My sewing machine is amazing! Everyone who kept commenting and telling me that I would love it... they were SO right.
I didn't get to pull it out of the box until after 8pm. First impression: it's solid. Like no plastic kind of solid. My old Singer was a heavy duty model and it stitched 1100 stitches per minute but the machine was primarily plastic and I felt every bit of that when sewed at full speed.
The set up was easy. Someone reminded me to oil the machine before sewing and I am very grateful for that reminder! I am determined to take very good care of this machine.
{those are not my hairy arms!}
The threading of the machine. Ummm... it's a little different than what I'm used to. It's not a drop-in bobbin like my Singer so I'm going to have to get used to using a bobbin case again. Steve helped me set up the machine because he's cool like that. We thought we did threading correctly but then I started sewing rat nests. That's when Steve wisely exited the room for me to stew and figure it out on my own. I re-threaded it again and realized that I missed few crucial steps. Once it was threaded correctly, I was off! The tension was even perfect right out of the box.
I started piecing my quilt using the Cosmic Burst swatches I received. Joan mentioned when she started sewing on her Juki how surprised she was to realize how hard she was working to get a 1/4" seam and precise points. I totally get what she means now. The foot that comes on the machine pieces a perfect scant 1/4" seam and it's as straight as can be. And quiet... I didn't even have to turn the TV up once I started sewing. And even at full speed, there's no vibration or feeling like the machine might zip out from under you.
And now for the miraculous! The knee lift. It makes it feel like it's hands-free sewing. And then there's the automatic thread cutter. Ummm... wow. Talk about efficient and next to no thread waste. There's a button on the machine or you can just rock back on the foot pedal which again leaves your hands free. And last but not least, there's the auto-needle down or up position. That alone is going to change how I quilt!
I've always wondered how so many quilters seemed to be so efficient and quick. I just thought I was slow but now that I am totalling the amount of time it took me to fight my machine... manually lower and raise both the needle and the presser foot.. snip threads... fight seam allowances, etc... I can see why piecing and quilting felt slow. It's because it was!
I'll finish up my Cosmic Burst quilt top tonight and then I'm off to quilt my Whimsy quilt. I'm so impressed with just the piecing of this machine; I can't even imagine how amazed I'm going to be with how it quilts.
All in all, I'm just so thankful to get a machine like this! And even after a few hours of sewing it was still hard to believe that it's actually mine. :) Thanks for being so excited with me!