Elna eXcellence 720

I have recently been very spoiled with a brand new sewing machine.  Isn't it beautiful!

It has a wide throat area for quilting large quilts and a wide variety of embroidery stitches.  It has an ingenious attachment for sewing button holes.  The button is put into position in the special foot, select the buttonhole switch and the buttonhole is stitched according to the size of the button!  The magnetic pin thingy is my own and didn't come with the machine.  It comes from Day Style Designs in the USA.

 

It came with a flatbed table with a handy little drawer in which to keep the accessory box and spare bobbins.  Thank goodness for the knee lifter which I had got so used to on my Bernina.

There are canvass pockets on either side, inside and out, for storing manuals and other whatnots!
 

Here is a side view showing the pockets on the side.  I have placed the table up against my original long table which gives a bigger area when quilting large quilts.

Here is a view of my sewing room - rather untidy though!  My 45 year old Elna Automatic still sews beautifully and I use it for piecing when my new one is set up for free motion quilting.  The gate-legged table in the corner opens up to give me more surface area when quilting.

I am one spoiled girl and I hope to produce some stunning quilts in time for everyone to enjoy!

Chocolat et Creme

I have just this week finished a wall hanging with a lot of negative space where I've been able to do some free motion quilting.  I'm very pleased with how it has turned out and was excited to use some of Ann Peterson's techniques which she taught in her tutorial, "Beyond Basic Machine Quilting".  The pieced pattern was designed by Joanna Figueroa and appears in her book, "Fresh Vintage Sewing".  It hangs on a brass rod above our television.

Chocolat et Creme

  Here are a few close ups of the stitching.

Centre with beading

The center block I have used beads from my girls' wedding dresses.

A view of a corner

This is a view of one of the corners to show the feathering.  I have micro-stippled all around the feather.








This quilt was sewn on my new machine, an Elna 720.  Photos of it can be found under "Elna 720"!

FMQ - September

This month's quilting expert was Paula Reid.  She is the owner of "Batts in the Attic" quilting studio where she has designed many patterns.  Paula loves doing beautiful free motion quilting on large quilts using a domestic sewing machine and her "fluff and stuff" method makes so much sense!  You can watch her video here.

She provided us with a stencil of a fancy feather design to fit in an 8" block.  It was not a continuous line design so some backtracking was needed.  I first quilted the circle, then the inside feathers followed by the outer feathers.  I used Don Linn's technique which we learned in the April tutorial to transfer the design on to my fabric.  Here is my finished design.

Fancy Feather Design

I used a variegated thread to quilt the inner and outer feathers and a green Colorful embroidery thread to do the four corner groups of feathers which I thought could be leaves!  But this is my interpretation of the design!  I finished off with quilting pebbles in my favorite gold Colorful embroidery thread around the outside and red "trellis" work in the centre.  I used a titanium 80/12 needle.

Thank you Paula Reid and SewCalGal for a most informative tutorial.