First Stitches on the Grace Qnique 21 Longarm and Tension Test

hello Michael ting friends my name is Leah day and welcome to this frame quilting Friday I have a new long arm as you can see this is the gray skew Niq 21 it is a massive long arm this is the biggest long arm that grace company offers and I cannot wait to try it out so this video is really gonna be a walk through a tension test this is the first stitch out I have done on this machine at all so I'm gonna walk you through all the steps that I take to not only getting the tension right but getting to know the machine and making sure it's running properly and this is really what I think is the key to getting started with a long arm whenever you get it it can be a little intimidating and it can be really tempting to just leave it in the box and I'm gonna encourage you not to do that get it out of the box get it set it up get it on your frame because you really want to run it through its paces from the very beginning any issues like mechanical malfunctions that happened with the machine usually happen within the first six months so you really want to get it out get it working from the very beginning so if there's an issue or any kind of scene if something crops up then we can take care of it and make sure that you have a working machine and it's going to be a great fit for you and on that note the very very first thing I should say if you're buying a long arm you always want to save the box so whenever you think about investing in a machine like this make sure you also have space to save a box that's obviously bigger than the long arm because if anything ever happens to me your machine that's how you're going to return it to the company in order to get it serviced or in order to get it replaced grace company will issue a call tag your machine will be picked up by UPS and then a new machine will be delivered or it will be returned to you all in the same box that it came in so save the box and say all the packing material that's all the styrofoam that comes in the box to just tape it up and maybe put it in your attic or you know kind of tuck it in an out-of-the-way place where the box will not get wet and that's perfectly fine so just make sure never get rid of the box and don't damage the box either when we were hauling this in here dad was about to cut out like a handle in the box so he could grab a hold of it and help me pull it in I was like don't damage the box dad so that's one of those things okay so we have this new machine set up here on the continuum quilting frame and this is the only frame that this machine can go at because it's the only one big enough and as you can see I've expanded the frame this way like I've said several times in other videos the continuum frame is one that can grow with you I can expand it this way and so now I have seventeen and a half inches from the needle to the back of the machine that's how much quilt Abul space I have to work in and I love that I can do huge blocks and all kinds of different things okay but the very first step this is absolutely key get it out of the box get it set up and start quilting but don't start quilting on a real quilt here I have a single yard of grey fabric I already have a yard of backing fabric that's been pinned to my leader cloth and this is the key I'm not gonna get started with a real quilt because I have no idea straight out of the box if the tension is going to be solid with the thread that I'm using I have no idea if I'm gonna have tension issues or thread breaks or any number of things so I want to get a plain piece of fabric here on the frame to test it out so I'm just gonna line this up and push the machine back and my channel locks are unfortunately a million miles away so whenever I want to use them I'm now gonna have to walk around the back of the frame which is a little bit less convenient but honestly it's not a deal breaker and the channel locks I'm using either one on the side of the frame and that stops the machine from moving forward and back so that way I can quilt a straight line across all right here we go I'm just gonna click the machine on and start the stitch so far so good all I'm doing is stitching the batting to the quilt top with a nice straight line across I'm just stitching slowly carefully I don't want to strip out my stitch regulator when it beeps at you that means that you're going too fast it's a very very different foot and also is a very different feel I have so much more space between me and a long arm now that this is gonna take a little bit of getting used to definitely there we go stitch to the end and then now I will position my piece of fabric my quilt top quilt top in quotations today and I'm just gonna line this up so that it is overlapping that line nice and straight across there we go and I just generally smooth that out again you don't have to be too picky that's kind of the point of using a plain yard of fabric is you don't have to be too picky with it you know you don't have to be obsessive it doesn't have to be perfect the idea is just to get it on and start adjusting making sure tension is looking good checking for a thread break all that kind of good job so far it's looking good but I can already tell the thread is kind of pulling up on this corner so on both corners I might definitely can say I'm going to need my clamps here that are attached to the sides it looks like that's gonna be a lot more necessary now that I have a bigger machine and it probably do have a little bit of a pull I can kind of see a little bit of a pull on the tension to the back and how I can tell is that the stitches are not looking as nicely delineating that top thread just looks like it's under almost too much tension alright so there we go now I walk around the back and unlock my channel locks so now I can kind of fluff up this fabric give it a nice smooth out because I have so much space here now I need to be careful to smooth that out nicely so it's flat and then I'll grab my quote clips this is an awesome accessory and you can find these now at lea day comm slash clip we've added them to the store so that way you can add them to your frame and this is something that's really you only need it for the continuum frame you won't need it for the Qzone frame because that comes with its own kind of clamps okay so I am unlocked and ready to go and make Celia what I want to do is I want to stitch down to where I can really see the stitches and do some play here right on the edge and that way I can flip back and be able to see what I'm doing I'm gonna be able to see the stitches from both sides and then if I'm getting those little dots of tension issues to one side or the other I'll be able to easily see it so here we go and also listening you know obviously this is a new machine a new frame sorry it's just a new machine not a new frame but it's a new machine to me and I'm listening and learning the sounds of it and this is really important you know when you first get started you don't know how a machine is gonna sound whatever it's feeling good whenever it's being healthy and it's kind of one of the biggest keys is learning that of knowing whenever it sounds a little dry and needs to be oiled knowing whenever it sounds you know like there might be some threads stuck in the bottom something like that so far this is feeling really good can I click it off here and take a look at my stitches now I can see little brown dots poking up between those stitches and what that means that's brown is on the bobbin like I said I have two different colors of ice a cord thread in the top and bottom so I have Brown in the bottom and I've got white in the top so if the brown is pulling to the top what that means is top tension is too high so I'm gonna take this and back it off a bit and that's loosening the tension dial down by it like a half number I think that's a good place to start and click the machine on this time inna stitch straight lines straight lines are really good for checking tension because you know if it's going to pull to one direction or another sometimes it's more extreme when it's a curve when you stitch a roughly straight line it's less extreme and then you don't run the risk of over kind of over adjusting so I'm looking at these stitches and this is looking better and it's still not perfect so I'm going to click the Machine off and loosen it up just a little bit more there we go I'm also double checking now this is just something that I know from having experience with my last one with my 14 plus and that is that if the tension is too high sometimes the thread will actually get squished out between the tension disks so it's not even under tension properly so I'm double checking that to make sure that it's under tension properly there we go let's do a needle up and needle down all right there we go I'll do a needle up needle down a few times let's try that see if that made an improvement and here's the thing I'm not gonna be super super super sniffy about my tension I'm not going to go after absolutely no single dot showing on either side because there is kind of a point of obsessive-compulsive that it kind of goes just a little bit too far you have to reach a point where it's like okay that looks good and then it's the color the thread color is the same in the top and bottom which is what I always I always use the same thread color in the top and in the bobbin of my machine then those little dots that little sign of a tiny tiny tension issue goes away you can't see it one bit all right it's still not making me as happy as it could and I want to say there is something going on with this tension dial and I think it's a different style of dial that yeah it looks it looks very different from the one I had before and I'm going to go on ahead and loosen this all the way sometimes I feel like fiddling and fiddling and fiddling with something you know and kind of just you know not kind of going quahog I oftentimes will loosen the tension completely on the top and then slowly dial it back down and that ensures that I'm not trying to be excessive on my tension the spring is also feeling just a little bit loose to me and another thing to check in on you know always and this is something I did right as soon as we put the machine on the frame and that was I double-checked my needle I double-check that it was in the correct location meaning inserted all the way into the top of the needle bar and that the needle was facing the correct way you know you never know some confused person invited to put the Machine together at the very last minute and turned the needle around the wrong way and that might have resulted in an issue with your machine so always double-check these things and never assume that something is set up properly for you straight out of the box so you know it's one of those things to always double-check everything yourself and in this case I'm loosening my tension all the way to kind of reset it here so that we were starting from around zero alright so there we go this is loosened up all the way I'm gonna click the machine on and do a couple more lines now I know now I'm not seeing any kind of brown dot but I'm also seeing some loops here on the top that are implying that it's not catching the bobbin thread or at least it's not it's not catching solidly and I'm also taking a look at my tension dial and now my thread is nicely seated it's nicely going in between those disks it's not pulling out but whenever I run my hand a lot of times I check tension just by running my hand on the back of the quilt and I can feel the tension issue I can feel loops I can feel looseness so that means I obviously can't leave my tension at zero I need to crank it up just a little bit so I'm gonna take this up to one and we're gonna slowly increase from there so this is just one of those things yes your machine will come tension as in factory tension okay but that's you know going to change depending on the needle you're using and the thread you're using so I really want you to understand it straight out of the box doing this test using a whole yard of fabric playing with it going back and forth doing some wiggles and stop all of this whole nine yards this is what's required in order to get good stitches good looking stitches on your long arm alright so I'm feeling the stitches what am I feeling for whenever there's a tension issue I feel noticeable lumps and bumps whenever there's a tension issue I can feel a tightness in the thread whether it's the bobbin thread that's pulling tight to the quilt or the top thread I can usually see it but I can also feel it that thread feels like it's held taut like up here I could tell that there was something going on because it was pulling in on the sides and I could even you know I could see it and I can feel it the thread just feels too tight now this is a very nuanced II thing it takes practice this and you know you know kind of time quilting in order to be able to see that kind of thing I don't expect you to be able to do that straight out of the box but just feeling this I can tell that we're much better in tension than we were to start with and just to let you know I went from having my tension kind of set at the middle place which was about two and a half there's lines and numbers on this tension dial I'm now at one and I think this is going to be about where I'm happy with my thread so understand that this is the process it's not going to come straight out of the box perfectly tensioned you're gonna need to do this yourself you're gonna need to play and give yourself permission to stitch to experiment to remove that tension dial and this is another thing about long arms in general I'm gonna need to adjust this possibly every day you know get in get started check in on my tension I always when I'm on a real quilt I'll have extra space on both sides so that way you can check in on my tension using scrap fabric on the sides and I also will check in any time I change my bobbin and any time I change the needle all of those things can have an effect on tension a bobbin that doesn't spin as smoothly as one before is going to affect that tension it's going to make that bob and have greater tension than the one before which means you'll have to adjust the top I very very rarely mess with my bobbin tension and I've shared lots of different videos on tension tests and stuff like that using your bobbin I very rarely touched that pretty much said it forget it don't touch it again it's the top tension that I spend the most time fiddling with until I get absolutely perfect stitches so I'm pretty happy with this let me grab my other camera and then we'll shoot some more and you can see some close-ups of how this gray ski week 21 is quilting so I took a little bit more time to check in on my stitches and then now I'm trying some loopy lines this is a great design choice because it's to show you if you had any sort of tension issue in curves is the super super curvy design so I think straight lines are a good place to start gentle curves great couple of things to start with whenever you're just testing on a machine and then go into a design like this and what I'm looking for is I'm looking for those little dots now I got a few over here I had just oiled the machine though so might have had something to do with that and then now I'm looking here I'm not seeing any now I did have to adjust my handlebars up just a bit and it's it's not the most comfortable but I mostly am adjusting them up this high in order to be able to film and I get a good shot of the needle so please understand that these are fully adjustable handlebars so I'm gonna play around with changing up where the location is of this right handlebar because I'm left-handed I can play around with this I usually just steer with my right hand anyway sorry my left hand anyway and so you can just lift up on these and then clamp them down wherever you want them to go and that might give you a little bit more control and that's a special feature of the 21 the the 15 our 14 bus doesn't have adjustable handlebar so I think that's really cool alright this is looking really good that's a really interesting feel with the handlebar kind of here on the side I actually really like that I'm gonna try steering just with that hand it's not in my vision although it is kind of coming to the front there a little bit but I really like the feel of it because it's at this angle I don't know why but I think it's good to definitely test that out and just see where it feels the most comfortable giannis repeating that same movie shape and check in real quick here there we go I'm getting just a little bit of dots pulling up in certain loops but not all of them I'm gonna just lighten up just a bit on my tension again and see if that takes care of it let's do some straight lines sharp angles another place that you might see thread pulling is in straight corners like 90-degree corners or sharp angles like these if you notice a little pull yeah I'm getting a little bit of a pull right in those points let's take a look so the thread is ever so slightly pulling up in those points this is extremely subtle it's not a huge tension issue but I'm making me want to check in on my bobbin case so let's do that next so here is the bobbin case that came with this machine and this is just a little bit loose tension in my opinion I'm pulling on the thread and I usually like to be able to pick up the bobbin case and have it kind of slowly run down this is you know I grab the thread and it basically just drops the second I'll let go of it that's striking me as just a little bit loose which would explain if this is running a little loose and I'm pulling up thread to the top then tightening this up will help with that so let me grab a screwdriver and give this a little tighten so this is the screw that I want to adjust whenever I am increasing the tension I'm going to take this in turn clockwise or to the right righty-tighty and then if I was to loosen it I would be going to the left alright so there we go that was a full turn and let me come over here and do that little yo-yo test again so this is almost a little bit too tight you can see how I'm jiggling it up and down and it's really not moving much that's almost a little bit too tight so I've gone a little bit too far now when you do that yo-yo test and you jiggle your bobbin like that make sure that your hand and your quilt and everything else you've got a pillow or something underneath so that this doesn't just crash to the floor especially a concrete floor you don't want to drop your bobbin case ever this is made out of metal it can bend it can get dinged up and it really won't work as well if that happens so make sure to treat this very very carefully and do this test very carefully if you are adjusting your bobbin tension always keep your hand right underneath it as you can see I also do that right above my quilt as well okay let me adjust this one more time so it's that nice big screw right there and I'm going to back it off by a quarter turn here there we go that looks good and then I'll try that bobbin test again and then that is exactly what I want let me show you again I'm going to start up here okay I move my hand and it's just a slow slide straight down so if I I have my hand here I hold on to the thread I move my hand and it's a slow slide down that's exactly what I'm looking for and that's the exact same thing I'm looking for whenever I'm checking tension on my home machines - that's exactly the tension that I like on all of my bobbin cases okay so I'm gonna pop this back into the machine we'll give it another test okay so because I made that adjustment I am most likely going to have to do something with my top thread so I'm gonna keep an eye out for that right now I'm starting with just a gentle wiggly line you know you can pretty much test however you want you know in whatever order if you want to go back to straight lines and sharp angles you can and then now I'll go back to those jagged lines back and forth and I'm getting the tiniest tiniest tiniest hole but you know what honestly I'm not going to continue trying to beat my head against a wall with that kind of stuff because that would be totally sorted out if I was using the same color thread in the top and bottom so there comes a time where you just decide okay that's good and up you know and don't keep trying to beat it to death you know we can be really persnickety with this we could drive our trick ourselves crazy with it and there is definitely a point where I say okay enough is enough that's good tension overall now I'm gonna go back into loops this is looking great I am super super happy with it I'm also getting used to the feel of the machine as I said I'm playing with these handlebars just to see how it feels to have those in different positions and I'm definitely gonna get keep on playing with that just to see what it feels like when I have both handlebars down here in the front I kind of like that idea and as you can see super amount of space to quills in I think that's honestly I'm kind of struggling to get used to that because I'm used to having you know a limited amount of space to work in and now I can go all the way back here and then all the way to the front and it just it almost feels just a little bit weird to have this much space and I have my arms stretched out this far into the frame but it's cool I mean it's awesome in a you know if it goes a little different but it feels awesome at the same time okay so as you guys know I've always had a little bit of trouble travel stitching on my long arms so let's see if this is improved at all a little bit I seem to be able to to travel Stitch for about a half of an inch to an inch and then I wiggle off a little bit but yeah this is a skill that gets built the more I quote the more I travel stitch the more I stitch designs like feathers where I have to hit a point exactly like here I need to hit that point exactly and then I need to travel stitch along the back of that feather the more I quote those lines like this and stop worrying about it being and perfect like that you know the more I stitch it the better I'm gonna get the more skill I'm gonna have and then the easier that's going to be to quilt freehand meaning no rulers no marks no nothing in the meantime until that does improve which as you can see I still need a lot more practice I can just basically focus on designs that you know hitpoints help me build that skill but can still be pretty such as echo feathers or spaced feathers it's basically the same design just putting a little bit of space between those feathers so there's less travel stitching involved as you can see that is one pretty demented feather not the prettiest but that's the point of a practice sandwich make a big mess it can be as ugly as you want and then this can become a cat or dog bed you know no one's going to criticize your stitches if it's meant for a pet that's a-ok and I find you know with something like that all I have to do is just kind of turn the edges over and zigzag and that's as much binding as it needs in order to be secured but really I think overall this is gonna be such a fast easy machine to use it has a great feel to it and I cannot wait to quote my first quilt on the 21 so that's it for this video I hope that this tutorial has helped you kind of get the gumption and the confidence to pull your long arm out of the box get it set up and I've given you some ideas for the first starting practice sandwich because this is the absolute most important thing to get started with you need to check in on your tension you need to make sure your needle is in the right position you need to check your foot height that's another important thing that you know can definitely affect your stitches you need to check in on that bobbin case tension and see how that is going so definitely run through all the steps double-check your threading of course and always refer to your manual to know how to thread the machine initially because of course when you're first getting started with something you haven't memorized the thread path so take your time getting to know your machine and getting to know how it feels how it sounds where you want the handlebars all that good stuff and then of course don't leave it in the box I have heard from so many quilters over the last year that has so that they've bought a long arm and then gotten intimidated by it and left it in the box not for one year but multiple years in a row so please don't do that if you're gonna invest in a long arm have the gumption to pull it out of the box get it on your frame and start playing with it now if you'd like to learn more about the grace 21 this giant long arm and the continuum frame that it is compatible with come and check it out Leigha DICOM slash 21 it is an excellent system if you are serious about quilting if you want the maximum amount of space stick quilting and you really want to knock out your quilts quickly now of course we have other machines that are smaller that are cheaper we have a different frame that only takes up four and a half feet so understand that there is a wide variety of different setups that you can do when it comes to your long arm so learn more educate yourself and if you have any questions feel free to ask at Lia dot-com slash contact now you can find a lot more videos on long arm quilting and my frame quilting Friday series so check out all of them at Lia DICOM slash frame until next time let's go quilt

Channel: Leah Day

Views: 11,124

Rating: 4.9324894 out of 5

Keywords: longarm quilting machines, grace company, longarm quilting videos, grace qnique longarm, grace qnique quilting machine, longarm quilting tutorial, Grace Qnique 21, grace company qnique, longarm tension issues, longarm tension problems, loading a quilt on a longarm frame, loading a longarm, longarm quilting for beginners, set tension on a longarm, tension on longarm machine, long arm machine quilting tutorial, first stitches on a longarm, beginning on a longarm

Id: 7NjEYl0bdEw

Length: 28min 36sec (1716 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2019