Learning New Tricks with a New Machine

I'm not new to sewing. Having started around the age of ten, it's thirty-five years since I started. My war cry was to make clothes that fit me but didn't look home made. Sometimes I have accomplished that goal, while other times I've fallen far short.

In recent years I've started to acquire some new skills in machine embroidery. I have also discovered a love of Pfaff machines. You're not supposed to do this, but I bought a Pfaff Select 4.0 brand new from ebay several years ago. The machine hummed beautifully, which was a delight, but where they had me is the zipper foot.  All my life I've been somewhat zipper-challenged, but the Pfaff foot changed my life and made me a Pfaff customer from then on.

A year or two after the mechanical Select 4.0, I made friends with the most local shop to me (an hour's drive away) and my next purchase. The Smarter C1100 is a tough electronic machine that has a lot of fun stitch functions. We've run the smack out of that machine and it keeps begging for more. A year or so later I deemed it time to upgrade my overlock machine to a Coverlock 3.0. I love that thing.

The opportunity came in the last week to upgrade from my Janome embroidery machine to something with a bit more power and scope. The shop had a very gently used Creative Select for a price I couldn't refuse. They aren't making this machine any more. They came out with a new top-of-the-line machine about six months after this one (which lead to the previous owner deciding to upgrade), and then retooled this model to fit in with an adjustment to the product line.

This machine is way beyond me. Today.

The company website has a free pattern for a quilt made using the machine, which includes what are basically tutorials in using the file, design, and programming functions. So I'm going to make the quilt. The pattern is here: http://pfaff150anniversary.com/media/pdf/quilt/1/quilt_en.pdf  I've done embroidery and quilt-like functions, but never actually made a quilt before, so it's a new experience all around. We'll see how it goes.

The pattern calls for silk, but I bought some basic broadcloth for mine. Hancock Fabrics had 10 of the 13 colors I wanted, and a local quilt shop had the other three colors, plus a nifty batik I'm going to use as the backing. I'm going to do one section of the instructions each day as I go. Today's step was to obtain the fabric, pre-shrink it, and iron it. Here are all my pieces, ready for action:

If I do the directions exactly in order, I'll spend tomorrow cutting, but I don't think it's going to happen that way. I suspect I'll be cutting and embroidering as I go. Some of the pieces of fabric are a little suspicious to me, too, and I may decide to replace them. I think I've got some poly/cotton mixed into my otherwise all-cotton arrangement.

Meanwhile, we have a doll-dressing enterprise going on with my mother-in-law.

 I'm also making some dress slacks for the oldest daughter that will hopefully be acceptable to wear to work.