Begin Quilting on a Qzone Hoop Frame with the Janome 1600

hello my quilting friends my name is leah day and this week i have moved my janome 1600 to my grace q zone hoop frame so this little frame is only four and a half feet wide but i can quilt any size of quilt in it because it's kind of designed to work like a lap hoop meaning that you clamp the quilt into the frame on all sides once you quilt that area then you unclamp it and shift it over very much like a traditional old-school hand quilting lap hoop now the cool thing about this frame is you can put a home machine on it you can also put long arms on it it's also compatible with our cunique 15 inch long arm and our cunic 19 inch long arm but i've decided to try out my janome 1600 which is a high speed single stitch machine the needle only goes up and down and that actually makes it ideal for stitching on a frame like this it also goes really really fast and that comes in handy as well so i'm going to share with you all the tips and tricks and little things about getting started using a home machine on a hoop frame we've got to get our rails to the right height that always seems to be a tricky thing we've got to check in on tension and then we have to work on getting a good balance of speed and movement and this is something that goes back to regular free motion quilting pushing the quilt underneath the needle we always have to balance the speed our machine is running meaning the needle bouncing up and down with the movement the quilt is doing so that's when we do it traditionally that's pushing the quilt under the needle in this case it's the movement of the machine rolling around now on the carriage and this is so much easier to move now because it's on wheels so we have to think in terms of okay balancing that easy movement and that means we have to put our foot down and go a little faster than you might expect so i'm going to share all these tips and tricks with you how to get started how to get the most out of your q zone hoop frame using it with a home sewing machine so let's get started so the very first step is to place your machine on the carriage as you can see i just tried to center it up here width wise the machine is roughly running down the center of this plate and if you have trouble placing this just lock down these channel locks you've got one here on the side you've got another one way back here in the back and locking down the channel locks just stops the carriage from moving and that makes it easier to place your machine so it doesn't roll away from you as you're trying to set it down now i'm going to lock the machine in place using these little black and blue clamps you just slide it into the slots on the carriage and just lock it down now if you find that these are a little tricky to close like if that latch isn't wanting to close on the way just pull it back a little bit away from the frame it actually pushes this blue part outward so if you're having trouble closing it all the way it might be that it's just simply resting too close to the side of the machine so there we go that is how to set up your machine very basically on a cue zone hoop frame just get it centered up on the top carriage and clamp it in place with our home sewing machine in place i'm now going to attach the back rail this rail could not be attached before because it has to slot through the arm of your machine just like so okay so it locks in place and then you place these covers and then have three screws on both sides so i'm going to lock this in place real quick and then we're going to get this rail to the right height now a quick tip when you're setting up your frame go on ahead and lift these sides to their not necessarily the highest level but just at least into the middle area here and you can lift it by clicking these clamps here on the sides and then you can lift and drop very easily and you want to pull them this evenly so that they stay roughly at the same level i can find that they get a little stuck if one gets significantly higher than the other so i just lift that up a little bit and that just makes it a lot easier to slot that rail through if it's resting too low then it will run across the machine bed and it might not even even work to latch it on both sides to screw these pieces in because the rail is resting too low for the bed of the machine so just keep that in mind that can be a little confusing now if you click on these and you can't move it up and down at all what that means is that you need to loosen the screw there's a screw right here and there's a screw on the back side and these are just like little screws that embed into the metal here and that locks it in place to limit how much that can move up and down from the factory these are screwed in pretty tight so that might be why you can't adjust this but as you can see that is meant to be adjusted you have all these little slots here that help you know what level they are on so you want to be able to adjust this not only high to get it through and initially set up but now you want to adjust it lower so it's at the right height for quilting so right now i'm going to take this to a fairly low level on both sides and then we'll go from there i'm going to aim to have it so that i can just barely squeeze my fingers between that rail and the surface of my machine bed so here you can see that space again between the machine and that back rail it's about a quarter inch of space or so and as i bring the machine forward let's talk about this front rail and where that should go i usually have this set to the same level as my back rail so four clicks from the bottom seems to be pretty good for this machine and again you're going to adjust it by clicking on this clamp and shifting up shifting down if you run into issues such as skip stitches or broken threads it is something that you could play with to troubleshoot to see if it might be the height of your rail i'd say the only time that you're going to really have struggles though is if the rail is set up way too high because if you set this rail up way too high you're going to put a lot of distance between the quilt and the bed of the machine and that's going to create bounce that's going to create too much movement around the needle and that's what usually results in skip stitches or broken threads so i think on you know just on general principle setting this up a little lower is not a bad thing and it might create a little bit of drag if the quilt is set up really low but that might actually give you a little bit more control over the movement of the machine so a lot of things to think about there this is definitely something that you just have to kind of play with see what works best for you now that the machine is all set up the rails are in the right position it's time to start quilting i have penned a little practice sandwich to my leader cloth and i think this is a really good idea just to use plain fabric for your first well two or three projects initially this is going to help you understand how to move the machine how to operate the speed and troubleshoot i don't think it's a good idea to jump right into a super special quilt especially it's just a general bad idea with any new machine in a new system you want to get some practice in first so this is just 100 woven cotton fabric on the back i've got a thin batting and then regular 100 woven cotton on top and i've already done some quilting here just some playing around and i have penned this to my leader cloth this is special leader cloth for the cue zone hoop frame it has a rope in the top that just helps you start that curling rolling process because this is how this frame is going to work as you advance the quilt and quilt more on it you're going to roll the quilt up on that leader cloth and roll your way steadily downward you can also see how you can have a bigger quilt on this frame obviously i've got all this long leader cloth here so you can definitely pin a much bigger quilt to this leader cloth i just have both of those just draping down the side so that works and this is another reason why i think it's a good idea just to get started with something small you can master this something small first and then work your way up to a bigger quilt okay so this looks good i've roughly centered this up and i want to make sure to clamp so that way i have a nice new space to work in i'm going to place the clamp like this and i always work from the middle and let's say i'm trying to nest this design so i have something quilted up here and i want to kind of nest the two rows together well then i'd want to bring the machine back and make sure that i could quilt far enough back to nest those designs together and if i haven't left enough space i can always unclamp and unroll a little bit of quilt or i could roll up a little bit more just depending on what i'm needing so that looks good i'm going ahead and put all three clamps back here along the back rail just like so and then now i'm going to bring around these are these little clamps these little clips they clip on the front just like that you tug on that black cord and then just tuck it into the little plastic piece to keep it out of your way you don't want to stitch that to the back of your quilt i'm going to do that here and here and one thing if your quilt is starting to roll up and get a little bit bulky go ahead and shift that roll so it's on the top of those clamps and the reason being you'll have a little bit more room to work in if your tube and roll of quilt is back here well obviously that's going to be hitting the back of your machine and limiting your quilting space if you pop it up here on the surface of those clamps then you have a little bit more room to quilt in and yeah quilting space is the is the thing that you want to maximize as much as possible with every single row there we go okay so now that the back is clamped in place i always like to just kind of spread and smooth you do need to layer the layers of the quilt together meaning just generally get the backing spread out the batting and the quilt top you need to go on and have everything layered does not actually need to be pen basted but it does need to be layered in a way where it's not going to get wrinkly it's not going to come apart and i always like to do that little bit of smoothing to make sure that it doesn't have any puddley fabric on the back or anything like that okay now i'm going to clamp the front clamps and just give that a little rotate and this is what you're going for you want it to be kind of springy you don't want it to be too tight if you get this too tight an example of you know too tight would be just rotating these this way you can see how much tighter that that can can become you don't want it too tight because the tighter pull can pull against your needle and thread in a weird way and that can create thread breaks so watch out for that don't try and get this just super super super tight this is the same for any frame in general though i think the number one problem that most beginner quilters have when the quilting on a frame for the first time is we want to crank it down and that's not the way you do it you really want a little bit more looseness there so now with the front clamped i'm going to work on the sides and for that we have this little side piece to the leader cloth and what i do is i just place this right on the side and some pens now if the quilt is big enough you just simply drape that over the side and place your clamp on top if your quilt is not big enough like this one is significantly smaller then i'm going to pin this and then i could clamp if it was enough it was wide enough but it's actually not it's it's running just a little bit short if i try and clamp i might be able to get yeah see it's just falling right out so instead here's what i do when it's really short let's say a really narrow quilt is in the frame then i take the clamp and put it upside down and click it in place like that and then i'm going to take my bungee cords now these come with the frame as well all of the clamps by the way come with the frame that's just a standard thing because that's how the frame works and i have slotted in this little bracket and then i have that little guide there and i'm going to take that white bracket and that is going to slot onto this side clamp just like so just slot that in place and that holds that on that side and i'm going to do two on both sides and then i can just fold that leader cloth over and clamp to it so that's going to again also hold it nice and taut kind of pulling it gently this way putting that little bit of pressure and so that way it keeps the quilt nice and straight okay so i have just pinned with three pins across the side and do the exact same thing on the opposite side we're ready to go so one other thing that you can adjust on this frame is your handlebars you can just unscrew this little bracket here and you can place these wherever you want and i kind of like mine at this outward angle that works great for me and i just spin that back and clamp it in place it's kind of like a little adjusty clamp thingy there we go that looks good and now it's time to start quilting i've got my quilt clamped in place it's ready to go now this entire thing is a practice sandwich if it was a real quilt i might want to try and have a little space over on one side just so i could do a little bit of practice just to make sure check in make sure that my tension look good my stitches look good as it is this entire quilt is practice so first thing i'm going to do is needle down and needle back up and i'm going to tug on that top thread that's going to bring up a loop that loop is my bobbin thread and i always do this every time i start quilting i always pull up my thread to the surface and then i drop my needle back in the down position and what this does on the janome 1600 is it ensures that the needle is always going to drop into the down position every time i stop quilting and it's also going to ensure that you know let's say i walk away from the frame and my cat comes in and hits it it's not going to go anywhere because that needle is locked down in that spot it's not going to go anywhere okay so this looks good we're operating with the foot pedal and this is something you need to think about it is very easy to grab a hold of these handlebars and want to pull on this machine but the machine cannot move with the needle in the down position cannot move until you put your foot down and give it some speed so the first thing to do is to put your foot down and start powering the machine in fact actually i would say the first thing that you need to do is actually just sit there and put your foot on that foot pedal and press and don't move the machine yeah you'll get a hesitation knot but you need to remind yourself always the needle must move before the machine moves before you grab a hold of those handlebars and the reason is if you are moving the machine and not not pressing on the foot pedal you're gonna get broken needles because basically that means that you're gonna be having the needle in the down position and trying to move the machine like that and it's going to cause the needle to bend and then break okay so let's check out and see how much space we have to quilt in looks like that's my limit of my frame i'm gonna run just a nice big line of stitches here you can see i am just running the machine at a steady constant rate you can fluctuate you know i can speed up and this is i gotta say where the janome 1600 really shines because it can go so fast i'm not even running it at full speed yet that is getting closer to full speed you can see just how fast i can move because this machine can handle it because this machine has such a high speed uh it doesn't have a very big heart space so this is as much space from here to here is as much space as i can quilt in but i can do quite a lot let's try that nice high speed and let's do some stippling here and so you might be wondering you know just about designs and stuff well basically any design that you've learned to quilt on your home machine that same design is going to work just fine whenever you put that machine on a frame the same basic rules you know whatever you've memorized however that design works you're going to apply those basic rules and steps to quilting on a frame and you're going to work in rows like this and look how pretty those stitches are they're nice and small stitches because i'm balancing that high speed of that needle bouncing up and down with my movement i'm keeping my movement very smooth and steady now if i was to slow down even more my stitches would get well fairly microscopic so i'd want to go in ahead and slow down the machine a little bit i'd want to just loosen up on how hard i'm pressing it with my presser foot with my foot on the on the foot pedal i mean so there we go that is looking beautiful and i'm just amazed by how fast this can go i mean i'm i'm rocking this and moving this just as fast as i would move one of my long arms because the machine can keep up with me and all i'm doing here guys is i'm just pressing my foot on the foot pedal and i'm just trying to keep my foot pressing at a nice steady rate and then i'm just making sure that my hands are moving the machine at a nice steady rate too so this is a balancing ratio but it's so much easier feeling because the machine can go so fast now you might be wondering how i break thread let's say i'm at the end of my design i'm ready to move forward or i just simply need to break my thread first thing i'm going to do is lift my needle into the up position then lift the foot so that takes the tension off of it i can tug on that top thread move the machine away a distance that's going to spool out my bobbin thread so i'm sure that i have a nice long thread tail on my bobbin then i'm going to reach forward and hit my thread cutter you want to make sure your foot is in the down position for that that breaks both my top and bobbin thread so now i can take that thread tail i can give it a tug that's going to pull up a loop i pick at that loop that loop is my bobbin thread and then now i can just tie off and bury these two thread tails i just tie an overhand knot and then i grab a cheater needle i keep those on this little handy pen place a single needle pen cushion i keep two of them right here on the top of my machine always handy and then i can run these thread tails into the middle layer of the quilt so just push the machine away a little bit grab that cheater needle cheater needle is my slang for a self-threading needle it has a groove in the eye so i can quickly pop those thread tails in place and i'm just running that needle through the middle through the batting layer of the quilt and then give it a tug that knot pops right inside and then i just clip off these thread tails so that is how i tie off and bury my thread tails that's how i cut my thread using the automatic thread cutter makes it very quick and easy now you might be wondering about the foot that i am using and how i'm getting it to have this open toe facing the direction that i'm quilting on a frame well this is a combination of two foot kits this is the convertible foot kit and this is one of the most awesome darning feet ever it looks really complicated i know it does but it is so amazing i've shared some other videos on quilting on a home machine with the machine down in a table so you can see those videos but basically you have the spring here on the side that allows you to adjust the foot so it has the right height and this is something that i forgot to mention at the beginning you really want to make sure that your foot is skimming the quilt surface you can see how low that is you can almost you can hear it i hope you can hear that that the foot is scraping the surface of the fabric it's not squishing it but it's also not hovering so high to allow the quilt too much bounce and you can adjust that just so easily by rotating that spring here on the back lifting the foot or lowering it down now it's convertible because you can change out the bases there's a screw back here that you can change out this bottom part and the convertible foot sets depending on the machine some have more options for the base for the janome 1600 you get an open toe and a closed toe and then you can also add this extra frame quilting foot set and the frame quilting foot set comes with two bases an open toe base a second open toe and a ruler base so this is the set you need if you want to do ruler quilting or you want to do frame quilting now you might be wondering okay well what's the difference between the open toe this is the original open toe and here's the reason it would face this way so if i put this one on and this is the original open toe that comes with the convertible foot kit it faces the front of the machine if you're setting in a table you know if you were facing the machine in a traditional way the frame quilting open toe faces you when the machine is on a frame so that is super useful as you can see it gives you just perfect visibility of the needle you can clearly see where you're going where that needle is going to hit and that's going to give you a lot more control and precision over your quilting so yeah that is the foot that i'm using i highly recommend it it just you know that ability to adjust the ability to change out the bases it really is amazing so now let's work in more detail about checking your tension this is something i was really focusing on speed before not so much on tension and this is something that can be very tricky so i think the very first step is to just pull up your bobbin thread and stitch a straight line from top to bottom and you want to have a nice even line of stitching you try and keep your speed nice and well just steady i think that's really the best bet so once i stitch straight down now i'm going to stitch straight over because i need to have a little bit of distance between that line of stitching and where i can actually see it so i'm going to unpin this side and then take a look at my stitches and this is one of the downsides of this frame is that you know when you get into the middle of a quilt it's going to be really hard to check your tension without basically taking the whole quote off the frame and testing it on another practice sandwich with the same materials just to see what things are doing so you know you're gonna have to just think about that i think once you set it and get it solid it's probably going to be good throughout that process you know through that entire bobbin it's only when you go to change your bob and when you go to change a different type of thread that you might need to adjust your tension so here i'm pulling back on this a little bit and taking a look at those stitches a nice delineation you can see kind of that little space between each stitch that looks great i can also look at the surface and that looks really nice as well so i don't need a tension adjustment but let's talk about if i did if i saw dots or loops on the surface of the quilt that would tell me that the top tension is too tight and pulling too hard on the bobbin case in that case i would loosen the top tension if i flipped over the quilt and i saw loops on the bottom of the quilt on the back and they were being pulled like the thread was being pulled to the back then that would tell me that the top tension was too loose and needed to be tightened up now that basically calls in the question do i ever adjust my bobbin case and the answer is typically no i don't usually adjust my bobbin case once i've set it and i have another video on how i've set the tension on my bobbin case when i was unboxing and setting up my machine once i set that bobbin tension do that yoyo test i don't typically have to adjust that again even when i move the machine to the frame i don't have to adjust that again because basically it sets it up to be perfect for any style of stitching so the only tension dial that i typically adjust is my top tension so that's it for this video i hope you learned a lot about using a janome 1600 on a little q zone hoop frame now i personally feel like the janome 1600 is a great choice to get started with with frame quilting it goes really fast and it has a perfect single straight stitch that means that the needle's not wobbling all over the place it's only going up and down it also has a front loading bobbin which is a lot more convenient to change out while you're quilting versus a top loading bobbin where you're going to have to actually unclamp your quilt in order to get to your bobbin case and change your bobbins another great advantage of the janome 1600 is it's compatible with both grace speed controller and our surestitch regulator so if you don't want to have to use your foot pedal with this machine you have other options now if you'd like to learn more about the janome 1600 or the grace q zone hoop frame you can find both on my website at leahday.com until next time let's go quilt

Channel: Leah Day

Views: 20,175

Rating: 4.8895464 out of 5

Keywords: janome 1600p sewing machine, janome 1600p quilting machine, janome sewing machine tutorial, janome 1600p free motion quilting, janome 1600p ruler foot, grace hoop frame, hoop frame quilting system, qzone hoop frame, qzone hoop frame instructions, qzone hoop frame reviews, q zone frame, qzone quilting machine, qzone quilt frame, quilting frames for domestic sewing machines, quilting frames for sewing machines, grace company q zone frame, quilting frame for home sewing machine

Id: A3rTFbNvvzo

Length: 26min 32sec (1592 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020