Juki Celebration - Fabric Giveaway!

It just so happens my new blogging buddy, Hydeeann over at Splish Splash Stash purchased and brought home a new Juki the same weekend as me! Hers is a brand new model, and I was drooling a bit when I looked at all the photos of her sparkling new machine (especially after spending so much time cleaning mine!)
To celebrate her purchase, Hydeeann has a very generous fabric giveaway underway. To join in the fun, I made up this kinda generous bundle of Henna Garden by Sandi Henderson for Farmer's Market. (Hey, I have to keep the giveaway in proportion to our purchases!)

 I do love these fabrics! I cut 5" strips so you will have options for use; strips, charms, a great binding perhaps?

Please leave a comment to enter! Giveaway is closed for entries!

Winner will be selected and contacted via email on Saturday, June 22!(entries close at noon PST)

A Warm Welcome..

Introducing my new JUKI!

Turns out, the gal I purchased the machine from is quite an accomplished art quilter! Rickie is a Blogger, and I really enjoyed seeing many of her masterpieces and works in progress. She does a lot of thread painting on canvas that she has first painted with oils. I found it quite inspiring and look forward to trying out some art quilting with my new-to-me machine!

 

My husband and I did not bring our dining set when we made the long move to Vegas, and we chose not to purchase one. Instead, our dining area is a kind of lounge area and gets more use this way. Point is, I really have no place to set this up.

 

For now, it is on a wobbly old card table...

I went to quite a few garage sales Saturday in search of something sturdier, but only brought home a $1 office chair. Since the chair I sit on at my Bernina is cornered in there, and has to be lifted to more, I thought this was worth a buck. It was in super bad nic, in fact they probably thought I was nuts when I offered the buck, so I spent several hours yesterday stripping it down and re-covering it with some purple denim. Funny, now that I see the photo, it is the brightest thing in the room!

 

Rickie spent some time with me showing me the ropes, and although it seems she has spent many hours at this machine, and it has some wear, she gave me a great price I could not pass up :-)

 

I have not had much time to play with it yet. I gave it a cleaning last night and made a few stitches before bed.

It is way faster than I am used to, and it has a couple functions I am not used to. (Twice I have cut the threads by stepping on the thread cutter button instead of the power on the foot pedal!). Today I will play with some different threads and tension a bit. When using the walking foot last night, I noticed the bottom seems to gather a bit, so I need to figure out what is causing that..

(Underside)

 

I checked the bobbin tension with the dangly trick and it seems OK. The feed dogs seem quite high to me; maybe there is an adjustment I can make. And the bobbin thread was lighter weight than the top thread. I only have sz90 needles for it so far, so I have not tried any Aurifil or 50wt yet.

 

 

On another happy note, our heat wave has broken, and some wind and cloudage has kicked in. Course this photo is three hours ago, and it now reads 102 outside, but yesterday at this time it was over 110 degrees. Hot and sticky, even for me. Visibility is low too, and I could only see a surreal kind of outline of The Strip this morning.

 

Should I buy the Juki TL-98E ? Any Advice?

I get to go test drive the Juki TL-98E in the morning, and I just hope someone following me has used, or knows something about this machine, specifically regarding free motion quilting. I did find some nice ratings online, but I am hoping for some first hand knowledge from a quilter:-)

I have been the proud and happy owner of a Bernina 1020 since 1991. Here is a little bitty about it, and why I justify an additional machine, (even though I have no idea where I will put it!)

I wanted a machine that would last a lifetime,  so I went for this all-mechanical machine. The cams are all metal, and it is a 25-30lbs workhorse. It runs over heavy fabrics with only the occasional pause (do I have to go over that?), and has all the stitches I have needed over the years.

No decorative stitches, but great utilitarian stitches. It has had heavy use, without many problems over the years and I love this machine. I have read that it is becoming a collectible machine, and I know why!

I was even lucky enough to find a Bernina table on Craigslist about 10yrs ago that seems to have been made for my machine. And I found a CutNSew on Ebay, (good thing it was a bargain since I haven't used it much).

 The biggest downside to this machine is when Free Motion Quilting. I have never outsourced quilting, nor have I ever taken a class. I did a lot of straight-line quilting in those early years. I have managed to work around the small bed space, but when I began branching out to FMQ, I quickly realized that not all advice I was receiving at the quilt shop, in books, etc, actually worked with this machine. It tends to skip stitches, and needles are generally thought to be the cause of this. But there are certain threads I just avoid, and I have to change needle types ALL the time. I regularly use Universal and Topstitch needles to Quilt, in sz 70, 80, and 90.   I have needles with notes on them all over the place since I change them so much. Actual Quilting needles have never worked with this machine. Using Bernina brand needles, or Fons and Porter did not help either. I like the stitching on the back to look just as sharp as the front. So, over the years I have just found what works for each project, and made it happen. However, I spend a lot of frustrated time trying to set it up to work well each time, and often use my second choice in thread. And when I find a happy combination of needle, thread, wadding and tension, I will still occasionally have skipped stitches when stitching a curve , (usually moving the quilt to the upper right).

If you have any Juki experience, I appreciate anything you can share before I make this purchase:-)