Puckers and jumps

Yesterday my friend and student Mrs. Noro brought over her new sewing machine. Noro-san is a seamstress and she has her own shop in my city where she makes clothing and remakes kimonos into western wear as well as fixes items that need to be hemmed or refitted or something.

The other day she was telling me about a new sewing machine that she bought and yesterday she brought it to my house to see if I could figure out how to use it since the directions were in English. Well! It is a Bernina and though I don't know very much about sewing machines, I have heard many of you bloggers speak of your Bernina sewing machines so this was a treat for me to sit down to. Unfortunately the directions are not in English after all but rather in French and Swedish. (I think). So we diddled and experimented instead.

"Ah, look at all these different machine foot accessories. Wow. It sure looks like you can do a lot if you know what you want to do. " We didn't.

I recognized the quilting foot so I ignored everything else and while Mrs. Noro figured out how to thread the machine and turn the light on I went upstairs and got out some batting, some backing and an old block that I had lying around. Pinned it all together and sat down at the machine.

Hey, I'm quilting on a Bernina! Well, not doing a very good job but the machine sounds good, the touch is easy and the stitching is fairly even. Mrs. Noro gave it a try for 30 seconds but determined it too difficult. She left the machine with me for the week and told me I could play as I like.

Actually after Mrs. Noro left I decided I didn't like the stippling that I had started afterall so I ripped that all out and tried another effect. Not great but since this blocked has been stuffed in a drawer for years it was a good practice piece. I'd made this block when I was just discovering paper piecing and I think this was a mystery block from Paper Panache. I decided to quilt raindrops all over the block but I may have overdone it a bit. Too many raindrops and you can hardly see the umbrella and flowers under all the top stitching. Ah well.

For all that, I think I've determined that this machine isn't really designed for machine quilting. It doesn't have a large enough space to maneuver quilts (you know, on the right side so that you might roll up a quilt some in there) and there are extra contraptions for doing embroidery with the computer screen on the machine so that is probably its specialty. No matter how nice and expensive the machine, I still had puckers on the back and jumps in the stitching (my own lack of control). I think I can do the same skill level on my own cheapy machine which in a way is a wonderful discovery. It is not the machine that makes the quilter! Or maybe it isn't so wonderful. No matter how great the machine I'm stuck with the same results... puckers and jumps...