Bigger Feet

 

I'm finding that I'm still getting used to the size of the feet that work on my new sewing machine. On the left is the foot from my old machine, and on the right, the same foot for the new one. The cross-bar part where you clip in the foot is 9mm wide, it's quite substantial and solid feeling. I think it gives noticeably better control of the fabric as you sew. At first I was a little bummed that my old feet don't fit, but I'm over it now that I've figure that out.

A new 1/4" foot and a walking foot is on the way, and a box to fit all the feet in. A little weird that this machine didn't come with one for some reason. The Janome website is terrible for figuring out what foot goes with which machine, so I hope I ordered the right ones. 

New Free Motion

 

Trying out the new machine with some free-motion quilting. It's a whole different experience, it's so quiet! And so very very smooth. I really like the fmq foot that it came with. It has three feet that you can swap out.

I'm still getting used to the needle threader, but it works very well. When you get set up for free motion quilting, the recommended stitch plate is the single hole, and it's just the push of a button to switch. Wild, huh? And then the machine knows that you are no longer allowed to do anything other that a a straight stitch. No more smashing needles when I'd forget and do a zig zag, oof, I hated that. So it's nice to have a machine that has a better memory than I do.

I'm not sure what the white dots are, they aren't the bobbin thread or the batting, I think it's something to do with the way the fabric is printed. If I remember correctly, sometimes the griege goods for darker fabrics are dyed a dark color to start with or even woven with black thread from the get-go and then overprinted with a design. But in this case, I think it was just printed over a white background. In person it looks like salt crystals sprinkled on the surface, which will work well for a table runner, hah!

One side of the background done just like **that** (makes snapping noise)

New Machine Day

It came! It really came! The sewing machine my DH surprised me with for my birthday arrived yesterday. 

A few months ago, I had told him how it was surprising to see Janome machines for sale on the Costco website, and we looked at some of them together. But then I dropped the whole thing, because I don't really truly need a new machine, mine had been working just fine. So it was a very lovely surprise.

 It was honestly a little weird that we ended up buying this without me sewing on it at a dealer, but in these times of COVID, I really didn't want to travel long distances, and sit in an indoor location for an hour with a salesperson breathing over my shoulder. (Just my imagination there on that part). I figured if it didn't work or I hated it, I could just take it back the next time we venture out to Costco.

I got it all set up very quickly and I started in on sewing the current project (a table runner natch) It's so quiet and beautiful and powerful. You don't even need a presser foot, the glowing green button will start and stop sewing. Not sure I'll use that, but hey, if I have a foot issue, that's nice to know. 

There's a whole extra inch of sewing space, so I can't wait to try and sew a bigger quilt.

The lighting is so fabulous and bright! Hooray for LED's!  I can actually see what I'm doing without a bunch of extra desk lamps.

Really amazing to see just how things have changed in 15 years.

Here are the feet that it came with (not pictured is the enormous buttonhole foot). I was slightly disappointed to learn that the new machine is a 9mm shank so none of my old feet will fit. Specifically my 1/4" foot. But there's a programmed stitch for exactly 1/4". That'll have to do for now.

I tried out some of the decorative stitches on an old pillow case. This isn't done with the correct threads, but I love seeing how this looks. And these words aren't even using the alphabet section.