How to Attach a Sure Stitch Regulator to Your Q-Zone Hoop Frame!

hello my quilting friends my name is leah day and welcome to this video on attaching a sure stitch regulator to a q zone hoop frame so this is a more complicated build it is a method of replacing your foot pedal with a regulator and what this does is it basically allows me if i am stitching faster let's say i'm stitching a design that i'm really comfortable with and my hand speed moves faster well then my machine is going to adjust and stitch faster too if i'm stitching something that i'm a little bit less comfortable with a little bit more hesitant my needle speed is going to slow down now as you can tell this is a little bit more of a complicated build there's lots of steps there's lots of parts involved so let's walk through this together step by step as i put the sure stitch regulator on my janome 1600 the first step to setting up your sure stitch is to attach your encoders this encoder is going to be attached to the back wheel of the bottom carriage so i've already removed the top carriage and i've removed the machine i've just set it aside here and i'm going to turn this over so you can see which wheel i'm going to attach it to this is the wheel that has my channel lock this is the wheel that i'm going to use to attach the encoder and i did find that this was very uh challenging to unscrew so just be mindful of that you might have to get a big burly guy to unscrew that screw for you so now i'm going to press firmly on that middle black bit on the cord and that will allow me to pop that out set it aside and now you want to remove this sticker it says remove sticker to install and you want to make sure that this is moving easily and that the loop here is also moving so i'm going to grab the smallest allen wrench that comes with your sure stitch and i'm going to loosen this up this is exactly like installing the encoders on a cunic long arm you want to make sure that all of this moves really easily so that way we can put the proper tension on the encoder after we get it installed so i'm going to use the largest allen wrench that comes with the sure stitch to loosen up this bolt on the wheel and we've got the bolt we've got the wheel we've got a spacer make sure that as you unscrew this that you don't lose the spacer you're going to need it so i'm going to carefully remove that i'm going to remove that bolt that can be saved in a bin just in case you decide to take the sure stitch back off of your frame because now we're going to use the screw in the encoder to attach this wheel back on the frame and again that was very very hard for me to remove i was able to remove it myself but you if you have less hand strength then you might needed some help okay so now i'm going to attach on the bolt on the encoder i'm going to slot in the wheel and the spacer just like that now i'm going to attach this grab my allen wrench and you want the encoder facing the channel lock you want it facing inside the carriage and this is why it's a lot easier to do this just going ahead and take your upper part of your frame apart you know go ahead remove the machine it is really challenging to try and do this with the carriage down on the uh down on the track there's just so little space to work and tighten this up so that's why i decided i just go on ahead and take it apart it takes only you know a couple minutes to take your machine off to take your carriage off and then it just makes everything so much easier to work with okay that is nice and tight this is hanging loosely that's the way it's meant to go but the actual bolt going into the carriage is nice and tight now we're ready to put this down on the track and we will tighten up and add tension to the encoder so let me set this down on the track and i want to make sure that that groove running down the middle of the encoder is running right in that groove of the track so that they're making nice contact now this is a piece of rubber here around that piece of plastic for the encoder that can come off you can see i can just pull on it and it can gently come off so keep that in mind if that flops off you can easily reattach it back on that encoder all right so now i'm going to roll this down and roll the carriage back and forth a bit making sure that that is making nice contact and that the encoder is spinning nicely and it looks like it is but now we want to add a little tension to it and we do that by taking that loop of metal rotating it up so that way it is at a 12 o'clock position and i'm going to grab the smallest allen wrench my hand might get in the way here guys but all i'm doing is using this small allen wrench to tighten up that little set screw right on that loop of metal so now that i have the encoder attached i need to reattach the cord this can be a little tricky so i want to make sure that have it facing the right way kind of the doodads are going to be facing towards the back i'm going to slot it in here i might even lift this up just a little bit and i want the cord to go over this spacer bar i don't want to go underneath i want it to go over the spacer bar and then plug into the back of that encoder now what happens if you have a q zone hoop frame pro and you have a dual track instead of a single track it's going to change how you attach this first encoder just a little bit so this is my back right-handed wheel as you can see this is my back left-handed wheel this is the one that has my channel lock attached so this opposite wheel is the one that i am going to unscrew and attach this encoder to so again unscrew that wheel take off the bolt that comes with it so there is my wheel removed and you can see this is a wheel that has a flat side and then a slightly raised side the slightly raised side goes towards the carriage now i'm going to grab my encoder and this time i'm going to try and leave the cord in place just simply because i found that a little bit tricky to attach it once i had the wheel in place but i think that this will work just fine too make sure that that cord is going over the spacer bar within the encoder that this little spacer here make sure that the cord is going over that and we also want to make sure that the encoder is facing the inside of the carriage versus facing the outside of the carriage if it was over here then it would limit the amount of space that your frame could stitch you would probably run and hit the side of the frame if it was over on this side okay so i'm lining this up nicely another thing is before i took this off before i changed my carriage around and upgraded it i made sure that this was loose and easy to move so that way i can screw this in and not damage the spring okay so i'm just going to line this up and again you might have to lift the carriage slightly as it tightens just so that you now nothing gets bound up here i'm just going to lift this ever so slightly with my hand as i tighten that wheel up and get it nice and tight just like so get that good tighten okay and now just like before we're going to take this little ring of metal this little loop of metal and we're gonna push that all the way up to the 12 o'clock position and grab that small allen wrench and go on ahead and tighten that so it just stays in that upward position there we go so that is how to attach a surestitch regulator when you have a dual track frame so now let's attach our second encoder to the top carriage this is the part that holds your home sewing machine right here i don't think that these encoders are case specific meaning they are not marked to put one particularly on the bottom carriage and one on the top carriage i think they're completely interchangeable so you don't have to worry about which encoder is going where so i'm again going to remove that sticker and make sure that this moves easily if you're worried about it go ahead and loosen that little screw on that loop of metal just so that way it moves really easily and is not going to over tension that spring that looks good again i'm going to go up and pinch on the little black piece of that cord and gently wiggle it out so that way i am just working with the encoder okay the wheel that you attach this to i'm holding the back handlebars of the top carriage and this side has the channel lock on it that i installed this side does not so this is the side that i'm going to attach the encoder to all right let's see if this particular wheel is going to be as tricky to unscrew as the other and nope came off pretty easily so i'm going to unscrew that bolt and this time i don't have a spacer here instead i have a wheel that is very directional so one side of the wheel has an additional bit of metal it's slightly thicker okay and one side does not it's flatter on this side so all you have to do is refer to the other wheels on the carriage you'll see that that thicker side goes towards the carriage it acts as its own spacer all right so i'm going to take that encoder slot it through the wheel make sure that thicker part of the wheel is facing the carriage line it up like so and screw this in again i'm going to roll this back and forth and just make sure that all of my wheels are rolling and making good contact with that bottom carriage i'm going to lock that channel lock just to make it easier to work with here and then again we're going to take that loop of metal on the encoder pull it so that it's upright this puts tension on the encoder so it's going to spring back against that track and then all i do is just tighten up that little bolt on the surface of that loop of metal and then it's going to stay in place now i've plugged in my cord again remember the little metal bit that you kind of press to plug it in goes towards the rubber side of the encoder and i have the cord here going over that bit of metal between the wheel and the spring so that's how that should look we're ready for the next step the next step is to work inside our stitch control box we're going to pop open this and make sure that the jumpers are in the right place for our machine now this is the stitch control box for most janome the faf grand quilter the viking mega quilter and most jukies as well if you have a brother 1500 a baby lock qc pro or a baby lock jane the box itself is going to look different it's going to have a different set of electronics and here's the other thing guys this is not cross compatible so let's say you start out with a brother 1500 and then you change to a janome horizon 8 900 they're going to require different parts they're going to require different electronics so you really want to get one sure stitch for the machine you're going to use on your frame now what you're going to modify here depending on your machine are where these little black boxes go on the circuit board so they have a groove you want to just be really careful not to touch the circuit board if you can and you're just going to pull on that little black box and lift it off and i do think this is a good idea to do on the floor close to the floor so that way if you drop it it's not going to go too far so the janome 1600 it looks like this you're gonna have an open space and then you're gonna have three little black boxes and then the next row down here you've got a little black box an open space and then two little black boxes so there we go that's going to go just like that i'd say most of the time this is going to come already pre-arranged for your machine but you should pop it open just to double check make sure it looks right and is set up for your machine according to page six and seven of the surestitch manual so now let's take this box and attach it to the back of the machine but you want to do this carefully because of course you have basically ports on all sides in order to attach this to the different cords on your machine so i want to make sure that this is going to be placed somewhere where i have enough room to plug in and it's not going to impact the hand wheel here my stitch length knob or anywhere that needs to be open in order for the machine to be able to cool off that's what that is for so i wouldn't want to place this right there i'm thinking somewhere like this i think that looks like a good location so now i'm going to peel off this is a double layer of velcro back here and there's a layer of basically sticky tape and i just peel that off to release the sticky and then i can stick this to the back of the machine so i like this location i think that's going to look good for the 1600 if you get into a bind and let's say that just really isn't going to work you don't like it you can always pull it off leaving the velcro behind and be able to readjust that so let's say i had that stuck on really nicely well then it's velcro so i could drop that down a little bit leaving a little bit of the velcro exposed to the top or the bottom that's perfectly fine you want to make sure to get that bottom piece of velcro nicely attached smooth it out with your fingers real good get all the air bubbles out and that way it's going to lock in there firmly so that is how i'm attaching my sure stitch box to my 1600 so now i have this part this is going to attach to the front handlebars and you want to put it on the side that is corresponding with your dominant hand so i'm left-handed so i'm going to put this on the left-handed handlebar and i just remove that velcro open that up secure that nicely and i can easily now hit the start stop button the pulse button and control my stitch length all from one location all on my dominant hand alternatively you can attach the blue box to this carriage holder there is a small screw that comes through the top just unscrew that and then slot it through and then reattach that screw here on the back i'm not sure that i'm going to like this quite as much mostly for the location of how i like my handlebars but it's something to experiment with i think that you want to just play with this try a couple different locations see what works best for you see what feels the most natural and the most convenient i certainly like the look of that that looks really good but it might not necessarily feel all that great it might feel just a little bit awkward taking my hand off the handlebar to hit the buttons or it might be awesome and i really like having the handlebar free and just being able to click that off whenever i need to so we'll experiment with it and see what works best so now we want to connect our display to our control box using this cable this is the display cable and it has lots of little pins down inside of it including a kind of a black plastic center piece you want to make sure to line this up nicely make sure that it's in the correct alignment and then plug it straight in you want to try not to bend those pens now do the same thing the connection whenever the display is connected to this carriage holder it's through the back here so i'm going to carefully plug this in and then i'm going to connect and secure this cable to this bar of my top plate carriage so a whole little stack here of these little elastic straps i'm just going to line up that cord so i have a little bit of slack down here on the end and then just wrap that elastic around that bar around that cord all at once that looks good of course you can tidy this up you could loop this cord around that bar if you wanted to just want to get it out of the way so it's not going to droop down over your quilt okay here on the back of the machine i've got a lot of cords to play with and i need to make sure they're plugged in properly into the control box and properly into the machine so let's start out this is the cord we just plugged in into the control box i'm going to loop this under the power cord going into the machine this is just the standard power cord that came with the machine i've got it plugged in nicely that's going to provide the machine power now what i have unplugged here next to it is the foot pedal i no longer need the foot pedal so i want to be able to connect from that jack to the control box so for the janome 1600 i need to use this cord that has a three prong end and make sure to line that up properly and plug that in and if it doesn't quite fit or something isn't going right just make sure that you're using the right cord it can be confusing and there is one chord that is specifically for the hd9 and i actually think that that's this chord you can see it has a closer spacing here between those two prongs i'm going to try this chord instead and i think this is the right one so watch out for that it can be very confusing but just remember the machine is powered by the power cord that it comes with the only thing that you are changing on the machine itself is the cord that goes into your foot pedal so there we go i think i've got the right one now i'm actually going to kind of coil this back up again because i actually don't need this to be a nice long cord it's not going anywhere the connection between this and my control box is very very short you can see they're right next to each other so i'm actually going to bundle this up grab another velcro strap and wrap that around all of that i think that looks good there we go and now the end of that foot control cord is just a single prong that's going to go into this side of the sure stitch box okay so we've got a couple more plugs to go so here we go i've got a power cord here for the sure stitch so i'm going to let that spool out it has a nice long cord so if you have you know a lot of space between the power on your wall and your sure stitch that's going to be okay so i'm going to plug this in this is as you can see a female end and that's going to go into this end of the sure stitch control box so that plugs in like that okay two more things that is our encoders so this one's coming from the top carriage that's going to plug in like that and this one over here is coming from the bottom carriage that's going to plug in like that alrighty this looks good now i'm just going to shift these cords out of my way to get this stuck back on the machine and i stick that on firmly okay and then now i can take a look at and figure out okay how can i make this just look a little bit less jumbly here so i'm going to undo this velcro strap and then work in that cord that looks good you want to be careful with your encoder cords because they actually need to be nice and long that allows you the distance the space to be able to you know pull the machine forward in all directions that kind of thing so the encoder cords just need to be kind of out and loose here and i'm just going to shift that so that way i'm not going to roll over it as i steer the machine around okay just to test myself i'm going to lift up those channel locks and roll the machine around i want to make sure that i have a nice range of movement none of these cords are getting pulled on nothing's going to get jerked out and now it's time to test our sure stitch and see how it works on our machine so we are ready to give this a test i've turned the machine on as soon as i plugged it in the surestitch registered the number five here in gold we've got a little basically a light diode here and that's going to change color depending on what's going on with your machine now one note for this very first test i have unthreaded the top and bobbin of the machine i've taken my bobbin case out and my bobbin i've unthreaded the top i like to do a little test first just to make sure everything's moving and grooving just fine and then as you can see i don't even have the top back bar on the frame right now i like to do this test first just to see how everything's going so another big key make sure that your foot is in the down position it's really easy to forget that whenever you're running that initial test okay so i'm going to start by just hitting the pulse button okay so you want to hit it kind of firmly so when i just tap it lightly it doesn't do anything you want to actually give it a good solid press so what the the pulse button is going to do is it's more of going to stitch at a steady constant speed kind of like our speed controller so if you hold that down that's what that's going to do now i'm going to hit the on off button now this is the actual regulator so as you can see whenever i push slow the machine is stitching slow when i speed up the machine speeds up the green light here indicates that it's still being stitch regulated if i go way too fast you can see it goes red what that means is that i'm going too fast for the stitch regulator to regulate properly i'll end up with bigger stitches so there we go anytime that i want to just stitch i'm just going to click that on off and then as soon as i've kind of reached my point where i'm done you can see the needle is going to continue to drop so you want to make sure to hit that off button and that is how our stitch regulator works so the test sandwich here in the frame and i have re-threaded my machine just so i can get a good eye on the size of my stitches with this regulator so i'm going to make sure to drop my foot down before i get started and i'm going to use the needle down button on my machine as you saw the pulse button is not really a needle up needle down it's longer than that it's going to give me several stitches so i'm going to continue to use the needle down needle back up button and it's pretty conveniently located on the 1600 it's not too far away okay so i moved my machine over i tugged on that top thread that brought up a loop that loop is my bobbin thread there we go i'm going to get back centered right on that spot drop my foot back down again always make sure that you're starting with your foot in the down position that is very very important okay i'm going to get my needle back to where it was before drop it back in the down position and we're ready to test the sure stitch i'm going to dial this down to number one just to see that actually let's go to zero let's just see the size and shape of the stitches starting at zero so i'm going to click on and it's really you know you don't have to go super fast you can go nice and slow remember this is a regulator so whatever speed you're running the machine uh you know whatever however fast your hands are moving basically the machine is going to compensate for that it's going to take that size stitch and it's going to keep it consistent that's what the encoders are for that's why it's a more complex build because those encoders are rolling right alongside the carriage and they're saying oh she's moving kind of slow okay well then the needle needs to move kind of slow all right so i'm going to click that off and these are pretty big stitches i would call this a basting stitch i've zoomed in a bit so you can see more clearly and you can see that those stitches are i would say roughly a quarter inch in length so now let's dial up to one and do another test stitch and this is the way that i would advise testing this out uh you know just go one at a time and then these straight lines just a straight line down straight line back sorry i just got in the shot with my carriage so it's going to take a minute for the camera to focus but you can see it was a very subtle distance difference between these stitches and these stitches but it's ever so slightly smaller so as you go up in your numbers from zero uh on up to one and all the way through to nine it's gonna get smaller the further you go so i'm gonna stitch out a few more of these and we'll discuss how each one changes so this is line for now setting number two and two lines for setting number three so these are getting a little bit smaller they're still going to be a fairly chunky stitch if you're doing something decorative on your quilt such as straight lines across with really thick chunky thread uh maybe even doing bobbin thread work where you know it's it's really thick thread in the bobbin you're quilting your quilt in reverse you might want a stitch that's that long that's just going to be purely decorative and really thick and chunky i don't like this for general free motion quilting because if i try to stitch stippling with the design like this it's going to be very boxy and blocky and it's going to basically be stippling with lots of dragon angles it's not going to be all that pretty because of the size of the stitch length so i definitely use stitch length number three on the 1600 for something decorative nice thick bobbin thread work something like that so here i have two lines for stitch length four two lines for stitch length five so with each progressive set you can see that i'm slowly shrinking things down i like smaller stitches than this even that's just something unique to me so this is just going to be something that you're going to have to experiment with i really encourage you to do a stitch out like this so that way you can gauge and see all the different links that you're going to get with the surestitch regulator i'd say even this i would consider this more of a decorative stitch i might consider this length if i'm stitching straight across the quilt i want those nice bigger stitches that i think would look really cute you know just straight line quilting across but general free motion quilting though i like a smaller stitch than that stitch length five i should note is going to be the standard setting of your sure stitch regulator every time you turn it on every time you plug it in it's going to default to stitch length five okay i can see a dramatic change now this is stitch length six two lines of it and stitch length seven seven is getting into where i like to see my stitches i like a tight small consistent stitch that's my preference but let's keep going let's see what eight and nine look like so there we go we've got two rows here of stitch length eight two rows of nine and that is my favorite stitch length i really like tiny stitches that is what i do when i am hand guiding whenever i'm quilting freehand on a home sewing machine in a table i will have my stitches roughly about that size but you can see the range you can do so many decorative things with bigger stitches you know big stitch quilting is a thing you can definitely play with that don't be afraid of using that bigger stitch length if you like it if you want to try something decorative but i like tiny stitches because i feel like they are the most secure they're going to hold the layers of my quilt together really tightly so i like stitch link nine now let's give it a test and see how it does with regular free motion quilting so you can see i'm pulling in around here with setting nine and the most important thing is just to keep your movement still smooth and consistent so i don't want to just take off and whip the machine around if i go sup super super fast i'm going to strip out the regulator when that green light turns red that means i'm moving too fast for the regulator to keep up with me so i still want to move slow and steady you know slow and steady always wins the race i don't want to just jerk the machine around i want to keep a nice consistent pace but even if i am a little inconsistent the nice thing about the regulator is that it's going to make up for that and it's going to keep my stitches roughly the same size and consistent shape throughout and i really like that so that's it for this video i hope you learned a lot about attaching a grace sure stitch regulator to a cue zone hoop frame there were a lot of steps here there is it is a bit hairy on the back with all of the cords and stuff but i can say you know the back of the machine is the back and i'm not really worried about how that looks what i really like to see is how nice and consistent how even my stitches are now i don't really have to think about it anymore i just hit that button start quilting and that's really a relief so i hope that you enjoyed seeing me build this if you like to learn more about the grace sure stitch regulator you can check it out at lead.com stitch until next time let's go quilt

Channel: Leah Day

Views: 7,144

Rating: 4.8987341 out of 5

Keywords: sure stitch regulator, home machine regulator, home sewing machine regulator, q-zone hoop frame, qzone hoop frame, Janome 1600, quilting on a hoop frame, hoop frame stitch regulator, quilting frames for home sewing machines, quilting frames for sewing machines, Grace Company hoop frame, quilting frames for domestic sewing machines, grace company quilting frame, home machine quilting frame, attach sure stitch regulator, how to sure stitch regulator, sure stitch regulator Janome

Id: GAMcfzsjNOk

Length: 29min 38sec (1778 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020