The 830 and Me

No, I haven't fallen off the earth or used up all of my fabric.

The year before my last post, September 2009, was such a productive year for me as a quilter. I had completed more quilts/fiber pieces than ever before. I felt I was learning and growing and that I had reached a new relationship with my ability to create. All good things.

I was so excited about my new direction that I thought about purchasing a new sewing machine. I attributed my momentum in part to the Bernina 200 I had bought a few years before. I loved my machine. I would sit down, turn it on and it would sew beautiful stitches. I learned to free-motion quilt. She was powerful and responsive. Together we were unstoppable. We ate up yards and yards of cotton. We reached out and conquered new worlds: gessoed canvas, painted broadcloth, laminated plastic bags, melted synthetics, thick yarns and wools. We machine embroidered really, REALLY fast.

And when she was snarled up or messy I popped out her bobbin case, picked thread out of her hook race and soothed her with canned air. Then I put her up to rest for a bit and we'd be back in tune and ready to go the very next time I was available. It was a beautiful relationship.

But the machine had been a floor model, probably one of the early 200s. Her CD rom reader went and I had to have her upgraded to read USB sticks. Even so she read them so slowly and poorly that the process would almost always time out. I'd have to haul the laptop upstairs and connect it to transfer embroidery designs and that process was unpredictable also. Her embroidery field, compared to other, newer, machines on the market was small. Adding BSR capabilities would be expensive and clunky and I knew her internal memory was limited.

My attention began to wander to the new, huge Bernina: the 830. It had two USB ports and read sticks like it was born to it. The BSR was integrated into the machine and the throat was twelve inches deep. But maybe best of all it had a 15 x 10 embroidery field. I could really use quilting embroidery patterns and since I was becoming proficient at digitizing I could create my own. That had the potential to help me finish more work.

I watched sales and waited for the best price. I agonized over trading in my 200 but I knew it would ease the financial commitment and where would I put another machine in my small city sewing studio? A trade would be for the best. Finally the day came. The machine had been on the market for over a year so all those new-model bugs were worked out. I was convinced I had the best deal I was going to get. I packed up my friend, exchanged her for the gigantic new machine and drove home.

We started out slowly Gigunda and I. I tried to learn to use the auto-threading feature and worked on breaking myself of the habit of reaching around behind the sewing head to raise the presser foot. I watched all the YouTube videos about threading the bobbin, started to stitch out all of the specialty stitches on scraps and practiced free-motion quilting on left-over batting and muslin. As long as I was just doing getting-to-know-you tasks - what I think of now as courtship activities - Gigunda behaved perfectly.

However I had the painted Phil Beaver quilt that I wanted to finish. Nearly all of the raw-edge applique was done and I had been dreaming of quilting with my new BSR. That would make quick and neat work of the background stippling I needed to do. But the moment I settled down to do actual work Gigunda would not complete a stitch. She spit bobbin thread, she refused to auto-thread the needle, she sent me endless nasty errors about the thread path. If I took the quilt off the sewing bed and went back to "practicing" on batting remnants and scraps she behaved like a pro. The minute her sensors saw the hand-dyed and painted fabric of my project she dug in her heals and refused to cooperate. This went on for weeks. I was so close to being done I couldn't let go of my work and accept delay and Gigunda wasn't budging.

In addition to our free-motion woes I couldn't thread the bobbin for machine embroidery. Beginning with the first Pfaff I bought with my first real salary I had always owned machines with bobbin cases. This machine has an integrated case that rotates out automatically for threading. You must bring your eyes to it. That means crouching down in the shadow of the sewing bed and trying to slide the thread into the correct slots and springs UNDER the bobbin case. I still have to ask "what were they thinking?" A poorly threaded bobbin combined with the superfast sewing speeds that Gigunda offers resulted in snapped needles. Needles breaking at high speeds frighten me. I worry they will fly into my face or drop into the mechanics of the machine - that would mean expensive repairs.

So I went to my Guide classes. Gigunda acted out in class also and I spent most of my time sitting next to the technician as he cleaned sensors and worked on getting the machine to perform whatever task was at hand. My local quilt shop offered to let me retake the classes whenever they were offered and for the first time maybe ever I felt like a remedial sewer. It was depressing and demotivating - - needless to say no quilts were finished or begun.

As time passed and I practiced more, at first in annoyed bursts and then regularly, Gigunda and I reached a détente. Now I can use the automatic threader 9 times out of 10 and load the bobbin by touch, even for embroidery, most of the time. She hasn’t spit thread at me in several months and I’ve started being more adventurous, edging mixed media paper projects with stitching. I’ve nearly finished piecing a Moon and Stars pattern and I’ve finished all of the applique for the painted project and started sketching a free motion pattern for the background and testing it on practice fabric although I’m still a bit nervous about starting to stitch the hand-dyed fabric.

I still think the machine is a bit of an experiment but also a technological marvel and maybe a paradigm shift for me - and honestly, I'm a person who wants to use tools that push limits. I do love the huge embroidery field and I hope this will be the year I start to use machine designs to boost my quilting progress. I'm now sure that getting the new machine was not a mistake. I’ve learned new things and this will be the tool to help me use those lessons and let me learn more. Its going to be alright...