How To Buy A Quilting Machine

hi everyone my name is Jan and I've been in the sewing machine business for over 44 years now so I've been around with all the different brands and all the new technology that came out so I've been asked to do a presentation for you about how to buy a quilting machine and of course there's lots of differences as to what you personally need so what my goal today is to do is to give you the features that are available and then you start eliminating what you don't want and what you do want and then you can do your shopping I'm keeping it completely generic I'm not pushing one brand over another brand as I do when you come into my store and the whole point of that is is every person needs something different every person has different needs and different wants and different desires so we have to really understand what you personally think you want to do after as well as what I'm telling you is out here so I just did this with a gal a few minutes ago and what she walked in for and what she walked out for was totally different but she was shocked at what she didn't know so I'm hoping I can give you some ideas also so a quilting machine now that's going to mean are you going to put little pieces together how big of a quilt are you gonna do are you just want a high-powered sewing machine maybe you'd want a sewing machine that is extremely strong as your first thing just had a gal that wanted a quilting machine but she was using pleather all the time so I certainly suggest suggested her to go to a different angle you can call this quilting even though you're making a bag but this has got a couple layers of batting and each one of these things and it's very very heavy so you need a sewing machine that's going to be powerful enough to be able to pull that through but also something that's going to be able to come across here when you're up to six and ten layers of fabric and be able to have the throat height to be able to take it underneath do you see what I'm talking about so everybody berries you can call a quilting machine a 250 dollar sewing machine you can quilt on anything that's straight stitches how you want to do it easier and a little simpler is going to be the differences so that's what I'm will go over with you a little bit of the things that you might want to take note of and figure out so the first thing we need to talk about is how big of a throat size you want to have if you look at your machine or a basic machine you're usually about a 5 to a 6 inch opening here now the companies have known that we want a little bit bigger opening so I can take a bigger piece of fabric and can put it underneath here to be able to move it around to see what I'm talking about so they've gone up to 1/8 inch opening notice the new performance icon has given me a 13 inch opening and I have other machines here as I am I'm talking all different brands here it's got different openings on it so that's one of your first thought processes so do you want to get a bigger opening or should you are you basically a piece or so being a pisser you don't need anything bigger than this right here right however if you're gonna FreeMotion it then we a bigger opening oh it's a whole lot easier than trying to put a queen size quilt through here so some of my ladies do all the piecing themselves and they come in and rent my long arm to be able to finish their quilts themselves there's professional long arm quilters that do the work for you there's also quilting long arms that are now affordable I'll be doing a presentation on that but you can get a long arm a short arm shall I say which is about a 15 inch for under five thousand dollars so it's not as expensive as it used to be to be able to decide while I do twelve we'll see here it's well worth you paying to buy one of those machines for yourself so also there is a technique called quilt as you go and if you've never learned that technique and you have no interest in a long-arm then I strongly suggest you get into class ASAP because we can do king-size quilts on this machine if you do it quilt as you go your other option now is that we are quilting our entire quilts on your embroidery machine there's a company Amelia Scott designs that says rope edge-to-edge and you can take your embroidery hoop and hoop and whooping whooping hoop and do it so our options of what we're able to do to finish our quilt is enormous which is another whole subject so now right now we're talking about you just possibly deciding I want to update my machine what should I do to make it easier on me so again your old straight stitch sewing machine might work well but let me tell you there's a whole lot of wonderful features on machines now that's going to make it easier so let's just talk about the very very basic features because you can get them on sewing machines at a very affordable price so one of the most important features that we're going to get into is needle up kneel down so what needle up kneel down is going to do is let's get a little closer here so that you can see this as I start sewing I'm going to sew doing my straight stitch and I want to stop with my needle down in the material so that I can now lift up my presser foot turn my fabric and go now that feature right there needs to be checked out because you'll buy a sewing machine for $900 it does allows your job of it and you'll buy a sewing machine for $600 it does a great job for it so you have to know what you're after and you have to know why so what you want needle up needle down to do is in our settings I want to be able to tell it to stop at the very very bottom position I don't want to have to come up here and make it stop up or stop down I want it to stop automatically so why do I do that because I want my material to go and not for me not to have to put my hands on my hand wheel over there following me so you don't see me touching this now I'm trying to show you what I'm doing at the same time so help me but this right here is called a knee lift so many many many years ago the knee lift was a mechanical so that I can take it and it will lift the presser foot up for me do you see how it's lifting the presser foot up so I would do that with my knee now remember grandma's old machine you might have used the knee lift and say oh I know what that is no no no back then you used your knee to make the Machine run it pushed a lever against the control to make it go what the knee lift now is doing is lifting the presser foot up and down for you so your hands can stay here on your work see what I'm talking about so I don't have to come back here and lift anything I can use my knee lift so I'm still going to slow my machine down a little bit just to make sure you understand what I'm talking about because I'm trying to let you see and do it at the same time so I'm going to sew along and I'm going slow but there's times you want to keep going you want the needle in the down position and you want your presser foot to lift up so I'm sewing along I'm stopping and my presser foot lifts up so I can turn my material why do you want that so that your hands can stay here you get it so again needle up needle down is not needle up kneel down needle up kneel down is we want it to be permanently stay down or permanently stay up just having one that I can push the button down is an added step you really don't want to bother with but that's gonna be as far as how much you spend so I want you to to check these things out before you purchase because it really makes a big difference foot controls are going to be obsolete at some point in our future because now we can unplug a foot control now for you folks that are old like me you might find that you're used to a foot control so it's easier for you to do with the foot control now the next step you might want to know about that I think is the most important thing you may have to be a little bit more serious shall I say of a quilter but it's something for you to know about there's a walking foot attachment that you can purchase for any sewing machine at all now how they work is a big difference so what a walking foot is really copying is something that patented many many many years ago so to give you the idea there are feed dogs down here and now do no and take a look at those when you're purchasing a machine because they need front feed dogs to be able to pull that you know sometimes you start off sewing it kind of puckers right in the beginning well they have new feed dogs to solve that issue so that's nice a walking foot is your feed dogs go like this on the bottom and what oh and it's got teeth so it's kind of grabbing it like this now I want teeth on top to grab to pull it through now all the different manufacturers at times would say all our machine doesn't need it well let me tell you if you're trying to put a zipper in and soak a walking foot it's going to save you hours if you're trying to go down 120 inch drapery and you get down and you're this much off a walking foot would have solved that issue when you're trying to sew through batting and fabric and everything and you're pinning it to make sure it's go if you have a proper terrific walking foot on I can go right down my hundred and twenty inch drapery and be exactly perfectly because the feed dogs have feed the material through okay so that is in my opinion one of the most important things for us to have because our fabrics change constantly one of the newest thing is the Snuggle fabric that we're using now the fuzzy and oh my gosh it's just heavenly when you have a walking foot it's hard when you don't so if you have a basic older machine you can buy a walking foot go to the store and spend the money there's different grades of walking foot don't this think a $29 thing you found on the Internet it's not worth your $29 don't even bother it's not going to help you get the right one or don't bother so the companies now have added the walking foot to the machines again this was a fought patent many many years ago and on the back of the foot there's a little arm that comes down and allows you to have feed dogs on the back why the feed dogs are moving the material following me that's one version so of course every company is watching the other companies and wants to improve their product to have the most features that you want so they have now taken it and Janome ease will made a wonderful situation here where it has the feed dogs down here and they put two different feet two different walking feet that connect with the bottom and match up perfectly so it will follow the material through so they've done basically the same thing that father's had on their machines so walking foot on your machine what you want to do however you got a walking foot okay you're doing great now you want to put a zipper foot in a zipper in or you want to stitch in the ditch let's talk about that since we're talking quilting so you want to stitch in the ditch on your quilt so of course with the batting and the backing and the top on there the material shipped on us away so a walking foots gonna solve that for you but what about having a stitch in the ditch foot guide so there's a stitch in the ditch foot that's got a groove so the groove will go right down your seam so you can't see where you stitched now they are making presser feet that are quarter inch stitch in the ditch zippers probably a clear foot so that now we can use different feet with our walking feet pretty cool so that's something fought this hand for 30-some years the other companies are catching up so it's really cool that they're catching up but you do want to check into that if you're gonna sew on a wide variety of fabrics like I do I don't just do straight stitching if you're just piecing and you're gonna send your quilt out and you're never going to sandwich it together then it's not as important to you if you sew on a wide variety of fabrics if you're sewing and you're tired of it not coming out exactly perfect at the end this is one of the most important features you look at however the basic level machines can sew a straight stitch as well as these machines can the walking foot as you spend more money becomes much nicer just like the scissors you spend more money it's much nicer it's like the width on how wide your decorative stitches can be make a big difference so that's something for you to very much consider now if you look at these two different machines the opening is here look at the lighting always compare that everything I told you about where the presser we'll go up and down that I showed you on the little machine I started with is all on all of these so those the cutter and all that oh that's just heavenly so that doesn't make a difference I just wanted you to know that you can buy it for a regular machine that you don't have to spend everything to be able to get it how heavy of a duty sewing machine you want to purchase makes a difference also I suggest you sew on it yourself I asked my customers and give them four and eight layers of denim and some batting and some sandwiches and I have them run through it and there are times that someone might say I like that one and there are times saying I like that one so it's up to an individual preference just like anything else you purchase so test of test drive it yourself to see what you feel comfortable which one you feel is smoother for you for you to be able to go I have to have power and I have to have speed just because that's who I am so everybody varies so check it out check when you go to low speed how low it goes is it slow enough for you is it can you control it that kind of thing so those are just simple little things let's talk about these tables so if you look around here you have your open arm that's going to come out just like you probably have on your current machine and you can take off this table and you can add on an acrylic table to be able to give you more room they come with some machines they don't with others they can be a hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars probably the two hundred and twenty dollars or so so that might be something as you're comparing one brand to another brand as to if you get a table with it so I know that there's machines that sell for $700 that don't have a table but the $900 one has extra features and has the table so therefore if you want a table that probably a better buy for you so something to be able to understand how to work it you want to be able to check out the electronics on the machines and I'm not saying that I'm going to get you a good enough picture for you to understand today because that's I'm not going up that that detailed but I really think it's important for you to try and see how do I obtain the stitches and how simple it is for you some are easier for some people and some are easier for others I know on the fog they have just made it now that it works like an iPad so I can just sit here and change from stitch to stitch all at the same time so bring up the stitches here I can select a stitch and I can go from one to the other and I can work out just like a IPF slip slip slip slip the ladies have like that because it's something they're comfortable with and they know how to use it they're all easy they're gonna take you a week to get used to it so it's not like I can tell you one brand is that much different than another brand you need to test this out for yourself and to see which ones you like I know what I'm partial to so let's go back to walking foot because that is so dire important to you quilters the brother and the baby lot brand have got a new walking foot that they're again competing with the father and the Janome and they have a dual feed system on here and they've came out with the winner what it's going to do is there's a belt down here so you put this belt on and it's going to pull that material the belt is helping you pull your material exactly evenly and beautifully it does an absolutely extremely good job so that's on your top-of-the-line machines here and it gives you a different ones and you can adjust it as to how much pull you want on that belt I'm hoping that some of you have got features inside your machine that just by listening to this video you might go check out and try to use the biggest concern that I always tell you is that I want you to use what you get especially if you buy it from me because I live I just feel an obligation to make sure I give you opportunities to use everything there's no sense having these wonderful machine if you're gonna do straight stitch sewing let's get into some fun okay I've switched machines out again for you because there's one more feature I want you to be able to think about and I think it's pretty much exclusive on baby lock and Brother so you know depends now we're talking about high end here but it's a function that's got two reasons for it so what happens is I have a laser light in my machine so you're sewing along something and you're trying to make sure it's exactly straight there's a laser so what all I have to do is to come over here and you remember before I was programming machine to have the presser foot lift up and I was programming it to automatically cut every time I put Reverse do you remember that a couple machines back well now I got one more function to add to that and I'm adding adding a laser now so what it's going to do if you can see here on this I'm trying to let see with the red red line going there so as just like a saw or something to that effect I can take that red line and put it exactly where I want to sew and it's going to help me see that I'm sewing exactly straight do you see it now that's one thing that's cool but now the coolest thing is that I can then move my laser can you hear that I'm gonna go backwards okay so let's say I wanted to follow along something over here but I wanted to use my edge of my presser foot right here as my guide so I'm making sure that the edge of my presser foot right along here I can use because then I know that even though I'm stitching almost an inch over I know it's exactly perfect or one inch from here to here do you see where that laser can save you hours do you remember when I had you adjust your needle position going over and back and forth and told you how that was important well now I can do the laser and I can go from one side to the other side wherever I want to be so even though I might be sewing here I can use my laser I can have it so way over here because that's where my laser needs to be so my laser will always be exactly exactly where I want a stitch and you'll be able to keep your lines even even easier now that particular function has even a better reason for it than that as a laser it's exclusive on only a few machines but and I don't I'm not going into decorative today because I don't have enough time but to give you a two second idea let's say we were sewing along and I'm sure you've done it before and you're sewing along sewing along and you're doing a little heart stitch okay and you get on down to the corner of your heart and you get a half a heart and you turn the corner and you get a half of the other part it looks pretty lousy when you take a corner with your decorative stitches right well guess what when my laser it comes with the laser pen and if I was doing a decorative heart down here and I wanted to turn right there because that was exactly a quarter of an inch up I'm able to sew along and when that laser hits where I told the Machine to do it will adjust these hurts one or two stitches per heart that won't be noticeable and end on that dot with an absolute perfect heart so what can I do turn and keep on going I know that's not enough to explain it when I'm asking you to do is to ask about it because that is something that you may know to put it on your want list of what you want to do it's heavenly it's absolutely wonderful and there's nothing that beats it so you have to choose which walking foot you want how big of an opening you want how big of a light you want how does the needle threat you want to thread the machine you want to say okay one of my favorite features is if I can get out of here is pushing the button and have it thread the needle every single time let's get the needle up and down to write it up right so every sewing machine a needle threader again is not a needle threader look how that does it does it for me it's never wrong it's absolutely perfectly the older you get that might be one of the most important features you get so think about who you're buying this for it if you're buying it for a granddaughter who's starting into quilting maybe needle up kneel down will be heavenly for her maybe you want to spend $200 more and let her have scissors and most importantly let her have yours and go in and buy yourself a new one I hope I've answered some questions and at least given you some ideas to think about as to what you think you would want on a quilting machine hope they helped you out go check yourself one out and happy quilting to all of you [Music]

Channel: Sew It Online

Views: 26,762

Rating: 4.9095316 out of 5

Keywords: quilting machine, sewing, quilting, embroidery, sewitonline, pins and neeedles, training, training video

Id: lbqHLdhswTM

Length: 24min 41sec (1481 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 06 2019