Chaos and Christmas

Did you all have a Merry Christmas or a restful holiday if you don’t celebrate?  We like to remember it is the Big Guy's birthday in our family.  Our celebrations were unusual in that we this year were forced to carve out spaces between piles of boxes, to cook and eat and enjoy time together, managing to cook some turkey and yummy roast vegies, and reheating a plum pudding. But we had fun anyway!   On Christmas day we celebrated with our children, but on Christmas Eve for breakfast we had John’s brother and his wife with us, camping on our lougeroom floor, on their way to spend Christmas with more family in Sydney.  We started a new tradition of going out for breakfast with which ever family member or friend is passing through.  Its easy when as there is an excellent patisserie nearby.

Christmas was extra special for me this year because I was deemed worthy of being particularly spoilt by husband and children this year.    Something that has brought a huge smile to my face...after a very stressful house move involving loss, damage and destruction of our household contents.  I can recommend the contents as being the perfect distraction from moving unpleasantries.  What could possibly be in a box so big it wouldn't fit under the tree?

A shiny brand new Bernina 820!!!  The stuff of dreams.   I have lusted for this machine ever since it was released a few years ago.

How best to describe the machine?  Sublime.  Unbelievable. Sleek. Beautifully engineered.  Fully Loaded.  Extraordinary. Unique.  Lusted for.  Total Bliss. Impressive.  Yes, its that good!

The husband and children added some wonderful accessories like the circular sewing attachment, a straight stitch plate, some feet that will be very useful.  Spoilt beyond measure I am!  I think I was so spoilt due to a really great Christmas sale price on the machine and 20% off accessories making the gift much more easily obtainable. 

 With flat out unpacking for most of each day except Christmas,  then annoyingly timed thunderstorms, I haven't had all that much time on it yet.  I have been piecing some patchwork, sewed some much needed cotton tape to tea towels so we can hang them in the kitchen off door knobs, and have nearly finished the binding on a table coaster I had pieced from French Provincial fabric remnants earlier last year,  but not finished at the time.  Nothing exciting but as I am learning I just grabbed some projects that needed finishing off with easy sewing so I can concentrate on learning the machine.

The machine sews a beautifully perfect stitch and is very quiet for such a big girl. For a fun comparison I unboxed my 215 which is the most compact Bernina I own and sat her side by side with the big girl!

It came with some great dual feed feet mean I can engage the dual feed function with quite a few feet in the range and have their unique technique fabric handling properties along with dual feed simultaneously.  Fantastic!

I have had fun watching the on screen tutorials for threading the top and bobbin and had a driving lesson when the machine was collected.  It is a wonder to see the machine thread itself after the needle thread guide, a robotic arm comes around and threads the needle- at the push of a button!  Magic.  Once you do it a couple of times,  it becomes easy, because it really is totally different to any other threading system on a sewing machine.  If you go and buy one of these, make sure you get your threading up and cleaning the machine lesson and you should have no problems.

 And when you open the bobbin door, the bobbin magically comes down and forwards from inside the machine, waiting for you to change the bobbin.  The bobbin is also huge!!  40-60% bigger than the previous bobbin depending on what thread you load onto it.  I can choose to partially fill the bobbin by different amounts if I don’t want to fully load it with thread.  

 I can by percentage select the speed of winding, wonderful for fine or delicate threads to slow it right down and prevent stretching of tricky fibres.  At full speed, the winding is very fast and firm.  The machine at full speed is also faster than my Aurora, which I believe runs at 900 stitches per minute.  I have many times wished for a little more speed and now I have it, with 1100 stitches per minute.

And the space in the harp that I will love making large quilts as I am want to do.

There are a lot of really wonderful features I am familiarising myself with- fantastic things include being able to adjust the lighting level and screen contrast for different times of the day in my studio space, which has lighting that varies wildly from early morning bright in one corner, to dull, to rather too dim as the day wears on.  And being able to adjust the space I want between the beads of buttonholes depending on what fabric I want to sew-from 0.6mm to 2mm, because besides being a quilter, you know I like to sew clothes for fun.

She is so clever, I almost expect her to climb down off the table and start vacuuming the floor and cooking dinner- but I think she would consider these mundane activities totally beneath her!

My husband has a few days off work before returning on the 3rd January so we are making the most of it, running errands for things we need for storage in the new house, unpacking as fast as we can and will hopefully have time to do some fun things with our children, before he goes back to his new job.  I have a bunch of quilting that is lining up to be done so of course my idea of fun is also time with my toys , oops I mean my work equipment, to let rip with some new quilting and free motion embroidery patterns that are brewing.  Which I can do once I get a corner of my studio to bare bones functional capability.  Now, where are those scissors and threads....

Happy Quilting and Happy New Year shortly!

Stephanie