First Day of HandiQuilter Kindergarten

I used my HandiQuilter frame and Janome 1600PBX together today for the first time!

This kicked my butt big time! I had fits getting it to work, had to dig around for better than half a day in my sewing studio to see if I could find the manual in case I was making a threading error....

I could not get it to just take a few stitches without becoming unthreaded.

The only thing I could find in the book to do differently was to thread the needle from right to left instead of left to right. I had reached a point where I was willing to try anything. I'm not convinced that it was the threading of the needle, as I also loaded and unloaded my bobbin, and might have corrected a tiny error there also.....who knows. Whatever it was, WORKED! I was able to make stitches.

I raced to my office and made a couple copies of a simple design I had seen on many websites. I obviously would do a better job of making a pantograph, or even better, purchase one, if I were working on a real quilt, but I was just in a hurry to try SOMETHING.

I taped several sheets together, slapped them in the bed of the HandiQuilter frame, turned the machine back on, and attempted to just follow the lines with the stylus.















Wow. I felt like I was back in grade school. Kindergarten even!! I could not stay on the lines for love nor money...as evidenced by my sample below. If you click twice on the picture, you will get an embarrassingly clear shot of my first attempt. Demoralizing.






























Never the less I yanked Karen out of her room where she had been relaxing after a long day at work. I planted her in front of the machine, told her which button to push and where the stylus to watch was located and turned her loose!

First words out of her mouth: "Mom, this is hard!! But its so much fun!!"

After a couple of passes, she turned the Handi-Handles back over to me and grabbed the camera and started to take a video. I was actually following the lines half decently, but just before I could get smug, she announced I had parted company with the top thread and was "practice sewing." Sigh.

Video: Machine Quilting 101