Nancy’s new quilting machine - Pfaff Powerquilter 1600

hi this is nancy with onpoint tv coming to you live from my basement studio here in grand rapids um it's a little chilly outside and it is december and it's almost christmas and that's the reason i know it's almost christmas is because i got a new present so i want to tell you today a little bit about my new fat power quilter 1600 so before i start that we're gonna do an official start to the video my my great nephew clarence is the director today and he's gonna start the video so you gotta hold it up hold it up hold it up there we go it is officially starting now thank you director you can go and watch the football game with uncle bill now okay stuff so we um we can't be at this um for too long because the lions are playing am they're winning and so athena really wants to get back to watch the game as soon as possible so i have been waiting for some time to be able to get a new quilting machine the quilting that i usually do here on the channel has been done the majority of it on my grand quilter so that was a nice size sturdy sturdy machine and it had about a nine inch space from needle to the back as you can see we have extended that this has 16 inches of space now even when i had a gamble now back in the day a good i know maybe about 20 years ago i had actually purchased a gamble and i used to quote for other people and i really enjoyed it but then i started working a full-time job and i didn't have time and so i sold it and that's when i bought the grand quilter that i used to have my gamble had only 15 inches of space so it was not one of those big huge ones because now those long arms i think like they're 30 inches it's they're huge they're so huge so this one is the largest space that i personally have ever had 16 whole inches now we should have done an open the box video yesterday that would have been really cool but we didn't think about it because partly i was so excited to get it open um but that would have been really cool to have shown you do want to let you know that i cannot see the comments right now so if you have any comments if you have any questions which i'm always hoping for more questions some more chat around the um the chat screen while we're going just go ahead and type your question in an athena who's running camera she will let me know if there's something that i need to answer all right so i want to start by telling you that this is what it comes with now let me move this out of the way but this is it all right now it is not a huge table you don't need the extra width because you're here and the end of the machine is here which might seem rather different for you because you're used to sitting like this way on your sewing machine what this does is it gives you so much more space for your hands and your quilt is just going to pile up behind you so you don't need any of the extra depth like we needed with the other machine that i had but i really do think that i want to have more width specifically here on the right hand side so i was talking to tim who was the owner of the shop that i got this from so smith owen sewing center in grand rapids tim owen and the crew there and that's where i teach also um and he says that yep there is an extension table that i can get right here that i can flip up and flip down and i'll probably be getting that but in the meantime i have this table that i i don't know i got it meyer or target or someplace like that i raised it up as high as it can go it actually is going to work really nicely so that when i have a larger quilt i'll have that space i won't have anything additional here because i don't need anything additional here i've got the wall the wall is going to keep the machine or the quilt from going that way all right so i will be using this but i'm not going to use it today so that athena can actually come in closer when i'm actually doing the quilting so i'm going to move that out of the way so athena can come in now the machine comes with the table which it's hard to explain and i can't really show you right now but it actually can raise up so that i could use it it raises up to about here so i could use it while i'm standing if i want to so that's an option and it's got a lot of different um choices it actually could go a little bit lower and it could go higher so depending on how tall you are if athena decides she wants to start doing some quilting we we can adjust it for her that would be funny next video athena doing quilting um any you know what i need some people to make some suggestions does anybody want to see athena doing some quilting come on there's got to be somebody let me know all right so it comes with the machine and a stitch regulator which i'll tell you about here in a second but i want to turn you back over to here because it also comes with a separate bobbin winder the bobbin winder is not attached to the sewing machine it is a pretty hefty little unit um yeah and it reminds them very very quickly you need to set it up so that the little um pigtail guy here is holding the thread and it goes on in and the bobbins are large these are m size bobbins which is the same size that a long arm machine uses so a little story about that when i sold off my gamo my long arm i had oh i don't know a stacks of pre-wound m size bobbins i didn't need them anymore so i gave them away to somebody yeah i wish i hadn't done that so i'm going to have to purchase some more pre-wound bobbins will i use the bobbin winder of course i will if there's a special color or special thread that i want in the bobbin but typically even on my grand quilter i use pre-wound bobbins whenever possible because it just is just quicker i want to get that part of it out of the way so i can start working on the machine i'm not going to go through everything maybe over time like always when we're doing things i'll be able to talk to you about things but it does have four thread holders up here and it actually came with four spools of thread from superior which typically is my favorite brand of thread with all of their variety in education so you can put four spools of thread here it is going to thread like a long arm so it comes down here and you can put it through the two or three holes then go down back here and then oops gotta put my pedal to make a needle come up cause i find my pedal there it is all right so the needle is going to come down there is no presser foot because there is no walking feet there's no walking feet the needle is here the needle only goes up and down there's no zigzagging nothing like that i mentioned that there is no um walking feet but what there is under here that i'll explain in a little bit are these sensors there's one here and one here and those sensors are for the stitch regulator now i am generally speaking not a stitch regulator kind of girl but i will explain to you how that works on the machine so i'm going to get my needle in the down position and there are needles in the down position and athena if you can come over here real quick there are a couple of features that i certainly never had on my gamel um it can tell you when your bobbin is low right now i'm in the recording of a full bobbin so that i'll be able to know how long a bobbin um will last i can actually even do if i come here there's a calculator crack me up right here on my sewing machine i'm gonna have a calculator there is a timer so if you are doing you know commission quilts or something like this you can literally tell it how long have i been you know i know that if i'm going to work on this for 10 hours i want 10 bucks an hour because we don't usually get paid as much as we think we're worth um so it only records the time while it's quilting so that you can have some idea what um that is it also is going to record how many stitches you have gone through so some people actually charge by the stitch so a couple of different things there too and then there is the bobbin right now it's recording a bobbin kind of letting me know how long a bobbin will last when i go back to my home page i've got my manual and my regulator um sets and then my needle up and down and also i thought this was pretty cool i like this it has two speeds that you can have preset now i can jump up here and i can make the speed faster or slower i can also adjust it with my foot pedal if i want to and i will do that some to show you but then you can actually set them so like if i'm going around applique i want a slower speed for a 600 if i want a faster speed maybe for doing meandering i want a 1000 this is a start and stop button so i can work without the um the presser foot if i want to i'm sorry my foot pedal there we go um this tells me what my tension is so the screen has a lot on it and we're going to start with just some meandering so before i start meandering back up a second athena i do want to tell you the things that i always tell you about what i am doing so this is a quilt this is my great basics quilt um it's done in some different colors so i've got the nine patch going on and some bikes so if you're interested in the great basics quilt for making this quilt or a twin size quilt that is available on my website so it has the instructions and yardage for a crib quilt or a twin size quilt i'm making this one for my niece lizzie's brand new baby that i'll be meeting for the first time at christmas pretty excited about that i'm going to be using my sword quick that's what i put on my hands so that i can handle my quilt better some people like to wear gloves more power to you use whatever works for you the sword quick is like now my hands feel sort of like a post-it note sort quick is available at firesidequilts.com so www.firesidequilts.com my friend laura has those handy for you and before i start quilting i'm always going to do some drawing first because oh look up here a second when you put a stitch regulated stitch regulator on a machine yes it will help you regulate the length of your stitches and i'll show you how that works and it's pretty darn good if you ask me which sort of surprised me to tell you the truth but what it can't do is make you a better drawer you have to work on your drawing in order for your design to actually improve that's where the drawing comes from that's why when i'm teaching my classes we focus a lot on doing drawing i actually tell the students they have to buy a sketchbook so that they can start doodling drawing just doing whatever it is that you want because i guarantee you if you can draw it you can quilt it all right now that might seems like a little bit impossible but it's not so for this this is going to be my setting triangles and in my setting triangles i'm going to do some long [Music] kind of aliens so going back and forth back and forth back and forth like that so before if i were you before i would start quilting them i would draw them about the same size that the quilt is and practice your design because you don't want to have those kinds of things that happen practice your design the next design i'll do will be in the nine patch and four in the nine patch so let's draw a nine patch and this is one of the things that we do in my machine quilting class is we work on a nine patch because this is what i like to quilt in a nine patch quilt or any traditional quilt maybe that has triangles and squares and the idea is going from one line to the next and criss-crossing through the line then coming back up these curves should be oh about a quarter of an inch from the seam line here so before you do a nine patch practice doing the drawing of the nine patch and the last one in the large square section here i'm going to do a flower all right so before i quilt the flower do a little test what do i want my flower to look like he's going to be a big flower so i'm going to draw him big i'm not going to draw a little flower if what i'm going to be quilting is going to be a big flower then i'll do some of these kinds of things going inside the flower petals all right so that's what i'm going to recommend you do get your sketch pad out do some practicing so that you know what it is that you want to quilt and you feel comfortable with the movement so let me get this out of the way a couple of other things the machine has i was thinking about while i was talking is the lighting check that out that is an awful lot of lighting now we do also have a studio light on now that's giving us a little bit more up here on top of the machine and such but all of this is coming from the machine and the lighting is adjustable you can adjust that back and forth what it does not have as long as i'm telling you what it does have i probably think i should tell you what it does not have it does not have a needle threader you have to thread it by machine because it's a long arm machine on a table it also and this is something that i fought for a long time trying to figure out are they ever going to figure out how to do this on this kind of a machine it does not have a thread cutter now that is something that i i swear if next year they come up with a way to make this machine have a thread cutter i will be trading this one in and we'll be doing another video and i will be buying the one with the thread cutter but all of the companies i've talked to so far and and and people that have different versions of this and everybody tells me that for this size and strength and regulator and all that they can't have a thread cutter so we'll see well maybe one does that cost a way more a lot than i'm able to pay the other thing it does not have is it does not have a walking foot so it's not like you can attach a walking foot to do the straight lines if you want to do a straight line you can just push it through and i could do a little bit of that for you but this here this on the ledge right here i just did that like i personally have done for a long time i don't do these with my walking foot so if you're not comfortable with that you could always take it to your regular machine to do the straight lines but no no walking foot no thread cutter no needle threader so other than that i think it has everything a person could ever want all right so let's do a little bit of design work here i'm going to do this and i'm going to do this first with the manual that means no stitch regulator i am just going to adjust the speed with my pedal now i do have it set for 1075 i don't know what that means but it means it's going to go pretty fast if i put my pedal down so here just going back and forth and i am keeping my speed of my hands consistent now keep in mind i have been free motion quilting for well over 25 years i am pretty good at this it's going to take you a little bit until you feel very comfortable doing a design like this and maybe getting them to smooth i'm not the be all end-all by any means but i have been doing it for some time right so that's what it sounds like when i do the with the manual now i'm going to change it to the stitch regulator now come on over here a second athena because i found this was pretty cool with the stitch regulator this is um your stitch length option so i can make it so that i have really big stitches eight stitches per inch which would be really quite large or i'm going to adjust this up to about 13. i found that to be pretty good for what i'm looking at down here is a little bit of the speed control i have it set at this 330 350 again i'm not sure what that means but when i was playing with it i thought that i really liked what was going on so now i have the stitch regulator on i want you to notice the sound difference keep in mind i am going to try to move my hands just the way i did last time but obviously i don't because the speed adjusts to do this i'm gonna put my pedal all the way down and then just move my hands when i go faster the machine speeds up when i go slower the machine goes slower but now look really carefully here and i hope i don't know if you can actually see you can actually see it even though i adjusted the speed that much up and down the stitches are all about the same they're about this 13 to an inch the stitch regular regulator does really work now i found when i was doing those kind of loopy those little um um i call them aliens when i was doing those i think i do a good enough job without that so i probably won't use the stitch regulator but when it came to doing the nine patch i found that i think i did a much better job with the stitch regulator on so i'm going to start quilting this nine patch doing that design that i drew and i think the reason that i did the nicely with the stitch regulator is because i didn't have to think about my stitch length so i was really concentrating on my movement getting my curves nice and smooth and the about distance away from the seam that i wanted i mean check that out you guys i've been doing this particular design for a long time and i kid you not i don't think i've ever made it look this good especially seeing how i have this brighter red color on top of this yellow and it's not just a matter of going slower or faster i just it's one less thing for me to have to think about so i am really thinking about how big is that curve that i'm placing in the square and where is my intersection going to be i do still try to do my starting and stopping at intersections because it's always going to give you a nicer starting stopping movement if you stop at an intersection a couple more coming on up here and you can hear the machine adjusting as it goes i have a question okay um this is going to give you so when i'm teaching my three emotional quilting class typically the thing that most beginners struggle with is the consistent speed that they are moving their hands i tell them to set their machine up at one speed and put the pedal all the way down so not super fast but just one speed and then they just have to move their hands at a consistent speed well that's easier said than done one time so we are going next live video athena doing quilting all right so i want to show you something so now without a thread cutter that means i need to bring my thread up so i'm going to lift my needle bring the quilt back so now i have a distance of thread i'm going to hold that thread so now i have that thread here back into the stop spot where i stopped then about my foot whoops so i do one stitch then i can bring it forward and right there is my bobbin thread i'm going to bring it away so that my bobbin thread will be at least three inches long and cut it off so that's how we can cut our bobbin thread and i want to just show you something here i'm just going to come over to the side so you can kind of see how fast it can go i'm just going to go wild here and go really really fast and really um try and adjust my stitches or my speed so if you are just going crazy the machine is going to adjust to a point it can only handle so much but if you're going to be adjusting here back and forth it's going to adjust the speed so i do want to show you the flower now so again i'm going to lift my needle up bring it to the back hold that thread now i am actually near the edge so i could have just reached under and cut it but as long as we're practicing and i've done this for ages bringing the threads up that's how i always had done it when i had my long arm all right so let's go for a flower i have a place here where i have done there okay i've got to come to the other side look at all this space i'll do it this way so that the majority of the quilt is in the space and i'll just be working right here there all right so can you get in there athena there all right so i'm gonna do the flower and i'm gonna do the flower with the stitch regulator so this is the flower that i did without the stitch regulator i'm going to do one now with it so as long as i have my thread my top thread i'm going to find my bobbin thread by making the needle go down and the needle go up now bring it forward tada there's my bobbin thread so i know where it's at it's not hiding underneath making a rat's nest now i'm going to start always with some little stitches to start with to make a lock going around now i'm going to make a pedal when i get to here before i get back to here i do want to cut off that tail that i have right there nice clean cut [Music] one thing that surprises me and you know i must when i'm doing this with the manual i must have a couple of extra stitches at the top of each of these points because i'm not changing the motion that i'm making but when i hear the machine actually adjusting its speed so much i'm like wow i guess maybe my stitch lengths are maybe a little bit different than i imagine them i always imagine that they're always really quite consistent maybe not so much there you go go around that flower a couple of times done all right and so i'm going to take again those tiny stitches and then bring my needle up bring my quilt to the back grab that thread bring it back one stitch down one stitch up there's my bobbin thread that got caught around the there and cut that off so there's the design again the quilt is in my great basics book hey you know what else this does not have and just reminding me because i'm looking right at it this does not have regular needles these are not regular needles you're going to buy because this is a longer machine you're going to have to purchase long arm needles which means i need to get online i'm going to go to superior and order some of the m size bobbins so that of the um probably mostly of the bottom line because i do do most of my quilting with a polyester thread different variations but sometimes i want to use a cotton thread so i'll probably get some of the masterpiece in the pre-wound bobbins also and then i'll order some different needles so that i've got some different thicknesses some big ones and some fun ones so there you go no questions just merry christmas merry christmas thank you very much really appreciate you watching um i appreciate all you that when i posted on facebook you're like oh i'm so glad you got it congratulations thank you very much clarence and i were talking earlier i think i want to name my machine so if you think of a name um let me know i thought bertha sounded pretty good i think that clarence said something about sarah or beth i don't know where he came up with those but you know so if you think of a name something i should call it just so that i'm not calling it the power quilter 1600 all the time go ahead and put that in the comments too hope you like this video if you have one of these machines and there are other variations on the theme out there too um but yeah i really like this i'd love to tell you more about it and i think that's it um question nope all right so oh athena didn't want me to mention that's what she was telling me we don't have anything scheduled for weekly releases right now we just finished the learning to quilt two series um hope you've all watched that the playlist is available now and the book is available we've got 336 videos and now we have 337 videos on our youtube channel so if you'd like to know more about quilting that's where you can go maybe subscribe i have a membership so if you're interested in membership click that join button it'll just give you an information it doesn't join you right away but it'll give you information so you'll know the different levels and if you might be interested in that so we will because we don't have anything scheduled right now i have a something in my head that i want to do for a series but in the meantime we will probably be just doing a bunch of different lives i've been doing a series of lives for a block of the month that i've been working on i've got a lot of painting i want to do i want to get back to painting on some fabric um this next thursday we'll do a live that i've already got planned for the birds in the air with paper piecing and then i'll probably have athena come over and start doing some more painting and then my son's going to help me with my setup so i can be doing some more live videos if there is something that you would like to see something that you're going nancy i don't know how to do that could you possibly help us figure out how to do that you know i'd love to just send me an email my email as always for all questions is quiltingwithnancy gmail.com give me a thumbs up i really appreciate you watching and merry christmas and a happy new year see y'all later

Channel: OnPoint-TV and Quilting with Nancy

Views: 2,616

Keywords: Quilting, sewing, machine quilting, free motion machine quilting, beginner quiltmaking, new quilter

Id: MJqvg5XeqAA

Length: 28min 20sec (1700 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 19 2021