Thursday, 17 November 2011

FMQ

I've mentioned it a few times here and there, and maybe I'll say more about it some day, but I did recently get a new sewing machine.  It's a Janome Sewist 625E (order of those three may or may not be right).  Anyways, it has what I wanted and was something I could afford as a recent graduate (read had some money from my loan left to unwisely blow on something).  So anyhow, I have discovered its shortcoming.  It sucks for FMQ.  Even with the foot pressure set to 0, I literally have to use all of my strength to pull the quilt sandwich through.  Even just a little practice piece.


At first I thought it was going great, I did the teardrop pattern on the right.  Then, I happened to turn over the fabric to see how the bobbin thread was doing.


Yah, definitely not going to work.  So I put down the presser foot.  and this problem was fix, but I literally worked up a sweat trying to pull it through.  I tried pretty much every single variation of FMQ styles that I could think/google and nothing came without great effort.


It's hard to tell in that pic, but the stitches are teeny tiny because cannot pull the thing through fast enough.  The edges are the worst.  The best I could come up with was:



It took way too much effort to get it, and the edges were still very hard, and I couldn't imagine doing it for a whole quilt.

So, all of that whining to say, I am not going to retire my old machine.  It actually FMQs like a charm, just didn't really do anything else quite as well.  So, I will quilt everything with my old machine and piece everything with my new one.  Never thought I could swing a two machine deal, but I find myself without choice.  And now I don't feel like I'm abandoning my old girl.  I have to admit, ever since Toy Story, I still feel a little bad about giving up on still working "toys".  Not bad enough to keep them though ;-).

The bonus, I'm quilt a fan of that last design, it's based off of things I've seen.  I'm sure someone has done it before, but I sort of came up with it myself.

And since I missed WIP Wednesday, again, I will only say that I am fast approaching a Starry Eyed Quilt top!
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4 comments:

  1. mtnquiltr18 November 2011 at 09:08

    Good plan with the two machines, that's what I do too. Looking forward to the Starry Eyed pic!

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  2. quirky granola girl18 November 2011 at 14:23

    did you drop the feed dogs and use a quilting foot? the feed dogs don't drop in my machine but i have a cover for them (that's not as good) but the quilting foot made a huge difference. the bar on the quilting foot means the foot jumps up a little each time the needle goes up. and that jumping lets you move your quilt at that time.

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  3. Aimee18 November 2011 at 14:45

    hmm - seems like you definitely have a tension issue with your bobbin. Were your feed dogs down? I also have a problem FMQ with my Janome (it's a different kind of problem though) and I put painter's tape over my feed dogs/throat plate, which really helps. Hopefully you can resolve the issue because it isn't convenient to have to use 2 machines!

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  4. Susana Neiger30 November 2011 at 12:03

    Your quilting looks like it's turning out great! Not without work, though, I know. I'm glad I'm not the only one with the FMQ problems you mentioned ... my old machine can't zig-zag any more, due to something unfixable, but it FMQs sooo much better than my new machine ... funny.

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