips for my Paint Me A Story bear paw quilt over the weekend. 

Binding Ready to Go For My Bear Paw Quilt

After pressing the binding in half lengthwise, I wrapped it around one of my acrylic rulers before sliding it into a zippered plastic storage bag that came with a set of pillowcases.  I also included the binding thread spool and bobbin, because why hunt around for it later?  Now I've got the top pieced and pressed, the backing pieced and pressed, and the binding all ready to go for that project, all hanging neatly together in the guest room closet until I'm ready to quilt it.  That feels pretty good, too.

See How I Label Things Now That I'm Organized?

And remember how I told you all that I've joined the Charlotte Quilters' Guild?  Well, I noticed at the September meeting that everyone was wearing a handmade fabric name tag, so I've been thinking about making one for myself before the October meeting.  I have a few orphaned sawtooth star blocks made from beautiful hand marbled fabric that I was unable to use in my bear paw quilt because the red fabric was bleeding horribly, but I couldn't bear to toss them because I love the fabric so much...  Well, armed with the knowledge I gained from the Victorious Bloodbath of my Jingle Blocks, I decided to try soaking out the excess dye with hot water and Dawn dish washing liquid.  It worked!  

Bloody Orphan Blocks, Rescued and Redeemed

Aren't they cute?  The two larger blocks are 4 1/2" with seam allowances, and the smaller block is 3 1/2" including seam allowances.  Of course I like the baby-sized block the best, but if I'm going to hand embroider my name in the star I'm better off with one of the larger blocks.  Too bad my name is REBECCA instead of ANN or PAM!  

My plan is to baste additional fabric strips around the star block so I can hoop it properly and embroider my name, probably in white perle cotton.  Then, depending on my mood, I may or may not add some bobbinwork, additional hand embroidery, beading or whatever.  There needs to be some kind of batting and stiffener.  And I want to poke around Michael's and see if I can't find those super strong magnets for pinless badges, because I don't want my name tag to hang around my neck on strings like a feed bag.  But at least the blocks are ready to play with now.  Another itty-bitty win!

Pinned and Ready to Sew

Oh, and the other thing I got done over the storm weekend was pinning two more sets of pineapple blocks together, ready for machine stitching.  OH MY GOSH, pinning all those seams is a pain in the arse!  None of the seams nest and it takes me three or four tries to get each pin right through the seam line of both blocks.  I am starting to wonder whether it wouldn't be faster and more accurate to tack those seam intersections together with hand stitches.  What do y'all think?  I only have three out of six rows stitched together, and then there will be just as many seams needing to match when I join rows together.  This top would be done by now if the pinning wasn't so tedious!

Well, it's Monday now, the skies are Carolina blue again and the sun is shining.  APQS Tech Support is open and my APQS dealer has reached out to offer her help as well.  It's time to confront my enemy!  Wish me luck.

Today I'm linking up with:

• Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com
• Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/2018/09/design-wall-monday-september-17-2018.html  
• Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/ 
• Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/ 

• Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/ 

Bring On the Bling! 750 QE Sewing Machine Cover, Part Deux

Almost Finished: Sewing Machine Cover for my Bernina 750 QE

So, this is what my in-progress sewing machine cover looks like today.  I think it looks like a mailbox.  Anyway, if you missed my Part One post about this project, you can catch up with that here.  Moving right along...

After spending a good chunk of eternity free-motion quilting my Kaffe Fassett Millefiore fabric, I used the muslin mockup pieces as a pattern to cut the sewing machine cover pieces out of my quilted yardage, like so:

If I hadn't needed to precisely position a cutout at the back of the cover for my thread stand, I probably could have skipped that whole muslin mockup.  It took WAY too long to custom-quilt my project fabric for me to risk messing it up with a cutting error, so it was worth the extra effort in this situation. See how much quilting I did to get the stiffness I wanted?

Quilted Yardage, Back Side View

I had some leftover covered cording lying around that I had made for my master bedroom throw pillows last month, and I decided to use it up on my sewing machine cover:

The cord fabric is F. Schumacher's pattern 62613 Betwixt in Peacock/Seaglass, a VERY loosely woven, 100% cotton fabric that is flexible and soft, but bulky and thick.  The piping is 5/32" diameter, the largest size that I can make on the serger, which allowed me to contain the fraying fabric edges and maintain a perfectly even seam allowance.  Making the cording on the serger like this has the added benefit of compressing and flattening the seam allowance, which makes the cording as easy to use in the project as a readymade lip cord trim.  The fabric strips were cut on the bias to follow the weave pattern.

As you can see in the photos, I offset the piping from the edge of the red fabric pieces by about 1/8" -- that's because the widest setting on my serger was still not quite 1/2" and my sewing machine cover would have finished too big if I had just attached the piping with raw edges and serged edges aligned.  I used my 4D zipper foot with dual feed engaged to attach the piping on my 750 QE sewing machine. 

To finish off the raw edges of my sewing machine cover along the bottom edge and around the thread stand cutout, I wanted to bind it in the same Schumacher fabric, but it was way too bulky to double up and wrap it around the way you would do with a lightweight cotton quilt binding.  What I ended up doing is this: I measured and cut bias fabric strips that were wide enough to be doubled on the front side of the machine cover, but only a single thickness wraps around to the inside.  I overcast one raw edge of the fabric strip on the serger first, then serged the other raw edge of the contrast fabric strip directly to the right side of my sewing machine cover (lots of fun driving around the inside of the cutout shape on the serger, let me tell you, but I managed!):

Binding Fabric Serged to Right Side of Machine Cover Along Bottom, Top Edge is Free

Now I had both raveling raw edges controlled and the binding strip was attached to the right side of the machine cover with an approximately 1/4" serged seam.  I then wrapped the loose binding edge to the inside and pinned it in place, making sure I covered the serged stitching with the binding fabric:

Pinning the Binding Prior to Stitching

Then I used Edgestitch Foot #10 to stitch in the ditch next to the binding from the right side of the project, and that secured the loose binding neatly to the inside of the cover.

After finishing the binding, I popped the cover over my sewing machine, and it was not exciting enough.  It needed something...  a monogram!  I briefly considered embroidering "Bernina 750 QE" on the machine, but then I decided that it's MY machine, MY dust cover, and it should be MY initials.

I chose the Gothic 4 monogram style from Embroidery Arts, my hands-down, all-time favorite source for machine embroidered monogram designs.  This monogram collection includes one fat and one skinny version of each letter, designed to be stacked rather than side by side.  My first and last initials are both R, and I thought that stacking two different R designs would be more interesting than positioning two identical Rs side by side.  I combined and enlarged the two monogram designs in my Bernina v6 Designer Plus embroidery digitizing software until it just filled the maximum stitching area of my medium embroidery hoop, experimented with thread colors a bit, and came up with this:

Pretty cool, right?  Then I stitched out a sample of the altered embroidery design onto a leftover unquilted scrap of Millefiore fabric, layered with batting and muslin backing to approximate my project fabric as closely as possible.  I got this:

Sample Stitch Out of Altered Design on Project Fabric

See why they tell you to always do that sample stitch out, especially when you're using a design from a new supplier or after you've done extensive editing to the design?  The first thing I decided from my sample stitch out was that the fat R needed to be a darker thread color to stand out better against the busy background fabric.  But then I noticed additional issues upon closer inspection:


My satin stitches aren't close enough together to give good coverage.  Also, when I stretched, distorted, and resized the monogram letters in my embroidery software, evidently the software did not recognize that the outline stitching was in fact outline stitching -- since I stretched the letters to be taller, all of the vertical outline stitches just got longer instead of the software adding more stitches to maintain a consistent stitch length.  If you look at the stitches that go horizontally and around the small curves, those stitches are all much shorter.  So I went back into my design software and ungrouped the design so that I had four separate elements: the fat R, the outline of the fat R, the skinny R, and the outline of the skinny R.  Then I selected each satin stitched letter, went into Object Properties, and changed satin stitch spacing from Manual to Automatic.  That increased the number of total stitches in the combined monogram from about 10,000 to about 12,000.  Then I selected each outline and clicked on "Outline Stitch" at the bottom of my screen, which automatically redigitized those stitches so that they would be nice and even.  I COULD have done another sample stitch out at that point to make sure I was happy with the results, but I am impatient so I hooped up my sewing machine cover instead.  I like to live dangerously:

Still loving all of the extra throat space on this machine, by the way.  Even though I'm using the medium embroidery hoop, the stiffly quilted sewing machine cover is bulky and takes up a lot of space.  On a smaller sewing machine, all of that bulk might have interfered with the operation of the embroidery module.  I drew chalk lines to help me position the monogram so that it was perfectly straight and centered on one of the red circle blobs of my fabric print.  Ta da:

Now, if I HAD stitched this as a second test drive sample, I would have seen that I like having those outline stitches evenly spaced, but that the stitching showed up better when they were longer -- and I would have gone back into my digitizing software to change that before proceeding.  But I didn't, so this is what I've got.  I'm happy with the thread colors I chose for both letters, but I'm a little sad that I don't see the contrasting outline thread as much as I wanted to.  Also, the positioning of the monogram is kind of high on the sewing machine cover, the lettering is still disappearing into the busy quilted background more than I wanted it to, and I'm not in love with it yet. 

Monogram Embroidered, Still Not in Love

So I asked my husband, "Bernie, do you think this needs some beads?"

And he answered, "No-it-does-not-need-beads" the way he would rattle off a phone number or the make and model of some hot rod we passed on the interstate.  And this is how I knew that it DEFINITELY needed beads.

This is not the first time I have added hand stitched beads to machine embroidery.  I've done it with decorative machine stitches, too -- it gives the machine stitching more of an individualized, hand crafted look.  It's much easier to execute than hand embroidery, too, because you can use the perfectly-spaced machine stitching as a guide for perfectly spacing your beads.  In this case, I decided to place one seed bead every two outline stitches around each of the monogram letters.  It didn't take as long as it would have taken to embroider the monogram by hand (assuming I had the skill and ability to do that, which I don't).  But, as with most of my bright ideas, it took much, MUCH LONGER THAN I EXPECTED IT TO!  :-)

Machine Embroidery Plus Beads

After I had blinged up the monogram with seed beads, I had to outline the red circle with alternating iridescent peacock colored bugle beads and cobalt blue seed beads.  As you can see, that beaded circle is a bit wobbly in places, because I followed the fabric print and the circle was designed a little wobbly.  I think it's okay.  And then, finally, I put the cover on my sewing machine and felt like it looked done.

Enough Beads?

I had a fleeting temptation to decorate the rest of the cover with an assortment of beads and/or sequins to embellish and play up the fabric print, but then I remembered that this was supposed to be a QUICK AND EASY project and I do want to get back to the quilts I'm working on.  I can always add more beads later if I decide it needs more.

This cover may or may not be finished at this point for one more reason.  The cutout for the thread stand could probably use a button or two:

Does It Need Buttons?  Hooks and Eyes?

It wants to sag down at the opening, which makes for a less-than-tidy fit.  However, if I put buttons or ribbon ties or whatever, that will just be annoying when I take the cover on and off.  If I do decide to add buttons, I'd love to make some turquoise Chinese ball knot buttons or maybe add a funky frog closure...

[At this point, Rebecca opens up another browser window and pokes around on Etsy...]

-- Eureka!  Check out this vintage 1950s frog closure that I just found on Etsy from seller Duchess General!  Doesn't that just look like it was MADE for my sewing machine cover?  It's the exact blues and greens that I used for my monogram, and I scored it for only $7.49 including shipping.  Perfection!

Vintage Frog Closure, Coming Soon to My Mailbox

So when that comes in the mail, I'll figure out how to attach it and THEN my sewing machine cover will FINALLY be done!

I'm linking up with Lee's WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced, Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, and with Esther's WOW WIP Wednesday linky party.  I'm also linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday which is hosted by Quilting Mod this week.  I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else has been working on this week! 

The Emperor's Invisible Quilting: A Sewing Machine Cover for the Bernina 750 QE, Part One

Tedious, Unrewarding, Utterly Invisible Quilting In Progress

No, I have not been away on a glamorous vacation during the two and a half weeks since I last posted.  I have merely been busy cleaning, organizing, and shedding things (especially hoards of fabric remnants) that I don't really want, will never use, but that have been taking up valuable real estate in my office and studio.  Meanwhile, I concocted a scheme for what I thought would be a "quick and easy" project to sandwich between all the big, long haul projects I've got going on.  I started making a dust cover for Big 'Nina, my 750 QE.

Sewing machines don't like dust, so you're supposed to cover them up when they're napping, just like little birdies.  My Bernina 750 actually did come with a dust cover for this purpose, but first of all it's UGLY, and second of all, it doesn't fit the machine when I have it lowered into a custom cabinet with an accessory thread stand attached to the back -- and that's how my 'Nina ALWAYS takes her naps.

See? The Bernina Dust Cover is Too Tall for a Recessed Machine

New Cover Will Need a Cutout for my Thread Stand

If you do a google search, you can find LOTS of creative tutorials for making elaborate patchwork sewing machine covers that are embellished with decorative stitches, ribbons, buttons and beads.  My idea was supposed to be simpler -- no pockets, no frills, just a streamlined version of the ugly Bernina cover, about four inches shorter and with a cutout at the back.  I found the perfect fabric in my stash:

'Nina Tries On the Fabric, Kaffe Fassett's Millefior

The fabric looks good on 'Nina, and more importantly, it looks good in my studio:



Fabric In Situ

It even goes with my coffee cup!  But it's a quilting weight cotton, and I wanted to give it more bulk, body, and stiffness so it would hold its shape instead of draping limply over the sewing machine like an old sheet.  So I decided to quilt it, densely but unobtrusively, so as to give some stiffness without detracting from the fun, busy print.

Since I'm not working from a pattern, I took some measurements of my machine and did a mockup out of the cheapo muslin first. Once I checked the fit and marked the location and size of the cutout for the thread stand attachment, I ripped out the basting stitches holding the muslin cover together so I can use my mockup as pattern pieces.  My plan is to quilt the snot out of a square yard of my Millefiore fabric, and then cut it up and use it just as I would use a fabric that came quilted from the mill.  That way I don't have to worry about predicting exactly how much shrinkage happens during the quilting process.

I had some fusible polyester craft batting left over from a purse project my mom made several years ago.  Since I WANT stiffness for this project, that's what I used for the batting.  Plain old bargain bin white muslin for the backing, which no one will ever see, and a 40 weight cotton variegated machine quilting thread from YLI in the needle with 50/3 red cotton thread in the bobbin, size 90 Quilting needle.

As I said, the quilting is fairly dense because I'm deliberately trying to make my quilted fabric stiff enough to hold its shape nicely.  As usual, I vastly underestimated how long it would take, and how boring it would be, to execute this quilting plan.  Behold, the right side, after hours of stitching and at least THREE entire gargantuan 7 Series bobbins' worth of thread:

The Emperor's New Quilting, Which We Can't See Because We're All Fools

You can't see anything, can you?  Just a bumpy texture.  That's exactly how I wanted it to look and feel...  But you can tell how much time I've put into this when you look at the BACK side:

From the Back Side: What the Smart People See

Sharp-eyed smart people will notice that the back of this piece is very messy, with thread tails and knots where I stopped and started and some lint fuzzies caught in the bobbin stitches.  I made an executive decision to use my auto thread cutter and ignore the resulting thread tails and other issues on the back of the quilt because it's NOT a quilt, and this is going to be on the INSIDE of the sewing machine cover where no one will see it.  So this has turned into yet another example illustrating that I am incapable of coming up with ANY ideas that are either quick or simple.  As you can see, I'm practicing several different free motion quilting fills, and that's good for me whether it's invisible or not because quilting is all about developing muscle memory, like dancing.  Hopefully not TOO much like dancing, though, because I'm not much of a dancer...  I can't work on this for longer than an hour at a time because it's repetitive and it's boring to be putting in a lot of quilt stitches and then stand up from the machine and not be able to see any of the stitching, but there's still SO MUCH left to be quilted...

Thus the quilting continues.  I'll blog about my machine cover again when I've finished custom quilting the yardage.

Meanwhile, I have been attending the boys' summer drama camp performances, Disney's The Little Mermaid Jr. last week and Anders' Good Kings Come in Small Packages performance this evening.  Lars has been away at sleepaway camp with his confirmation class compadres all week long, so we're looking forward to having him home again tomorrow.  Also, Quilt Week is coming to Charlotte next week, and although I wasn't planning far enough ahead to preregister, I am planning to pop over there and try to get into an EQ7 workshop and perhaps a few lectures if space is still available.  Wish me luck!

Have a fantastic weekend, everyone!