New Machine, Managing Stash

Posted on June 29, 2019 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in High-Tech Studio, Machines, My business, Studio maintenance, Tools / 4 Comments

Quilting on my 830 in my studio

OK gentle readers, many of you already know that I had a major crash of my wonderful old Bernina 830 LE (Gibbs). I had it for eight years. I used it a huge amount, especially since my full time retirement at the first of 2012…hours and hours. It suddenly had problems in the bobbin area and I took it to my terrific Bernina tech Lew. He is one of the best He gave it a full service and adjusted a few things and got it back to work, for all of five minutes after getting home (it stitched out a nice couple of test stitching pieces at the store beautifully). So I took it back and he managed to get it working again.

I came home and got my little Bob Ross Cherrywood Fabric challenge quilt completed. Then I made a shirt for my son for his sci-fi/fantasy writers’ conference down in Chattanooga where he is now. But I made it on my little Bernina 350, which I use for taking with me places. I also use it for several specialty sewing techniques and attachments I don’t particularly want to use on the big machine, like needle punch and the ruffler. But I was wanting to give it a good little workout (machines are better if they are used at least a little bit, but perhaps not as much as I used Gibbs…LOL).

Sew I got down to the top stitching around the edge and buttonholes. I decided to do those on Gibbs. First of all, all three of the thread sensors said I had problems with my thread and bobbin, so I turned them off. Then the auto buttonholer messed up several buttonholes. I managed to get the messup out (hard to do if you have ever tried it), and I used the manual buttonhole buttons to complete them. Then I tried to do the topstitching. I got three stitches along and Gibbs hung up (like before) with the gears of death. I cleaned it, rethreaded and oiled it and tried again…again, the gears of death. Just to make sure, I rethreaded it one more time and still got the gears of death. I concluded that Gibbs has reached the end of its professional life. Even if Lew got it going again, it would not take the high level of work I put on my machines any longer. Lew had told me that he thought there were signs that the mother board was failing, in addition to the bobbin case hook assembly probably needs to be replaced, he was pretty sure . I am fairly certain he was right.

Well Gibbs, thank you for waiting until Bernina offered a great trade in deal for all 830s and 820s, and in the month they also are including a great package of gifts with it and a 60 month with no interest. I traded for a Bernina 880 plus, which I will likely get in a couple of weeks from now. It was a fortuitous timing on Gibbs’ part. In human terms I think Gibbs was probably approaching 100 if you think about the hours and number stitches I have put on that machine….LOL…of course, that is just speculating. Lew said I had an exceptionally large number of stitches on the machine.

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So while I’m waiting I decided to address my huge studio storage of my stash and notions issue that has gotten increasingly messy and overfilled in the past five years since I did this last. My dear friend Anita, who is an artist in her own right, and my student/apprentice came over and helped me for a full day of sorting through the fabrics.

We threw away two big bags of unusable scraps, filled another big bag for Anita to take away, go through and keep what she wants, and get rid of the rest somewhere. But of course we didn’t finish. She is coming back tomorrow afternoon for another session.

Today, I am going through my threads and organizing those as much as possible, and sorting through my clothing and accessory patterns to try to reduce my three and a half filing cabines full of patterns I have collected for at least the past 15 years. I want to eliminate enough patterns so I only fill one filing cabinet with them. Then I can use them to store things like stabilizers, interfacings, other notions, and bag making supplies. I have a lot of these things…Sigh. So that will empty several of the drawers in my oak cabinet that I want to use for really special fabrics like my silks, satins, and so forth.

It is my hope to end up with empty storage spaces. This way, I can maybe even keep things in order for at least the next five years (I’m a realist…I know this will have to be repeated sometime down the road).

This way, when the new machines comes home, we can launch right into productivity. I was really upset at the expense right at first, but now I believe the new machine will be a great blessing. I developed many of my techniques on Gibbs and pretty much literally wore it out. I now have a Bernina Q20 for my quilting and free motion embroidery. I will still be using the new machine for feed dogs up quilting and zig-zag free motion, which can be done with the new BSR that is included in the package. I suspect the old one I had with Gibbs, which goes back with him, is near being worn out itself. It also comes with a new embroidery module and the old one goes back with Gibbs.

Sew I will likely be able to use the new machine for much longer if I don’t trade it in for the next top of the line in four or five years from now–which I might–since I have split off the major part of the quilting to my Q20 and some specialty attachments and activities to my B350. I suspect there are a lot of new advances I will also like. Despite my disappointment over Gibbs, I am really getting excited about this refreshment of my studio all ready for new quilts, book and workshop samples, and a few other projects.

Sew happy everyone! May your stitches be beautiful and your machines work without problems for years and years.

Embellish This!

Posted on June 16, 2019 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Design Work, Embellishment, Fabrics, Food for Thought, Machines, My micro-business, Panel quilts, Techniques, Workshops / 2 Comments

So yesterday I got the printed fabric I ordered from Fabric on Demand with my little 15″ x 15″ panels I designed for my fall class on embellishing techniques primarily by machine. It came out wonderfully, and I have already washed and dried it so I know it won’t run or shrink.

Sew I can play with embellishing one or two of them to make the sampler and save the rest for the class. I am thinking these would make perfect tops for decorative pillows.

This made me realize how much fun it is to use the different feet and techniques we now have for decorating our fabric art projects and I am really looking forward to decorating these.

Sew I had a crazy idea I would love your opinions on. I am thinking I might design some more of these and publish a short book on how to accomplish the various techniques. Then I could sell the “Embellish This” squares from my website so those who bought my book, which will be sold on Amazon, could buy them and embellish decorative pillow tops or sides of bags, or some such. I will aim to get these ready by October so people could have time to make pillows or tote bags or anything they could think of for using them to give as presents. Oh it would be so much fun. What do you think?

Sew happy everyone! Remember to take out your machine feet, read your manual, look at YouTube and sling that bling around!

Embellishment…a workshop

Posted on June 6, 2019June 6, 2019 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Classes, Embellishment, Embroidery, My micro-business, Panel quilts

I know I said I wasn’t going to do another workshop this year, but I felt there is part of basic fabric arts techniques that I left uncovered. I decided to add this in the fall since I am trying to provide an overview of the main basic techniques I use to create my own fabric art. That is surface design and embellishment. My reason for not originally including it in the set is that I not only think the supplies required are a little larger investment than I think students might want to spend, but it also requires covering a number of techniques. So after some thought I have figured out a way to cut some of the costs and I think it is acceptable.

So I am creating a small 15 inch by 15 inch square project. Today I finished a background design for a little fabric panel that takes the place of painting or digitized painting of a design to embellish. I sent it to be printed by Fabrics on Demand. I figured that with their 56″ wide fabric I can get six panels on one yard of fabric that ends up costing about five dollars per panel. I will give a little lecture about how digital art fabrics accomplished, and provide links to several good places to use.

I am working out what I need to assemble a variety of decorative cords, threads, and yarns to use with different feet, which a lot of people already have or would find good use for if they need to buy them. So the students will bring along their feet with their machines. When the first batch of panels comes I will use them to work into a sample or two and figure out the handouts. This will be really fun, I think, and the end project will make a very nice pillow top or tote bag side. Additionally, I will demo both needle punching of roving with the bernina machine and how I place hot fix crystals using transfer tape.

This sounds like a lot, and I have to fit it into a four hour class, so I will see how much of this I find I can actually fit into the class and then make adjustments, but I have to have the panels to work with before I can do that.

Sew I am working on this while my Bernina 830 LE is at the spa getting all fixed. He had a temper tantrum last week and I took him to Lew to fix. He’s a good machine…having served me now for a number of years, and it’s been several years since he had his regular service. I think there is some thread caught way down in the bobbin assembly that Lew will find. I am very hopeful it will be fixed without a huge bill.

Anyway, once he is back I can finish my Bob Ross quilt for the Cherrywood Fabrics challenge. It is well along the way, but I need a couple of in-the-hoop embroidery pieces to applique on before I can quilt it. I was thinking today that maybe I could go ahead and quilt it and add the applique later. The deadline is July 1st and it’s already June 6th. Yikes!

Sew happy everyone!