Hi! Here they are…almost finished! I just have to put on the piping/binding. Am so excited because they have been sitting in an unfinished state for months. I’ll be teaching a class on this Wonky Little House design (as a mini-quilt or pillow) this spring over here and I am publishing the pattern soon. My fabulous and wonderful dad swooped in over Thanksgiving and bought me a Bernina. He believes in me. Always has. In fact, he knows way more about fabrics and sewing and construction than I ever will- so he gets it. He totally gets why I needed a really good machine. And he is the best dad in the whole world. Want to go into business with me, Pops? I need a partner. We could sell pillows and puppets?
So my new machine has sat in a box for several months. I’d eye it across the room…it taunted me. Beckoned me. But it was a foreign creature…with a foreign bobbin and an inexplicable threading system and everything was different and I wasn’t ready to switch languages; I was a bit scared of it. Maybe even a bit xenophobic! My whole life I have sewn on Singers…and this new machine is all electronic with weirdo buttons that do strange new things. Anyway, when you buy a machine at my lovely local fabric shop they give you classes to help you learn about the technical aspects of your new machine. So I took that class a month ago and that helped me over the hurdle.
Oh, the delight of my new machine. Swiss precision engineering. There are three- count them- 1-2-3– thread cutters on the machine: one by the bobbin-winder, one by the bobbin housing down below and one by the presser foot. Holy efficiency! And you should hear it…hmmmmmmmmmm…hmmming along..it hums in a German dialect. It hums without plastic involved…it hums in metal. It doesn’t shake or rattle. It purrs. When the thread is being thrown onto the bobbin winder it is like an olympic event…beautiful and perfect. The thread flies through the air as if eager to find its destiny (ah hem…too much?) And did I mention that when I take my foot off the presser foot, it stops- exactly where I asked it to stop. It stops. And in needle-down position, if I choose. For all of you non-sewers, that is a BFD in the sewing world. That means that I don’t have to manually force the needle to stop in the down position by turning the flywheel…this is major. This is the reason I needed a new machine in the first place because I was getting loops on the underside before. If you are the CEO of Bernina and you are reading this…let’s talk. You can sponsor my blog and I’ll sing your praises, deal? I will write poetry about your splendid mechanics….your myriad stitches…your lovely cord cables that wrap so perfectly under the foot peddle that I wouldn’t put the peddle on the floor without mopping first.
Love your project! I’ve been wanting to make a little house quilt for ages, maybe I’ll do it one of these days. Congrats on your new machine! I’ve been on the hunt for a new Bernina but dang they’re expensive, I’ve even been into the dealers to try them out twice. I’ll just keep buying my weekly lottery ticket 🙂