So, a few weeks ago I brought Jeannie, my BERNINA 790 home with me. BERNINA clearly tweaked a couple of things, the position of the bobbin, made the tension more responsive, and added some seriously cool features, like the stitch designer. The feature of the day “Adaptive Tension”.
As a quilter I’m accustomed to changing the tension on the machine for every single thread used in a quilt. Lowering and raising the tension as needed for the specific thread being used. Heavier and specialty thread the tension is lowered; lighter thread needing slightly more tension. There are, of course, other things that come into play: fabric, batting, humidity each presenting an option to tweak the tension to get it just right.
Over the course of the last week I’ve been multi tasking with a couple of projects the first, making a small quilt that will make an appearance on this or the GenQ blog in a couple of weeks. I’ve been sneak peeking it on instagram. The second testing batting and a thread stand.
More on those in subsequent blogs, it’s time to get back to the tension. With the first test I was having some skipped stitches. Truth be told I was a little upset, I really wanted this to work. A little while later I discovered two very important things one being the bobbin thread running out and the other being that I had a bit of a known thread mismatch. I had poly on top, cotton on the bottom, which has not worked well for me in the past. Adding to my troubles I had the stitch length set at 2.5 and the feed dogs up, so when I was moving in various directions the machine hence the skipped stitches. Yes you read it right…I wasn’t paying attention and caused my own problems. Cool eh?
And then last night and today (Friday and Saturday) I let the machine adjust the tension. I left the bobbin thread the same and changed the top thread using two different 40 wt. polyester threads (I’ll bet you know what brand) and a metallic thread. This time I dropped the stitch length to zero, which adjusts the preset on the machine and stitched to my hearts content, and as is my wont I changed thread on a whim, ending up with the metallic stitching you see in the photo above. To be able to quilt, to change thread to get the effect I want, without having to change the tension with each thread is incredible. I have one more thread I want to stitch with as something of a test however I can say without reservation the Adaptive Tension is my new favorite feature on the machine. Cool eh?
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll have a couple of give aways to go with the blog posts. I’m excited about both. Don’t forget the discount on Sara’s Craftsy Class. Getting to know your serger is a great thing, actually getting to know your machine well is a great thing.
Happy Quilting!
Teri
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