My first job working for Bernina of Ameria in my 20’s was to sit at my sewing machine and be creative. Just try out new things. Experiment.
BTW – Best. Job. Ever!
And I got paid to do it! 😉
The idea was to try to come up with new and unique ways to use the sewing machine that was not in the manual. Make it do things it was not designed to do. I loved it! I poked buttons, engaged functions, turned the fabric backward, do just about anything unordinary was completely game.
During the filming of the Pfaff quilt expression 720 sewing machine, I accidentally discovered a new stitch. I was explaining the “tapering feature” and had randomly selected a scallop stitch. What I saw on the screen was AWESOME!
The Pfaff tapering feature allows the beginning and end of any built-in stitch to be tapering in 30, 60, 90, and 120-degree angles. Some decoratives stitches look amazing with this feature and others do not. It is only by trying out all the stitches would one finds the fun ones.
After discovering the stitch, I choose to stitch it out as a single pattern. After one repeat, I rotated the fabric 90 degrees. In the example, you can see two different looks depending on if the fabric is rotated clockwise or counterclockwise.
What fun combinations do you think you would discover if you gave yourself time to play?
We always seem to have a project to complete. A start with a finish line in sight. But, what if we took 15-20 minutes to explore the features, functions, and stitches within our machines? What do you think you would come up with? The possibilities are endless, but you will never know until you tried.
Here is Another Stitch Discovered During the Filming of the Pfaff Quilt Expression 720.
This one started with the filming of how to thread a twin needle. The stitch that got selected and the twin needle function turned the “greek key” stitching into a “courthouse steps quilt block”! Who knew!
