About 2 weeks ago I finally had my Handiquilter machine delivered. The girl that I bought it from brought it over and her husband set up the whole thing in our basement.
Luckily it fit the spot we were thinking for it perfectly. We had to rearrange the whole basement to clear that spot, but I am just glad it fit!!
The machine came with some thread, so I loaded up a practice piece to try some different stuff out. I used muslin for the back, Warm and Natural for the batting, and some sale fabric from my LQS for the top.
I had taken a class for the machine a few days earlier, so I already knew how to check tension, thread the machine and try some stitches. The first thing I tried was a simple meander, this will probably be what I use the most in the beginning.
Not too bad if I do say so myself. It’s hard to stay focused on making the pattern random, but I am sure it will get better with practice. The next one I tried was a pebble pattern.
This one took A LOT of thread, I went around each pebble two or three times, I think I could get the same effect just going around twice, I will have to work on that one more, but I do like it. Another one I tried was loops with hearts thrown in.
This was a little hard at first, especially to get the hearts going different directions, but I got the hang of it eventually.
Overall the practice quilt turned out pretty good. I did have one or two minor issues on the back.
But that was mostly due to how I was changing bobbin threads and starting back up, I need to work on that a bit more. I ordered some Quilter’s Dream batting and some more thread to try out some actual quilts. I can’t wait to show you my very first finished quilt!
Happy Quilting!
Rachel
