Quilting101: How to Choose a Sewing Machine

hey everyone and welcome back to my channel today I have a really fun video for you this is going on with my quilting 101 series and today we're going to talk about some of the features that you're going to want to look for for a clothing sewing machine for either yourself or I also have some beginning quilting sewing machine options as well so I'm going to show you my machine I have a Jew qiji --k j 210 excite machine I absolutely love it I've only had it for about a year and a half but I've done all of my piecing straight-line quilting free motion quilting everything that I have done that you've seen on my instagram has been done on that machine now I want to say that this video is not sponsored by Dookie it's just the machine that I went with based on the features that it had to offer and so I'm going to show you the features that I have found helpful using my machine but I just want to make it clear that it's not a sponsored video or anything like that and you can certainly find other similar probably just as good quality machines out there with the same features I just wanted to show you some of the things that I think are important to look for when you're looking for a machine specifically for quilting keep in mind if you're going to do something different like you want embroidery or anything like that then that's going to probably have some different requirements the machine that I have has been really great for just general home sewing and then it also has some really great quilting features as well so if you're interested in seeing some of those then let's get started four machines you're going to need some kind of sewing machine unless you plan on doing all of your piecing and everything by hand which I do not have the patience for so I'm a machine quilter and I started out sewing on my grandma's dressmaker and it was about 46 year old machine something like that and you know they don't really make them like they used to it was super heavy it had all metal parts but that also made it a really nice stable sturdy machine and honestly it was a great machine for quilting it did not have a couple features that I was looking for so I eventually did purchase another machine which I'll show you in just a second but I also want to show you the machine that I got for my daughters because I think it's also good for beginners so let's take a look at those all right so this is my machine I purchased a jukey excite this is the G 210 they also have a 110 that's a little bit less expensive I believe this machine was between five and six hundred dollars the 110 I want to say is closer to 400 dollars that sounds like a lot when you're maybe looking for a new machine so I'll give you a less expensive option but I have to say that I have not regretted purchasing this machine even once now some of the features that I looked for because I wanted to quilt and you're going to be looking for different features based on what you want to do but one of the things I really wanted was an automatic thread cutter which this machine has and that's why I went to the G 210 the 110 does not offer the automatic thread cutter alright so what the automatic thread cutter does is if I put in a piece of fabric and forgive me because I have my my my free motion foot going on here so it's going to be a little bit squirrely but if I want to go ahead and sew a little bit or whatever and then when I'm done I just press my scissors it cuts my thread and I can just pull it out and there's no waste of my bobbin thread or my top thread so that's a really nice feature it's obviously not a must-have but I have to say that I use it all the time most of them also come with a little thing on the side here that is a cutter so if you don't have the automatic thread cutter you just pull your fabric out and then snap it off on this little deal and it's kind of the same kind of situation but I just really like having the automatic thread cutter some of the other features that this machine has that I make it really good for quilting is this throat space right here this is a nice large space for when you are trying to do quilting because you can you know kind of I just kind of shove my whole quilt up in here and I'll show you that as we go but it makes it so that I have a little bit more room now the Machine comes like this it comes with this little detachable piece to it and it actually is also like a little storage compartment as well which is nice it also comes with the capability to drop the feed dog so if I push this lever over here my feed dogs go down and I can then free motion quilt and what that means is I am now controlling my fabric I can move it around the feed dogs aren't pulling the fabric through so that is another feature that you're going to want to look for if you plan on doing your own quilting you can also quote with your feed dogs up and there's a girl on YouTube namely a de who always uses her feed dogs up as well and she has some great tutorials on that and it actually can help give you a little bit more stability she feels like so I like to put mine down I feel like it gives me a little bit easier motion on my fabric so that's another feature you're going to want to look for one of the other features of this machine is all of these stitches and I really kind of liked that it has an alphabet which has been kind of fun because I've made some tags these are just niceties you really honestly don't need this if you're going to be doing mostly quilting the main stitch that you're going to want to probably look for is just a really good solid straight stitch I use that probably 99% of the time the only time I've ever really used any of these other stitches is the wavy stitch over here because you can kind of set it really really wide and then you can do like a nice straight line stitching but it looks like waves and so that's kind of a nice feature like I said I do like having the alphabet that's nice so one other reason that I like this machine is this little stitch right here number 38 is a hand stitch look and so if you put in they have this clear acrylic now this is like a polyester thread not acrylic sorry clear thread it's called invisible thread and if you put this in your top top thread and then put a colored thread in your bobbin thread and do stitching using that it actually pulls up the bobbin thread to the top and makes a stitch and then does several small stitches with this clear and so you can't see it so it looks like you've hand-stitched your quilt which is kind of a fun feature on this another feature that I ended up purchasing for this machine is at a later date is this so steady clear acrylic table and it just you buy him and tell him what kind of machine you have and they just fit it to your machine so that it fits right on there and what this does is it gives you a nice big surface to work on so unless you don't have like a sewing table where your machine is sunk down or whatever this is a great option these are a little bit expensive I believe this one ran about 80 some dollars so but what that is is when you start quilting your fabric and yet even I just keep this on all the time now even when I'm piecing unless I go and sew somewhere else but it gives you this nice big area to work with as you're moving your hand because if you're trying to quilt on the little piece that comes with it you really only have like this much over here and it makes it really difficult so this is a total add-on purchase certainly don't have to have that for sewing but maybe once you get into sewing and you really do like it you're going to want some kind of an extension table for your machine and some machines actually come with them so that's also another great feature to look for all right one last thing I want to talk about as far as machines go are the presser feet if you're going to be doing a lot of quilting I highly suggest that you get a quarter-inch foot this particular one is for my machine it's a low shank machine and the foot actually drops off here like this but what it is is it has this quarter of an inch right here and there's also a quarter of an inch mark right here so this width right here is a quarter of an inch and then that line right there lets me know when I'm a quarter of an inch away from the edge of my material so this is very important as far as getting a good quarter of an inch seam allowance when you start quilting if your machine does not have one of these I highly recommend that you find one on that Fitzhugh machine there's kind of a lots of different styles out there this is just the one that kind of fit my machine and so I went with it but I actually do really like it and I highly recommend this if you're trying to eyeball a quarter of an inch or remember to scoot your needle over to make it a quarter of an inch and just use a regular foot it can be really difficult and to get like a nice straight line so I really do highly recommend this for sure if you're going to be doing a lot of quilting a couple of the other nice to have is this this is a walking foot these are a little bit more expensive and you're really only going to need this if you're doing more thick materials like for example when I did my rag quilt tutorial if you guys saw that I was using a thick batting plus a you know like a minke on the back and a flannel on the front and it was a lot of material and so this really helps it has what it is is it has feed dogs on the top and these feed dogs move with the feed dogs on your machine and they pull the fabric through from the top and the bottom at the same time so this is kind of a nice to have I wouldn't run out and buy one of these but if you find yourself doing a lot of thicker fabrics then I probably would think about it alright and then the last one is the one that's on my machine right now and this is a free motion foot and what this does is it allows you to move your fabric through the machine on your own it doesn't put a whole lot of pressure on the fabric and as you can see I put my mind down but I can still move my fabric around freely all it does is kind of help stabilize it just a little bit so that when you are sewing it's not going everywhere but this really will allow you to do and free motion quilting like you really it's a necessity if you plan on doing that now to start out with you can just keep your regular foot on and do like straight-line quilting until you want to branch into free motion quilting I'm going to do a video on that because it's not very hard and it's a lot of fun and I think you guys will like it but in order to do that you will need one of the these um free motion your feet on your machine all right and then one quick last thing to look for on your machine is a good light now it's daytime that I'm filming this so it's kind of hard to tell but if I turn it off hopefully you can see um the difference between the light and not light but I do have a nice light on this machine again like I said it's kind of hard to tell in the daytime but it's especially handy even even during the day so that you can kind of see what you're doing so you want to just make sure that there's a nice bright work surface and probably the room that you're sewing and you're going to want to make sure you have plenty of light as well all right one other machine I want to show you is my daughter's mom all three of my daughters have this machine it's a brother XL 2600 eye now if I were to be quilting on this machine I would think it would be a little bit more difficult however I it is a great machine for beginners one of the things that I like like I mentioned before to look for art is a machine with metal parts just because they last a little bit longer they're sturdier and they tend to give you a better stitch quality now this one does not have metal parts it's quite light one of the downfalls of this is that if you're going to be quilting sort of a larger project and you're trying to move it through this little space your machine can kind of move around with the quilt and that's not really a desired result however if you do have younger kids or you're just now starting out this is actually a fairly decent machine to use she doesn't have too many problems with it it's easy to thread and she does get fairly decent stitch quality out of it so that is an option and this machine is quite inexpensive it's around I want to say $70 on Amazon or something another friend of mine has a brother JX 2517 it's got little flowers on it she got that at a local store and she has had actually really good results with that as well so I have a list of some of my top machines for beginning quilting and sewing on my website so I will link that below because it goes into a lot more detail I just wanted to show you that there are some other options out there however if you do plan to quilt honestly I would go with the more I would spend more money now than buy a really cheap machine and then have to just replace it because it's not working for you alright so hopefully you found those tips helpful for selecting good quilting sewing machine now as I promised last week I do have another fun giveaway this was actually sponsored by a friend of mine Pleasant home Etsy shop and she makes really super cute magnetic pin bowls and so she is actually sponsoring this giveaway right here which is a cute pin ball plus a ruler pal the ruler pals are really fun they're wooden blocks with slits in them and then you can set your rulers in and put them on your desk or sewing table or whatever so again head over to my blog post to enter to be selected as winner for that and all right guys I hope you enjoyed this video as always you're welcome to email me at Erica confessions for homeschool comm I'll put all my information below I hope you enjoyed this video and I will see you for the next one you

Channel: Erica Arndt

Views: 92,263

Rating: 4.8719068 out of 5

Keywords: Quilting, How To, Sewing, Machines, Beginning Sewing, Juki, Brother, Features

Id: EJXThg_kfHI

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 15 2016