Ok, so, this yellow blanket quilt for my sister's 1st born. I had originally planned on having about 60-65 11 inch hexagons made from 6, 5.5 inch equilateral triangles.
Issue 1 - I'm not patient enough to cut each triangle individually. So, using my June Taylor Shape Cut, I diced up about 4-6 layers of fabric at a time. Not Precision.
Issue 2 - I didn't count on issue 1 causing me to trim each diamond
Issue 3 - I didn't really plan on how to put everything together. I thought, originally, that I would do rows of triangles, but I was worried that my corners wouldn't match up (per experience from snake quilt), so I took two diamonds and put them together in a "V" and then attempted to add the 3rd diamond to form a hexagon. I'm sure that years from now I'll wonder what all the fuss was, but figuring out how to do that, keep it flat, and lined up without too many wrinkles! Sheesh! What a learning curve in pinning and twisting, and seem ripping.
Issue 4 - Issue 3 caused the need to trim the end hexagons by more than anticipated! to 9inch hexagons. On the first 3 hexagons, I had to go all the way to 9in. By the 5th or 6th, I probably could have done 9.5 or 10.
Issue 5 - Trimming has left me with fewer hexagons than needed to fill the quilt top as desired.
End quilt should fit on the 108 x 72 in backing, I plan on leaving the hexagon edges instead of finishing square. So Tomorrow I'll go find a fabric to border each hexagon, which might help hide the issues with some points not quite lining up..
Tutorial I found helpful....tallgrass prairie studio: sewing hexagons by machine
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Husqvarna Viking Emerald 203 - further review
Maybe too much electronics....
OK, so I've had my machine for about a year. I purchased it for a steal, and primarily for the step up in motor and capability. But at the time I thought it had 100 more stitches than I would want. And I confirmed that. A few weeks back I was trying to embellish some plane fabric for a simple attention getter. So I started experimenting with the fancy stitches. The leaf, the flower, some lettering. It was OK. I would expect that someone might see these as a feature capable of creating labels or minor details. The quality is not so good. The flower petals aren't round, the stitch lengths are too long to achieve a neat design. Lucky me, I don't do this often. I'm much more of a straight stitch kind of girl.
Also, the instrument makes an interesting "BONG" noise when I lower the needle, which it doesn't make if I just press on the pedal. The feed dog settings aren't really as sensitive as the number of positions (6). I really only noticed about 3 real positions. This is a common trick on blenders. What does work really well, the feed dogs can be lowered completely out of the way. With a $20 generic open loop foot, I've experimented with some free-motion quilting. Which the machine handled quite well, much better than I did.
I've also taken apart the feed dog cover and have done a manual cleaning, which was easy to do and easy to put back together. SO MUCH LINT! Wow! it was really amazing how much had built up in relatively few hours of quilting. I suggest you open it up and run the vacuum over it after every quilt sized project!
The Auto-threader.... some needles get loaded in or are just a little off center. So sometimes, I've had to push the needle to one side to get the threader through the hole. No big deal. The bigger deal, the little light is not quite enough. But $10 at Ikea got me a tiny and very flexible little lamp for better lighting. I also found the nook to the right of the needle a little small for quilting. I had to pretty tightly roll up the last quilt to get it to fit for the quilting portion. But, with the walking foot, it went so easily! Nice and straight and even. And I didn't have any tension issues the whole time!
My sister has an Emerald in the 100 series, which she likes very much. I believe she has a manual stitch selection knob and little or no electronics. Yet, she makes custom purses from upholstery fabric on hers.
Love my Viking!
OK, so I've had my machine for about a year. I purchased it for a steal, and primarily for the step up in motor and capability. But at the time I thought it had 100 more stitches than I would want. And I confirmed that. A few weeks back I was trying to embellish some plane fabric for a simple attention getter. So I started experimenting with the fancy stitches. The leaf, the flower, some lettering. It was OK. I would expect that someone might see these as a feature capable of creating labels or minor details. The quality is not so good. The flower petals aren't round, the stitch lengths are too long to achieve a neat design. Lucky me, I don't do this often. I'm much more of a straight stitch kind of girl.
Also, the instrument makes an interesting "BONG" noise when I lower the needle, which it doesn't make if I just press on the pedal. The feed dog settings aren't really as sensitive as the number of positions (6). I really only noticed about 3 real positions. This is a common trick on blenders. What does work really well, the feed dogs can be lowered completely out of the way. With a $20 generic open loop foot, I've experimented with some free-motion quilting. Which the machine handled quite well, much better than I did.
I've also taken apart the feed dog cover and have done a manual cleaning, which was easy to do and easy to put back together. SO MUCH LINT! Wow! it was really amazing how much had built up in relatively few hours of quilting. I suggest you open it up and run the vacuum over it after every quilt sized project!
The Auto-threader.... some needles get loaded in or are just a little off center. So sometimes, I've had to push the needle to one side to get the threader through the hole. No big deal. The bigger deal, the little light is not quite enough. But $10 at Ikea got me a tiny and very flexible little lamp for better lighting. I also found the nook to the right of the needle a little small for quilting. I had to pretty tightly roll up the last quilt to get it to fit for the quilting portion. But, with the walking foot, it went so easily! Nice and straight and even. And I didn't have any tension issues the whole time!
My sister has an Emerald in the 100 series, which she likes very much. I believe she has a manual stitch selection knob and little or no electronics. Yet, she makes custom purses from upholstery fabric on hers.
Love my Viking!
So, 9 months later... No, it's not a baby, it's life.
As I was spending my Sunday morning drinking my coffee, enjoying the quiet and browsing through my bookmarks of crafting blogs, I suddenly remembered, "Didn't I start one of these?"
Since November.... Work has really taken over and my motivation has dropped. I have a long commute, and with the hours I keep, I find very little time to give to myself. I wake up between 6 and 6:20, I leave between 6:40 and 7, I get home between 6 and 7, I go to bed at 10PM, on the dot, just before I turn into a pumpkin for the night. That leaves 3-4 hours between getting home and going to bed to do some of the following:
1. Make dinner
2. Play with dog
3. Pet the cats
4. Chat with husband
5. Television
6. Sewing
7. General Computing
8. Landry
9. Dishes
10. House cleaning
11. Personal Hygiene
12. etc. etc.
There just aren't enough hours in the day... Excuse made.
In the last 9 months, I completed a couple projects. And I attempted some more.
1. A quilt for my sister (Referenced in the Nov. 2011 post)
2. A quilt for my friend Sara Jane and her first son, Elijah
3. A dress for my sister (just need to ship it)
4. Started a quilt for my FIRST niece, due in January 2013
5. Purchased fabric and planning many other projects
6. Had a very fruitful garden this year
So, hopefully, I'll post more often so I can track what I've been doing with so little time. I also need to stop watching so much TV and limit my computing... Good goals, I guess.
Since November.... Work has really taken over and my motivation has dropped. I have a long commute, and with the hours I keep, I find very little time to give to myself. I wake up between 6 and 6:20, I leave between 6:40 and 7, I get home between 6 and 7, I go to bed at 10PM, on the dot, just before I turn into a pumpkin for the night. That leaves 3-4 hours between getting home and going to bed to do some of the following:
1. Make dinner
2. Play with dog
3. Pet the cats
4. Chat with husband
5. Television
6. Sewing
7. General Computing
8. Landry
9. Dishes
10. House cleaning
11. Personal Hygiene
12. etc. etc.
There just aren't enough hours in the day... Excuse made.
In the last 9 months, I completed a couple projects. And I attempted some more.
1. A quilt for my sister (Referenced in the Nov. 2011 post)
2. A quilt for my friend Sara Jane and her first son, Elijah
3. A dress for my sister (just need to ship it)
4. Started a quilt for my FIRST niece, due in January 2013
 |
| And it will be yellow... |
5. Purchased fabric and planning many other projects
6. Had a very fruitful garden this year
 |
| Garden Week 3 |
 |
| Garden Week 14-ish |
 | ||
| At least this has been coming out every week for 4 weeks... |
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Husqvarna Viking Emerald 203
Brother LS2125i
My first machine. I registered for this little Brother for my wedding. I thought it would be useful to have a machine around. My mother and my sister greatly enjoyed sewing and were starting to talk business ideas and such. I wasn't planning on giving up my day job, but shortening some curtains and making bags for my bicycle seemed within reach.
I registered because of the overwhelming good reviews on Amazon. This machine works great for tons of people. It is really light weight, very portable. It's quick to setup, low maintenance, and takes standard sized bobbins, needles, and thread spools. It has 10 stitches, about 8 more than I really needed for what I got it for.
My first project was a set of denim bags for my bicycle. Went well. The only issues were really my failure to fully design and execute.
My second project was a quilt, somewhat detailed in the first blog post. This showed the issues with the machine. Underpowered, not flexible, and without the features required to quilt at home.
I purchased a Husqvarna Viking Emerald 203 with about 100 stitches more than I probably need but with the motor power and quilting features I can appreciate. I finished the quilting on one quilt then set out and made some owls. then attempted some cats and dogs with no avail, not due to the machine.
Over all, I feel I purchased a machine I can "grow into". Bells and whistles, power and feet. So many feet....
My first machine. I registered for this little Brother for my wedding. I thought it would be useful to have a machine around. My mother and my sister greatly enjoyed sewing and were starting to talk business ideas and such. I wasn't planning on giving up my day job, but shortening some curtains and making bags for my bicycle seemed within reach.
I registered because of the overwhelming good reviews on Amazon. This machine works great for tons of people. It is really light weight, very portable. It's quick to setup, low maintenance, and takes standard sized bobbins, needles, and thread spools. It has 10 stitches, about 8 more than I really needed for what I got it for.
My first project was a set of denim bags for my bicycle. Went well. The only issues were really my failure to fully design and execute.
My second project was a quilt, somewhat detailed in the first blog post. This showed the issues with the machine. Underpowered, not flexible, and without the features required to quilt at home.
I purchased a Husqvarna Viking Emerald 203 with about 100 stitches more than I probably need but with the motor power and quilting features I can appreciate. I finished the quilting on one quilt then set out and made some owls. then attempted some cats and dogs with no avail, not due to the machine.
Over all, I feel I purchased a machine I can "grow into". Bells and whistles, power and feet. So many feet....
I know nothing about crafts, sewing, project ... etc.
I have been sewing on my weekend since mid September. Figuring 2D was safer than 3D I started a quilt for my sister. I had about 10 fat quarters from a failed curtain project back in 2008 and thus went to the store to collect another 15 or 20 red, black, or black/white quarters.
Here's what I learned from that project.
1. I don't know how to use a ruler to create square squares...
2. I didn't know to do a 1/4 inch seem
3. My machine was under powered from the start... but I didn't know it
4. I didn't pre-wash
5. I couldn't sew consistently straight lines.
Piecing..... Went OK. I choose to do pin wheels, but my squares weren't square, so my triangles were not normal, and thus my pin wheels were uneven. The fix: I got out a square stencil and re-cut every pin-wheel square down to a smaller finished square.
My Brother LS2125i did not have an adjustable presser foot height, so it struggled getting over joining 4 seems. The fix: I trimmed seems to 1/8th inch to avoid the issue, but I mainly just pulled the sewing through, or lifted the foot and free-styled across. This probably didn't help the square issue.
Assembling rows of squares...
Not all my rows ended up being the same length. ie. 10 pinwheel squares did not (!=) 10 pinwheel squares.... joy.
By the end of the piecing, I was pretty good at fighting through un-even feed to get a 1/4in straight-ish seem.
Backing...
I didn't want the quilt to be on the boring side since the front was so busy, so I took some fat quarters and pieced together some 10in squares to make the backing, this went really well proving to myself that I had made progress on my capabilities.
I did invest in a tool between cutting for my pin-wheels and cutting for my backing.
Shape Cut from June Tailor. Worth every penny. Only issue, it didn't solve my attention deficit.
1st thing's first. I sew after work and on weekends, else, I spend over 60 hours a week out of the house supporting my work habits. Thus, evenings and weekends are ofter total attention check-out times to relax and decompress.
So, I did cut some squares to be 9.5in x 10.5in... oops. Should have had that coffee.
No big deal, I had more than I needed, so I put them to the side and used them as test swatches.
Quilting.... the heartache.
I used pure cotton batting. I like the idea of this quilt eventually being able to decompose fully back to nature.
I put on the walking foot and started to stitch just down the spacers. I wanted simple lines. Nothing fancy.
Here's the pattern that I ended up doing:
a. Test on swatch, set tension.
b. start stitch row
c. check row, row OK
d. finish row
e. check row, row OK
f. Start next row
g. check row, row not ok,tension bad
h. rip out row
i. repeat from a.
I don't think my relaxation time should be so stressful, so I went to a shop to get the machine fixed. And this was the conversation....
"So, you're having tension problems, did you do a test piece?"
"yes I did, but it doesn't hold"
"What type of project are you doing?"
"A quilt."
"And this is happening when you're quilting?"
"Yes." [tell her the steps above]
"Is your machine ok when piecing?"
"Yes"
"I don't think your machine's broken. I think you have a pretty handy light crafting machine that can do some curtains, mending, etc. But you don't have a very hardy motor."
"Ok... so what should I do?"
"Have you looked into sending your quilt out to be quilted?"
"Yes, it's very expensive."
"I hate to say it, but this machine is probably never going to be able to do quilting without a struggle."
"Well, what are my options?" Looking around at all the sewing machines.
She then proceeded to tell me about their machines that they deal and some they didn't.
I came back and purchased a Viking Emerald 203 for $600. It had come in a damaged box and set up as the demo and was 1/2 price. Yay me. I'm sure I could have stalked Ebay for a cheaper deal, but what ever, I had a quilt to finish. More on that later.
I eventually tutored myself so I felt I was ready and I started to quilt again. Night and day. It fed smoothly. I didn't have to adjust the tension at all. Within 2 hours of rolling, squishing, and pushing the bulk around, I had quilted very simply, albeit a little crookedly throughout all my intended areas. I then put together all the binding strips from scraps.
Binding....
I followed this tutorial, Continuous Quilt Binding, except I screwed up one corner and fixed it a bit on the messy side. Then I decided to machine bind the other side as well since my hand sewing is worse than my machine sewing.
Quilt finished! No photos for now, as it's a Christmas gift, and I don't want to give away the surprise.
Am I satisfied with this quilt? Pretty much.
Is this an heirloom quality quilt? No, just too many little mistakes. I give it 5 years tops....
Am I better for having done it? Yes, calmer, more in tune with the stresses in my body, and more aware of my starved creative side.
Here's what I learned from that project.
1. I don't know how to use a ruler to create square squares...
2. I didn't know to do a 1/4 inch seem
3. My machine was under powered from the start... but I didn't know it
4. I didn't pre-wash
5. I couldn't sew consistently straight lines.
Piecing..... Went OK. I choose to do pin wheels, but my squares weren't square, so my triangles were not normal, and thus my pin wheels were uneven. The fix: I got out a square stencil and re-cut every pin-wheel square down to a smaller finished square.
My Brother LS2125i did not have an adjustable presser foot height, so it struggled getting over joining 4 seems. The fix: I trimmed seems to 1/8th inch to avoid the issue, but I mainly just pulled the sewing through, or lifted the foot and free-styled across. This probably didn't help the square issue.
Assembling rows of squares...
Not all my rows ended up being the same length. ie. 10 pinwheel squares did not (!=) 10 pinwheel squares.... joy.
By the end of the piecing, I was pretty good at fighting through un-even feed to get a 1/4in straight-ish seem.
Backing...
I didn't want the quilt to be on the boring side since the front was so busy, so I took some fat quarters and pieced together some 10in squares to make the backing, this went really well proving to myself that I had made progress on my capabilities.
I did invest in a tool between cutting for my pin-wheels and cutting for my backing.
Shape Cut from June Tailor. Worth every penny. Only issue, it didn't solve my attention deficit.
1st thing's first. I sew after work and on weekends, else, I spend over 60 hours a week out of the house supporting my work habits. Thus, evenings and weekends are ofter total attention check-out times to relax and decompress.
So, I did cut some squares to be 9.5in x 10.5in... oops. Should have had that coffee.
No big deal, I had more than I needed, so I put them to the side and used them as test swatches.
Quilting.... the heartache.
I used pure cotton batting. I like the idea of this quilt eventually being able to decompose fully back to nature.
I put on the walking foot and started to stitch just down the spacers. I wanted simple lines. Nothing fancy.
Here's the pattern that I ended up doing:
a. Test on swatch, set tension.
b. start stitch row
c. check row, row OK
d. finish row
e. check row, row OK
f. Start next row
g. check row, row not ok,tension bad
h. rip out row
i. repeat from a.
I don't think my relaxation time should be so stressful, so I went to a shop to get the machine fixed. And this was the conversation....
"So, you're having tension problems, did you do a test piece?"
"yes I did, but it doesn't hold"
"What type of project are you doing?"
"A quilt."
"And this is happening when you're quilting?"
"Yes." [tell her the steps above]
"Is your machine ok when piecing?"
"Yes"
"I don't think your machine's broken. I think you have a pretty handy light crafting machine that can do some curtains, mending, etc. But you don't have a very hardy motor."
"Ok... so what should I do?"
"Have you looked into sending your quilt out to be quilted?"
"Yes, it's very expensive."
"I hate to say it, but this machine is probably never going to be able to do quilting without a struggle."
"Well, what are my options?" Looking around at all the sewing machines.
She then proceeded to tell me about their machines that they deal and some they didn't.
I came back and purchased a Viking Emerald 203 for $600. It had come in a damaged box and set up as the demo and was 1/2 price. Yay me. I'm sure I could have stalked Ebay for a cheaper deal, but what ever, I had a quilt to finish. More on that later.
I eventually tutored myself so I felt I was ready and I started to quilt again. Night and day. It fed smoothly. I didn't have to adjust the tension at all. Within 2 hours of rolling, squishing, and pushing the bulk around, I had quilted very simply, albeit a little crookedly throughout all my intended areas. I then put together all the binding strips from scraps.
Binding....
I followed this tutorial, Continuous Quilt Binding, except I screwed up one corner and fixed it a bit on the messy side. Then I decided to machine bind the other side as well since my hand sewing is worse than my machine sewing.
Quilt finished! No photos for now, as it's a Christmas gift, and I don't want to give away the surprise.
Am I satisfied with this quilt? Pretty much.
Is this an heirloom quality quilt? No, just too many little mistakes. I give it 5 years tops....
Am I better for having done it? Yes, calmer, more in tune with the stresses in my body, and more aware of my starved creative side.
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