Machines

I wrote a while back about the problems I was having with my Rowenta and how I thought the self clean feature had  fixed it all.  And it did fix it.  And then it broke the next day.  So I’ve been ironing with no stem or spray for months now.  Not good for sewing quilts.

The husband picked up a new Shark this weekend at Costco.  So far the $30 Shark is outpreforming the $100 Rowenta by leaps and bounds.

Now that the Hinterberg Voyager 17 mess is all over with it was time to look for (another) new machine to help with quilting.  I went back to what I had been looking at — the Pfaff Grand Quilter.  Did some reading and decided that’s what I wanted.

The local dealer didn’t have the Pfaff in stock but they did have the Viking Husqvarna version (the Mega Quilter).  Tried it out.  Sold.  It was a little dicey at the beginning when they were showing me the machine and the thread kept breaking.  I almost ran out of the store screaming.  Thankfully the bobbin case just wasn’t inserted all the way.  A little nudge and it was stitching flawlessly.

In my reading before going into the store I found out the Pfaff and Viking are made by Janome and Janome has a 9″ machine with their label as well but we decided that it was worth buying the Pfaff so we could have local dealer support if necessary.

The is a carefully cropped photo… the mess beside, below and beyond the machine must not be revealed.

It’s only done a little bit of work so far but it stitched beautifully.  Wub.

Sean has this crazy idea of sewing me something for Christmas. I honestly have no idea what he’s up to but he scared the carp out of me when he asked for sewing lessons.

The conversation went something like this.

Emily: You want to sew? Using *my* machine? Do you know how much that thing cost?

Sean: Yes, actually, I do know how much it cost. I paid for it.

Ok, so he did pay for it.

I told him he could indeed use the machine but if he breaks it, I’m upgrading to Pfaff’s new TOL creative vision (lowercase letters included).

You have to get the price from a dealer but most dealers, or at least the PITA dealer here in Raleigh, won’t give you the price over the phone. They are so paranoid about the competition undercutting them on pricing they won’t give out a price unless you go into the store (never mind the fact that they are the *only* dealer in Raleigh. Who are they competing against?). And then they have two pieces of paper with two different prices on them. I guess the more special you are, the better the price is? So if I wanted to know how much it costs, I’d have to drag both kids in with me to listen to the 4 hour sales schpele while corralling a three year old who wants to pull all the thread out of the display and a 7 month old who wants to spit up and drool all over the fabric (smart kid… drooling over fabric at such a young age). And they’d probably be so annoyed with the kids destroying their store that I would get the more expensive price.

I’ve read things here and there that say the price of this machine is somewhere between $8,000 and $10,000. If I ever do have the money to buy this machine, it will *not* be from the dealer here in Raleigh. I don’t like them and I would never give them my business especially on a machine that costs that much.

Right, this isn’t supposed to be a vent about a Pfaff dealer.

Anywho… so Sean wants to use my machine.

So he asked for a lesson on how to use the machine. It started with winding a bobbin and threading the machine. It’s amazing how I don’t even think about what I’m doing with that machine anymore. I can probably thread it in my sleep so explaining how to was quite a challenge. Once Sean saw all the nooks and crannies he had to wrap thread in and out of, he started laughing hysterically.

So we made it through a couple practice runs and I think he might be able to sew a somewhat straight line now. I hope he remembers what all the buttons do.

Perhaps I will be machine shopping after the weekend.

Hinty (aka the Hinterberg Voyager 17) is going bye-bye (aka returned).

But the Hinterberg Voyager 17 has only caused gobs and gobs of frustration. It’s supposed to be a really good machine but I just want to throw it out the window. For it’s sake, it’s a good thing it weighs 75 pounds otherwise it would have found a new home in the creek out back by now. Poor Galaga was supposed to be done and listed on Etsy by now.

Ok, not really.

It’s really just an aftermarket thread guide for the Hinterberg Voyager 17. You think for as much as they charge for the machine this wouldn’t be necessary. The recommended glue is hot glue. It doesn’t work very well since it has come off twice. Must find some stronger glue.

… and both kids slept for 5 minutes so I could get some quilting practice in with the new Hinterberg Voyager 17. Maeve brought home a lovely bug from school and it’s making the rounds here leaving little time for sewing the past couple days.

Eek! I love this thing. Now to find some more interesting colors of thread to run through it.

I might do a real quilt tomorrow instead of clearance sheets from Target.

Yay!

First, the reason why this machine was necessary:

That would be a 6″ throat on the Pfaff 2134 vs. 17″ throat on the Hinterberg Voyager 17. Beautious.

And then this:

Ohmygoodnes. So pretty. So lovely. So friggin’ huge! But I guess that is the point. Now to attach the leaders, clean up the rest of the room, oh, and figure out how to use it!

Gasp.

Shock.

Don’t get too worried. Now I’m thinking a Hinterberg Voyager 17. Or one of the other 8 million mid-arm machines I’ve learned about over the past 2 days.

So just an update for those who find this post in Google searches… I bought the Hinterberg.  And then returned it.  It was horrible.  I now have the Viking Mega Quilter and love it.

Will you please come visit me?

So any quilter knows how much fun it is to shove a huge quilt through their normal sewing machine. You have to make sure you don’t quilt any wrinkles or folds into it … your free motion stitches stay smooth and equal in length … your quilting stays an even density even though you can only see about 5 square inches at a time … shall I continue? Probably not since I am probably sounding a wee bit whiney.

Does this look familiar to anyone?

Luckily, my handy dandy Machingers make this part of the process a little more pleasant, but it’s still tough and hard on the back and shoulders.

So the solution to this is to send every quilt to someone with a long arm machine or buy something bigger myself. Of course being the sewing machine lover that I am, I want my own. Not a super fancy computer driven one, just something simple that has a bigger machine and rollers so I don’t have to baste.

I hear angels singing.

Isn’t she beautiful? Rollers… a table that expands to 120″… it even has storage underneath!! What sew-er couldn’t use more storage? She is the Pfaff Grand Quilter with a Next Generation Quilt Frame. Absolutely beautiful. Problem is she costs a lot more than I currently have.

Moneytree?

Will you please come visit me?