Play-time: Superior Rainbows and BSR

For those of you who are also my friend on Facebook, you can skip this post :-).  I just want to share my latest experiment with my friends in blog-land.

Last week, while my head was spinning on what to work on next, I decided to see if my new found friendship with the BSR on my 830, would wash away all my troubles using one of my favorite threads, Superior Rainbows, on the 830.  And since I was playing I decided to try my hand at actually working on something else I want to try one day, a whole cloth quilt.  So out came a piece of Kona White, my pencil, a compass, a protracter (no this isn't math class, but I can't draw a smooth curve let alone create multiple curves, all lined up around a star...  so I needed just a tad bit of help :-)).  I loosely drew what seemed like a pleasing outline to start with and quickly grabbed a piece of scrap wool batting and one of my many Rainbow cones. 

So...  I was set.  Ready to begin....  I attached the BSR assembly, loaded my thread and off I went.  The center shapes came out okay...  I missed my marks a bit, so things don't line up all the way, but the stitching was smooth.  No skipped stitches, no spit up on the back and NO thread breakage!  I was beginning to think that I got the hang of this thing.  I was even able to do the next round, quilting using my 'leaf on leaf' motif, that I created for my last piece.  Again...  no issues....  I was on a roll!!!

I came back the next night and decided that my shape was to be enclosed in a circle and I would use a close stipple to make my archs pop from the wool batting.  Well wrong I was!  Snags, skipped stitches, spit up...  yes it all came back.  Then I remembered, oh wait, I was supposed to lower my stitch length.  That is what I learned from the Bernina BSR Webinar about a month or so ago...  so I lowered my stitch length to 1.0 and away I went.  Smooth as a baby's bottom.  Half-way through, I decided to call it a night.

I came back the next day, used the same settings as the night before and WHAM, same 'ole, same 'ole.  Well no skipped stitches or thread breakage, but I did have tons of spit up on the back.  I could even feel it happening...  I don't know what changed in the 24 hours I was away from the machine.  My tension and stitch length was the same... I was smart enough to save the settings as a favorite.  So what happened?

Well I don't know.  But later that night, I remembered that the latest software update for the 830 includes a fix for tension issues on a wide variety of threads.  Maybe, just maybe, it will help with my Rainbows issues.  I have tons of this thread, love the color changes, love the sheen, love the look in my quilts, but HATE the way it behaves when mixed with the 830...  BSR or un-aided free motion quilting. 

Since I am in Florida right now on business, I will have to wait to see if the update actually fixed my problems.  But I thought I would at least share the results of my play time... 

So here it is:

Once I get home I will once again try to fix the issue with the Rainbow thread and then try this on one of my Radiance silk/cotton blends, with silk thread.  Yummm, isn't playtime, just wonderful!