Green FMQ

 

After all that piecing and regular sewing, it was time to switch over for FMQ (free motion quilting). I even swapped out the foot from the closed- ring to the clear plastic. Trying that out for the first time on this machine. It's a lot like the Big Foot that I like to use on my older Janome machine. I also realized that my newer machine has yet to have had a servicing and I got it in December 2020. Sooo....after these two quilts get done, I'm taking her in.

I took this picture so that I would remember that I swapped the foot on the convertible FMQ shank and which one it is in my machine feet case. There's one that's very similar and I remembered I'd need a photo assist to get the right one.

It took a bit to get going but I got the green part all finished off. Now onto the rest of the quilt which will be all blue.

Quilt The Sky

 

As I'm all set up for free motion quilting, I decided to jump over to the Village quilt aka Japanese Houses. But first, I changed the needle, because I couldn't remember the last time I put a new one in! A Schmetz Chrome quilting needle specifically. I have one of those needle minders so at least I know which kind is in the machine, but it doesn't say when. Then I cleaned out the bobbin area. 

Not too bad of an amount this time, sometimes it's truly amazing how much is packed in that space. Free motion quilting means a huge number of stitches, so it's always worth checking. Clearing the way for everything to work well at top speed.

I'm trying to imply fog or clouds in the "sky" of the quilt. In this grey section especially. I may switch it to wind or something else in the blue sections.

I like the look of it so far, but need more practice.

It's a little harder in the spaces between the houses, so I have to figure that out.

Then my studio assistant reminded me it was time to take a break to play with his new piece of yarn.

He was a little put out when I let the Original Cat™ play with it as well. 

We're trying to all get along, but it's hard going sometimes. 

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 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.