How to Quilt with an Embroidery Machine

[Music] hi i'm eileen roach founder of designs of machine embroidery and thank you for joining me here today i am so excited about today's topic quilting with your embroidery machine that's a topic that is so dear to my heart i've been you know the very first issue of designs of machine embroidery magazine featured a quilt that was all embroidered and quilted in an embroidery machine on its cover and that's a long time ago 1999 right and boy have we come a long way but not only are we going to talk about quilting with your embroidery machine it's also the november door reveal and i know many of you are tuning in for that um and i see lots of comments let's see crystal campbell you're so excited about this you have uh contemplated purchasing these items so i think today's um program will really kind of clear up some questions that you may have had how doable is this really and what do you need to have success so i have some great tips for you to do that and let's see uh who else is there will there be oh i know and rita you are making more masks and you're using a new pattern good for you that's fun right um and dreary in new york uh you know dreary here in texas too we've had a lot of rain and cold here this week which is not you know the right temperature for our season so anyway but we're do you know we'll get through it right if you hear somebody from minnesota i shouldn't whine you know it's 30 degrees here and you know i'm sure it might be a little different in minnesota so oh michelle calling in from south africa welcome thank you for joining us from across the pond and judy warren aloha to you it's so great um let's see and carol lombard you say you don't always um you don't always sew straight but your machine does isn't that the truth these machines are a dream oh my let's see oh and rita you're in wyoming negative nine ah hey mccarthy there's our a mccarthy she was here with me last week remember everyone and she's saying she loves my earrings she showed these last week in purple they were super fun so well looks like the crowd's growing so i want to know how many of you are making the doors and how many have you completed have you done all 10 and if not no judgment no judgment at all i just want to know that you're enjoying these making you know some of them or all of them so let us know in the comments how many you have made okay oh but charlene we're going to put her up there because it's 85 in south carolina good for you that's a lovely day right and sharon shorter you have done all ten thank you i'm so glad to hear that that's awesome okay so let's uh take a look at those doors i know that many of you this is the 10 that's already completed we're going to get number 11 at the end of today's program and i think you're really going to like it a mccarthy saw it last week and she was just tickled so let's go ahead and you know we'll save that topic for the end of today's program because we have a lot to cover beforehand so we're going to talk really about three different uh elements of quilting with your embroidery machine and that's prepping the quilt hooping the quilt and then handling all that all that bulk you know because quilts are heavy right i mean we've been making these doors which are just six by ten inches which is very nice but you know it's small and you most certainly don't have to worry about handling the bulk of that but i've done king size queen size and my favorite lap size quilt is about 50 by 72 so you know that's a lot of quilt to handle on an embroidery machine so what do we want to do first well the first thing we want to do is baste that quilt together and pardon me you know i turned my phone off and and yet it's ringing so pardon me uh we got that out of the way so the first thing i do is i baste my quilt and i use safety pins you can use straight pins or um spray basting i don't really like to do the spray basting because i usually make my quilt sandwich indoors so i don't want that blowing all over my house so i use pool noodles and you know you can get them in the dollar store at you know home the home stores you can also get them at pool stores uh let's see somebody wants to know how do you get the pattern for the doors well pam we're going to have all those links available very soon towards the end of the program so you'll be able to get all of that in one fell swoop pool noodles allow you to baste your quilt in small segments because you can just use a table and it does need to be the width of the quilt but it doesn't have to be completely flat so what the image that you're seeing on the screen right now shows the quilt backing being attached to a pool noodle and you'll notice it is wrong side up just like you would normally make a quilt sandwich and this is the quilt top which is rolled onto the noodle right side up just like you would with a regular quilt sandwich here is what it would look like as you progress the basting process so you're going to start you know at the end of the quilt and then you'll advance the fabric releasing some of it off of the noodle and pin based and here this is my flower box quilt and i am just about under uh just about to the edge of you know or the top of that quilt so i'm just about done so let's head over to my tabletop camera so you can take a look at how i do it i have a table runner here so you can see how i do this so here's the right you know the top side the right side of my table runner and here's a pool noodle and i just use straight pins so i'll pull them out and then i'm going to let me get that in the camera view i'm going to place the edge of my table runner in a straight fashion across the width of the pool noodle now you could take a sharpie and mark a straight line so that you have a reference point that's probably a really good idea but you don't want a table runner it's not really necessary and then we're just gonna i'm just pinning that right into the pool noodle now i can't feel the pin on the other side so it's perfect and then i'm just going to begin to roll now i normally would have this all flattened out there we go like that and i'm just going to roll and smooth now i'll tell you when this is big you're going to work on one end and you're going to smooth it and then roll and smooth it and roll but this works on king size queen size it's awesome and then you'll just do the whole thing right and then we'll set that aside and for the back i've already completed this one and so you'll notice this is the back of my quilt and it's wrong side up here's the right side so this is wrong side up so in order to start pin basting i would lay this out and then take my batting and place the edge of the batting oh that was pretty fun okay they are round they do roll okay so now i have my batting situated here and i smooth that batting in place make sure it's you know nice and flat and then i take my table runner top and i want to match up those edges and most certainly you would take the necessary time to make sure all of that is nice and flat and then we're going to pin baste now at home i make sure i'm doing this with a cutting mat underneath so that i can just poke those pins right into the table surface and i don't have to worry about marking my table i have this pretty nice white table here so i don't really want to mark it by pushing that in there and you know i usually do this a hands with the way so i would have another one here and another one here and you know and so on the whole way and then as you release your quilt you know as you work the basting all the way down you're going to do this the entire length of your quilt and then you can just pull it off of the noodle and it's all basted you don't have to worry about it being wrinkled or you know any pleats or puckers in the wrong side i love this technique it is just phenomenal so but i think you get the picture right isn't that fun and then you know once that's all done now i'm ready to go to the machine and hoop that i would do a better job i would definitely have more pins about five inches apart so let me see if you have any questions okay mcdowell you like that um and embroidery.com yeah you like that pool noodles so many things to do with them yeah they are really you know i have often seen people use uh skinny pieces of wood but yeah you know i don't know i think pool noodles are so easy to connect to one another so you can have you know pool noodles come i think they're like 50 inches in length and if your queen size quilt is 80 inches in length you just buy four and tape them together and you know they're flush and boy that's awesome it's just it's great and then i can you can cut them apart and i also use them to store quilts on because now you don't have any creases or folds that you have to worry about damaging the fibers of your quilt you just roll them on the on the pool noodle and it's very easy to transport yeah so isn't that fun yeah really fun i know i love that how big is the quilt well sharon this quilt this is a table runner so this is about 24 inches wide times 72 it's not very big but the quilt that i'm going to show you on the machine is 60 inches it was 55 inches wide by 72 so you'll see that in a minute let me see where i am here now we want to go back to powerpoint i think because our next thing that we want to talk about is how we handle the quilt in the hoop right because now to be absolutely honest with you i would i've learned to not try to quilt with an embroidery machine with a standard hoop kathy wink says you can join you can put a dowel rod through to join two new noodles you can for sure you could do that but boy packing tapes one little piece so easy that's what i do and then i just tear them apart if if they're too long and i don't need them so hoops you know i'm definitely all going to be all about the monster hoop and i always well i don't always use but i suggest that you use a hoop that's possibly the largest one for your machine now i'm going to be working on the solaris today and the solaris the baby loc solaris and the brother luminaire have a giant hoop which is 10 and a half by 16. and frankly it's almost so big it's a it's hard to manage so i often use the nine and a half by 14 and that makes it just easier to advance the fabric and you'll you'll see what i mean but if you are comfortable with that 10 by 16 man use it it's great it's just great so where can you get those hoops well many stone machine retailers across america have them in their store you most certainly can just drive over to your local dealer and they'll probably have them for you but if not you can most certainly get it on our website dzgns.com and i want to kind of walk you through how you would find the hoop for your machine because we've changed our website so first you'll just click on hoops at the top of the toolbar and then you want to select your machine brand you can see we have all the different brands here and once you're in your brand you then select the hoop size that you want and you'll notice there's a model field underneath where you can also select your model and when you have those if you select a hoop that's too large for your machine it will be grayed out and it won't allow you to select that so make sure that you select the right model and the right size for your machine and then just add to cart and that's how easy that is and let's see matthew fabilio wants to say you're late oh well welcome you're never late on facebook we're always happy to have you here you most certainly can watch later you haven't missed that much well you did miss my tip on how to baste a quilt in preparation for actually quilting it so that's a great tip and technique that you'll want to learn so you can watch the replay when this broadcast ends okay uh let's see uh yeah misha your manufacturer makes one with just a metal base yeah and kind of like refrigerator magnets right not very strong yeah okay so let's go ahead and take a look and talk about the design so now i have this giant hoop right nine and a half by fourteen and my quilt is probably going to need about 50 hoopings 50 repeats of that design this is a big job folks right we have to remember it's a big job so am i going to be able to nail the placement of that design in every single hooping if i select a design that is the exact same size as my hoop probably not and it's going to frustrate me and i probably won't finish my quilt if you look at your pile of ufos unfinished objects aren't many of them just because it wasn't pleasant to complete the project that's what i want to erase for sure so if you select a design that is just a little bit smaller than your hoop you will have wiggle room which will allow you to move the design so that you can get your precision placement without precision hooping there's a big difference and i'll show you what i mean in a moment okay so now we want to talk about handling the bulk because isn't that the real challenge is all that weight you know it could be five six maybe ten pound i mean i don't know i actually i'm making that up i don't know how heavy most quilts are but they're too heavy for our hoops right if you think about it an embroidery machine was engineered to create to hold fabric that fills the sewing field so a five by seven a six by ten that is the limit that the manufacturer guarantees will be able to be carried with the machine you know with the hoop as the embroidery design is stitched but you know then there's us right because we have a queen size quilt and we want to quilt it on our embroidery machine well that manufacturer that machine manufacturer never intended for you to do that they kind of thought you'd go out and get a long arm for that job but anyway so let's uh let's go ahead and talk about how to handle that weight so on a table runner i just turn the back of my chair my sewing chair around and i rest that excess fabric on the back of the chair yeah you just want to lift it so that it's not dragging all over uh you know because you don't want it to drag the hoop right so now this is what we're normally faced with this is a lap quilt a jelly roll quilt and you know this is not going to be a pretty progress right i i'm just something's going to happen i can tell you because it's just way too much weight if you have a quilt back quilt top and batting much too much weight so we need a tool that is the right tool like you wouldn't use a mini cooper to pull a beautiful 24 or 30 foot boat right you just wouldn't do that it's not going to work you need the right tool i can get i can tell you that you this is one workaround to use an ironing board behind your machine and it will i suggest that you raise the height of the of the ironing board so that it is level with your machine bed not your sewing table it needs to be level with the machine bed there's a big difference and then if you use this technique place a piece of vinyl like a shower curtain or this is marine vinyl and it's you'll notice it's underneath the table and extending over that ironing board now that does give me a smooth kind of fluid area for my uh quilt to travel over as the machine stitches because it's going to move that's what it's for okay but you have a the right tool for the right job this is what you would use if you were going to take that beautiful uh fishing boat to the lake right you would need a large f-150 or some other wonderful brand so several years ago i invented the weightless quilter and the weightless quilter is a floor frame that sits underneath your furniture or be or surrounding your furniture and it has flex poles that hold the weight of the quilt above the machine bed and it mimics the movement of the of the hoop so it will actually sway as the hoop is moving because you know the hoop moves right not the needle the needle just stairs it stays here and goes up and down and the hoop moves so let's go ahead and take a look at it in progress so here we are over at our beautiful solaris and i just wanted to show you this is the weightless quilter box this is what it comes in and it is lightweight i most certainly can lift it up and even over my head it has eight different poles these are the flex poles and we have skinny ones and ones that are a little bit wider with diameter and the very skinny ones are more flexible so they're for lightweight quilts and smaller quilts and then the thicker diameter is for a heavier quilt or a larger quilt like maybe a king or a queen or a flannel quilt or a minky something like that so on the floor and you can't see that well you can kind of see it i have a floor bar on the back and one that's parallel with the left side of the machine and in that floor bar is a corner bracket there are three of them and that's what the poles are sticking out of and as we kind of go through this i have some of those pieces that i can show you on camera so you can see a little closer what they look like but i have set this up with the three poles notice i have a short one in the front you get two short poles and the six are taller and i suggest that you cut them to fit your needs you'll have to use the weightless quilter experiment with it a little bit for your sewing space and your machine and then cut them to fit if they're too tall you'll notice you have tension on your quilt here let's take a look so i have a quilt that is has been started actually it's almost finished so let's open that up it's a really pretty colorful quilt and i'm going to place this on my machine let me see what's the right side up okay so i've already attached my metal frame of my nine and a half by 14 to the machine and i actually have my design already selected on the screen and this is the design that i'm going to stitch which is just a big swirly pretty design and that's actually from our friends uh christine connor over at amelia scott designs edge to edge quilting and now i'm just going to feed the edge of the quilt underneath the foot and just not worry about it just put that under there and then i'm going to attach the back pole to the clamp the fabric clamp and the other corner also and you just you know take a little bit of time do it the right way and then i'll place this one here and then i can fuss with placement so i would take my template and i would position that on my quilt now i'm going to cheat here we're not actually we're not going to have thread we're not going to have needles but i'm just going to show you what i would do like for instance here i can just place my template right where i want it it's actually positioned directly over a previously stitched design so this tells me the center of my design so i know where i want to center my needle i can use the this long crosshair as a guide to make sure i'm parallel with my seams and i'm not perfectly parallel but you know i could spend time doing that and then i just kind of move the quilt so center that needle over the template and then i take my magnetic frame the top and notice if you have a metal bottom table like i do a leg i can just snap that metal frame right to it this is our hoop guard now hoop guard is going to keep that bulk roll out of position so i just snap that into place and now i'm going to attach the quilt i mean the top frame to the bottom and if you can see i'm really crooked it this template is now going this way so easy to fix i just lift that top frame reposition my fabric you know and you know you're going to do this 50 times so the very first hooping you're going to be so precise and then when you get to whooping number 20 you're not going to be as precise anymore and that's okay so i could move my knee my needle over to uh the center of my design and how do i do that i want to be in layout and move and then just jog over there there we go and say okay then i'm going to lift my presser foot and peel that template back and then i just store that on the quilt because that is a print and stick target template paper that is uh sticky it's tacky and i've used just this one template to do that entire quilt and then you know it's i love it it's wonderful great stuff so we're just going to let that stitch and we're going to show you we'll kind of back up a little bit give you a better view so you can see how that wide angle shot see how the quilt just moves and see how the weightless quilter moves with it so you can see that front pole is really flexing as where the poles in the back are just standing there holding it it's kind of like having three of your girlfriends hold your quilt while you quilt and it works the very same if it was free motion quilting walking foot stitch regulator it doesn't matter yeah it's really wonderful and misha you use ikea table rooms ikea tables for your sewing table you know actually this table here that i'm using in this image is an ikea table and it's an adjustable height you know just they have an electric but they also have it with um a hand crank that you can just raise it and that's what i do so you uh helene wants to know you do not have to pull the thread through before start stitching so the back doesn't have a knot at each starting point well that's a really great question and helene if you are um quite an experienced quilter you that may um be a problem for you i can tell you on my baby lock machines i don't do that there is a tie on and a tie off on on every hooping but there's a wrong side and a right side of every quilt and if it really kind of bothers you that much use a busy back but i we can take this off after a little while in the show and i'll let you look at the back of the quilt under a tight camera and let's see sherry pickerel will this work with the 8x8 oh absolutely yeah it'll work with any any monster hoop and it will even work with a standard hoop you're just not going to want to do your project with a standard hoop because you're not going to want to have to re-hoop see i in order to advance the fabric to the next uh embroidery design i'm not going to take the quilt off the machine so when this stops stitching we'll go back over there and i will show you how we'll advance the quilt by leaving that bottom frame in place okay amisha she said this might be a dumb question there's no dumb questions do you use clear thread on top for an embroidery top it's not a dumb question many people do use a monofilament thread they come in two colors they come in smoke and clear and so the smoke you would use on dark fabrics in the clear on light fabrics but many quilters like their thread to enhance the quilt and they will select a colored thread that either contrast or blends with the fabric that's really up to you now if you like if you don't want to see the thread you just want to add texture then go the monofilament way because then you you know you always have an ample supply right you could do it in the needle and the bobbin now winding a bobbin of a monofilament thread can be a little tricky because a monofilament thread can stretch during the bobbin winding process but i've had good success with it but yeah i love you know pretty colored thread in fact in this one i'm using our sunset which is a beautiful variegated thread it's just so pretty we probably can't see it that well but it's yellow and kind of a neon green and then a pretty bright orange so that's really fun okay so let's head back over and i can show you how to advance the quilt so what i do is i lift my bottom frame and actually i i don't do it like that i do it like this and i lift it right over and i just leave it in position here and then i will advance my fabric by putting my template in place and you know i would pay attention to the placement make sure that i'm parallel with the seams or whatever i'm trying to accomplish right every quilt is different now you'll notice i have this template pretty far close to the edge so i of the quilt so i'm going to drop that back handle i'll just let that go and now when i'm stitching i don't have to worry let's go ahead and get this in the center um pardon me it's hard to think on camera right okay so now i'm just going to lift that and get this positioning just where i want it and now i'm ready to stitch okay and we certainly would remove that template you know if you ever stitch through a template you'll only do that once right okay now remember we don't have needles i mean we don't have a needle or a thread in that so you're not actually going to see thread applying and then heart felt creative you want to know can you use the sticky hoop i would not use the sticky hoop on a quilt because you're not going to be able to remove that stabilizer our sticky hoop comes with tearaway sticky adhesive stabilizer which is permanent and stays on the back of a quilt you could cut water-soluble stabilizer water-soluble stabilizer like our adhesive sew and wash to apply to the back of a a sticky hoop but i i think that would be a very expensive process uh i i think you're better off getting a monster hoop that would hold the top so yeah and let's see a mccarthy she says she uses the weightless quilter when she sews big drapery panels and banana curtains and shower curtains and you know what i love it for aim those are great tasks to use for sure but um i i use it for binding i love using it for binding because that's the last part of the quilt right it's you know you've already probably put the label on and the very last thing that you're doing is binding and that's so annoying to have all that bulk of quilt that you're trying to feed through the sewing machine so i use it for that and uh let's see dawn wants to know why am i using a template instead of using the projector to line up well the the projector on this machine would be a good option for sure it is the only machine you know in the baby lock line that has the projector i believe so there would be a limited uh technique for all the people that are watching today but it would work and and it does work beautifully it most certainly does work beautifully for that okay let's see um will this work yeah do you have to pull the thread oh when you use a koala cabinet okay so let's go ahead and take a look at some layouts of how we uh can lay out the weightless quilter so with that being said so like what i'm working on right now oh let me see if i can why are you let me see if i can get rid of that comment so you can see a little bit clearer sorry folks okay thanks um okay so this is the layout that you just saw that's what my machine is doing that black kind of weird circle oval there is uh mimicking the chair and of course the machine is the white bar and the hoop and then the weightless quiller itself the little white boxes are the floor brackets which are right here so super easy to assemble here's the two holes for our poles one skinny one larger and our floor bars just slide right into these openings and you know so it works like this no tools are required the metal floor bar slips in here and then you just put this thumb screw right into that opening and uh it has a threaded hole on the floor bar so it will stay in place but in fact it i don't even use this the thumb screws anymore it's a nice pretty nice tight fit so i don't even use them anymore but they're there for you okay uh so let's see so that's the layout on the floor for what i just uh the machine you just saw and now this is a much larger table so this is like an eight foot folding table that kind of machine that kind of table so now you'll notice that the floor bar on the left slides underneath the table and uh you know because you you probably won't want it to be that far away from the hoop itself because you really want to keep the weightless quilter centered behind the hoop pretty much you know pretty much it's there's not a lot of rules you'll see once you get it on the waitlist quilter it just swings and does its own thing it's pretty cool okay now if you have a koala cabinet many of them well i can't swear on this but lots of sewing machine furniture is flushed to the floor and so then your floor bars would surround your koala cabinet now the cross section of the floor bar is a three-quarters in height so if you have that much clearance underneath your sewing furniture then you could slide the floor bar underneath your sewing furniture now for free motion for those of you who loved like the baby lock tiara or the new handy quilter moxie that just came out this is how you would sit at the machine now instead of facing your machine where it extends you know the needle right in front of you and the head of the machine to the right on a sit-down machine you sit at the needle and the machine extends beyond your face like directly in front of you so and you guide the fabric underneath the needle in that fashion so i would suggest that you use the three floor bars one in the back and two on each side and i would also suggest that you cut the bar the flex poles practically the same height as your table because if they're too tall now remember your quilt has to go around that machine head right if you can picture that with the way this illustration is so your quilt is kind of like splayed out in around the back of the machine so if your bars are too high you know it's just too much tension so cut them to be about the same height maybe two three inches taller than your table and that will allow you to do a very large quilt in a small footprint without you the need of extension tables that come with or you know can be an additional purchase with lots of those machines so uh anyway super fun huh okay let's um let's go and take another look at that quilt and and i want to show you how i would do the middle of the quilt so i'm just going to roll this over i'm going to come down here a little bit and you may find that when you want to do the other half of the of the quilt that it's best to rotate the quilt so i'm just kind of fussing with this you know and this is a job right i mean it's definitely a job you're this isn't something that you're going to do and oh i keep thinking that's in the center and it's not in the center i i i thought i was being really tricky here and loaded designs on top of each other and then forgot to hit the monochromatic button okay so now i'm in this position so i'm going to drop the quilt from the front bar and i'm going to reattach it to that pole in the back now it looks to you like oh there's a lot of rearranging well that's not really true now remember a quilt like this is going to take about 50 hoopings and uh because of that you're going to work a section at a time oh let's go ahead and pull that off you're going to work a section at a time so i might literally do like five or six hoopings in the same area of the quilt and i won't have to drop poles or release the fabric from a pole but it's you know it's a good idea to do the right half of the quilt in this fashion and then after that is complete you flip the quilt and rotate it rotate your embroidery design and then quilt the other half of the quilt because that will allow you to eliminate a huge roll between the hoop and the head of the machine now you know i have put i have hoop guard on there which i can show you maybe let's just fill the screen with that machine screen and you saw earlier in the program where i attached that to the monster hoop so i'll just show you here yeah christina cunningham she's so it just snaps right on like that you can't see let's see this is probably the best way to do that so we snap it on but you always want to make no sorry you always want to make sure that it is my goodness that it is to the right of the needle you don't want this hoop guard over by the needle right we you want it to the right side of the hoop so that it doesn't interfere with the levers or any of that it's been engineered to clear that needle bar and let's see christina cunningham you said yeah the biggest quilt you finished was 75 by 80 and it was a job it is a job for sure without a long arm well even with a long arm it's a big job but you know you you can do it on your way i mean with the weightless quilter i love doing this i love doing this yeah it's so fun you know it's just a great sense of accomplishment because i could go to my local quilt shop which i love which is quilt country in louisville texas it's one of the prettiest quilt shops in texas for sure and they have a great long arm serve there that i could drop boots off but you know i i like to finish them i like to put that final touch on you know as i make the quilt and i think of the person that's going to receive that quilt you know part of that love that i pour into it is in the finishing so you know that's important to me and i'm sure it is for you um let's see yeah do i recommend the weightless quilter over the shorty i would have to say yes i do uh yes i do at this time and then nancy taylor does the who card fit the hv machines the hoop guard fits our hoops it is designed to be used with snap hoop monster for all of our snap poop monsters all brands that we make it is not designed to work with anybody else's hoops so and what is the purpose of the hoop guard okay let's go over and take a closer look and i'll see if i can pull this down a little bit so you can see maybe sam maybe do the wide angle sam so they can see but right here i have this bulk and without this hoop guard this could happen so easy and that happens when you absolutely fall in love with the quilt while you already are in love with the quilt by the time you get to this stage this is just heartbreaking when the quilt roll falls into the sewing field and you have turned around for a moment and you stitch all that together well hoop guard allows you to snap that in place and then it creates that barrier and it's not going to fall through and so i have it forward right now so you can see but normally it's in the center of the hoop right around that center of the hoop so that it holds that quilt roll back on you know the whole length of the hoop and that is brilliant i mean that when i invented that i was like yeah that's the easiest way to handle that problem because that's a big problem now i will tell you if you're going to buy hoop guard it is on back order wendy hansen it is on back order but it's going supposedly coming in next week and you know we're so grateful that for your patience with these products this covet period has just been quite um it's a difficult time for everyone as you know and uh you know ups business is up 65 all shipping or everything is backlogged like you can't believe it's not so much you know that it's not in our warehouse we just can't get it here you know so anyway coming soon coming soon yeah oh let's see and you debbie you have a big hubby he's very tall so you finished at 140 by 140. wow wow i hope he appreciates what you did because that is one large quilt absolutely and kathy winks you agree you are a start to finish kind of gal yeah i agree i like to do that you know you kind of feel like you're cheating if you you know give it hand it off to someone else right uh oh betty you like the hoop guards let's see i they've been a lifesaver several times right and you know frankly we don't really know how often they are a lifesaver because when you use it you don't have any problems so you don't know how many times it has really saved uh your problem so let's see if you cut the the legs for your domestic machine then you would not be able to use them on your embroidery machine well not necessarily um you know you don't really need the poles to be that tall we we did you know i kind of think that um 48 inches is probably as tall as you really need but some people that have positioned their embroidery machine on a stand-up unit and they they don't want to sit at their machine so that's why we have the taller poles but you could also purchase extra poles it's a part that we can sell here so that you could save them um i mean you could purchase them extra ones but i've never been unhappy when i cut a pole and when i cut them i mean the shortest i'm going to cut them are like 35 inches so yeah it's pretty good okay let's see and what are the templates called the templates are print and stick target template paper and it's paper that goes into your printer and you print out the embroidery design with the crosshair now if you are not a avid software user and you don't or you don't use software at all we do have a free software program called embroidery tool shed that allows you to resize and any embroidery design and also print a template of that embroidery design so that's a free program you can download and you can open any of your quilting designs in there and print a crosshair you know on that template which is awesome and carol will this work on a bernina machine oh absolutely those bernina machines are beautiful i just you know they stitch such gorgeous quilting design so yes the weightless quilter is a very uh good companion to a bernina machine along with our snap hoop monsters and we'll snap hoop monster fit all hv machines well you would have to check our compatibility chart we make four um husqvarna viking uh monster hoops 120 by 120 260 by 200 200 by 200 and 200 by 360 i believe so they are all uh you can find that in our compatibility chart and also uh let's see and christina cunningham you want to ask judy how many hoopings was that yeah really well if i'm like judy i don't count i don't after a while i don't care i do a little math you know to so i know time wise and so forth and i it also helps well that's a whole nother lesson but that uh side that helps me um size my embroidery design so i know it's going to fit the width of my quilt and then how many repeats i'll need to fill the height but that's a whole another class and we're not going to do that today let's see uh misha you say there's problems with our mvp file all right we'll look into that thanks for bringing that to our attention um let's see isabel breon you never quilted a large quilt well lose your fear because if you can do a small thing you can do a large thing the whole idea is maintaining the weight of that quilt and carol lombard can you use a weightless quilter around the tent needle you can use the weightless quilter around a 10 needle but you know again you're going to have to get that quilt all that bulk you know around that head of the machine there's not that much opening in a ten needle between the sewing field and the curve of the head so if you are already comfortable doing you know quilting on your tent needle then the weightless quilter would be a wonderful addition for you yeah okay let's see do you want do we have a thread conversion chart yes in the embroidery tool shed we convert to almost every manufacturer that i'm aware of thread brand so you just bring up your design and if it's a madeira color palette and you want to switch to exquisite you just can do that with the click of a button it'll give you all the colors in that appropriate brand okay so we've been chatting a long time any other questions before we move on to the november door what do you think should we do it are you ready let me see some make sure there's no uh okay you need more practice on your 10 needle yeah don't we all but you know i'm actually getting better at my 10 needle okay so as you know we had oh these aren't in order oh boy well this is may june july and august and uh october september and october and here is november isn't it cute isn't it so cute oh gosh i love it i love it it's a barn it has hay in the loft it has a quilt barn block a barn quill and it has a weather vane but in the foreground it's really empty it has just a little bit of grass that flanks each door i mean the door so imagine what you could put under there some animals um maybe a tractor maybe chickens they are animals but anyway super fun huh let's see kirsten swanson says i love a good barn yeah who doesn't right you know i didn't grow up near a barn but i grew up at the jersey shore so um we didn't have we don't have any farms on that little island farms inland for sure and it really wasn't until i got to be friendly with nancy zieman that i learned anything about farming and it was you know just wonderful to learn about that and then i married a wonderful man from wisconsin who's also taught me an awful lot about farming and you know i grew up my father was a a personal pilot and he loved to fly and he had a beautiful steerman that he restored himself so i have these wonderful childhood memories of flying in an open cockpit airplane and uh over you know farmland where you would see these patches right it's like a patchwork quilt and some are you know round and rectangles and square and all that and so it wasn't until i was married like you know my late 40s that i found out that those circles are because of irrigation i was so horrified that i didn't know that when i found that out so oh my always something to learn right and all you folks that just can't wait to see what oml embroidery is going to come up with for the mini designs i'm sure they are going to have uh beautiful beautiful minis to add and the garden state right carol lombard you know so many people think new jersey looks like the opening scene of the sopranos well that's a patch of new jersey but it is called the garden state it's one very pretty state so let's take a look at how we actually are going to make this door so the first thing you're going to do is stitch that you're going to hook cutaway stabilizer and stitch color one which is the tack down of the batting and also some notches that indicate where the sky and the barn fabric will wind up you know place being placed so trim that batting before the next step if you are making standalone doors and then cover the sky area above that notch that first notch with sky fabric and stitch that tack down and then trim it away just under at the lower edge of the sky because you know you want to allow space for the barn to come in notice we have that excess seam allowance outside of the outline and that's helpful later on when we are turning next you'll cover that open area with the barn fabric and i used a moda grunge that had that kind of weathered look just perfect for the side of a barn and then your next colors are going to stitch all these black details and they look a little funky right there until you uh get the frame on and then you'll trim that bottom you know and this was very poor trimming but on the bottom you do want to leave at least a quarter inch because we're going to add some grass so leave some excess fabric beyond that bottom edge of the barn and then place your grass fabric strip right sides together making sure that at least a quarter inch of it is extended below the edge of the barn stitching and then stitch that seam and then pull that down and stitch the next color which will tack it in place and then it's time to move on to the half so that black area that you see is actually complex fill it's stitched it is not applique and you'll stitch that and then you'll stitch the hay and the black details of the hay which just give it a little definition and you know if you're learning to digitize along uh or you know really exploring this and like i'm getting to be a much better digitizer as i create these doors i've learned so much like as you stitch this take a good look at the hay and how that stitches out you know i i learned if you make three different blocks and change the direction it looks more realistic so then we're going to add all of our framing so there's no applique outside of the barn itself you know it's just all the details are added with thread instead of fabric which i thought was really fun and then you will add your barn quilt at the top of the barn and then finally finish with the weather vane and also when it stitches the weather vein it's going to stitch that black line the roof shingles right along the top so that's the final color and it also does door handles next thing you're going to do is add those hanging tabs and you know i had heard a comment recently someone sent in to our help desk that she thought that the tabs were too big and you know maybe so huh what do you think the tabs too big when you make them do you make tiny skinny little tabs let me know in the comments so we can i i can learn from you and as we move forward into 2021 we make sure we're all doing um the same look that we enjoy okay and then we're going to add our backing fabric right on top of the quilt block right side down right backing fabric right side down stitch the next color which is going to leave an outline an opening in that outline and remember this is a two-ply run so it's going to go around twice to give you a nice firm hold and then when you take it out of the hoop you're going to trim along all the edges and trim the corners diagonally so you get a nice sharp corner and at this point i also fold back the seam allowance on the back and the front and i press that before i turn it and it makes it easier to to um edge stitch it later on let's see and yeah many of you are saying um that you make the tabs uh that my tabs are too big you make them a little longer alicia you make a 5.5 inch wide one tab i like that that's a good idea it's probably a little tricky to get it on the um on on the opening you know but that's okay because it just has that one little slit in the center where is it there we go you know what you know what i'm talking about so anyway but okay that's good and you know a mccarthy last week she gave me her doors uh because we showed them on the show and uh her tabs are beautiful and in fact she finishes hers completely different so we'll have to have her back and find out how she does it she binds to the front she's really talented let's see let me see along with the back and not separately uh barbara kidding she says decide they need to be stitched along with the back and not separately maybe so i don't i you know i like living dangerously i'm sorry not my kid it's probably a good point that tape them down cover with the um backing fabric and then it wouldn't get caught yeah that's probably a good idea i i tend to sit at my machine at that point like with the pencil the and and just keep the tabs in place so and you and heartfelt creative you bind to the front also okay that's cool okay so there is our barn isn't he cute i love them i'm so proud of them i really had a lot of fun digitizing that and you could add snow you know you could add snow for sure i mean we don't have it's not winter quite here yet so anyway okay well next week we're going to talk a little bit more about software we have some other topics so if you have questions about the weightless quilter or monster hoop or hoop guard you know please put them in the comments now and um i'll be happy to answer them but wasn't that fun i hope you get your quilts done in time for christmas right any of you are making quilts for christmas because you know that's such a special gift yeah and rita you like the quilt block on the barn i know barn quilts are just so cool it's just so enjoyable to drive through the countryside and see the barn with a quilt barn on you know barn quilt on it and hoop guard for all hoops well we do have quilt uh hoof guards for standard hoops they don't really apply to quilting they're more for onesies and t-shirts and that type of thing and then they go in standard hoops so anyway okay well thanks folks for joining me it was really fun to have you here today and i look forward to seeing you here next week at one o'clock and we'll pick up where we left off thanks for watching

Channel: dzgns

Views: 25,455

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Id: KTKhXnd7CgI

Length: 57min 46sec (3466 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020