LIZ’S FAV MC 15000 FEATURES: PART 4 – ACUFIL TOOL

Just updated with pics……..life is getting crazy busy & I forgot to embed the pics before it got published earlier today!

One of my most FAVOURITE things on the new JANOME MC15000 is the ACUFIL QUILTING. With the JANOME MC15000…….you guessed right: it is INCLUDED!  YES, the Acufil tool is part of the HORIZON LINK SUITE software which comes included with the JANOME MC15000. Install the Horizon Link Suite software onto your computer (laptop or desktop) and then sit back in your comfy computer chair for some wonderful fun.

This is the Acufil Quilting Kit for the JANOME MC 12000

Acufil Quilting is available for the Mc11000 & Mc12000 but this is optional: the Acufil Quilting kits are purchasable add-on’s. There are 2 separate Acufil kits for the Mc11000 with 2 different Acufil hoops: the AQ and the ASQ  hoops. These are smaller than the ASQ 22 Hoop for the Mc12000 & Mc15000. With the MC11000 the Acufil Quilting is worked on the screen of the machine.  With the Mc12000 and Mc15000 this is done on the computer in the Horizon Link software: I find this much simpler & easier to use and the approx 8 inch square (22cm square) Acufil hoop is a really good size for quilting-in-the-hoop.

THIS ENTIRE TOTEBAG WAS QUILTED USING THE ACUFIL QUILTING SYSTEM ON OUR JANOME EMBROIDERY MACHINES. THE ACUFIL HOOPS MAKE VERY LIGHT WORK OF ALL YOUR QUILTING PROJECTS!

Notice the ACUFIL QUILTING IN THE BORDER OF THIS QUILT – EMBROIDERED IN BLACK AND GOLD METALLIC THREAD ALTERNATING

I am 100% convinced that our JANOME ACUFIL QUILTING  is the way to go ……. allowing the embroidery unit and hoop to do the quilting work for you. No neck & shoulder strain as you “fight” with a  big quilt to get it quilted.  When you let the EMBROIDERY MACHINE do the quilting job for you, it is SO much easier and the quilting looks just perfect  …… the JANOME MC15000 does a really great job of Acufil stippling and many other quilting design options. In addition to the Acufil quilting tool with its 100 quilting designs to choose from, there are also over 70 quilting designs among the 480 embroidery designs on the built-in embroidery design menu. Choose from many options including exclusive digitized designs from Quilting expert Leah Day of the 365 day Quilting Project with her simply stunning free motion designs. Janome has digitized these for you to use in your ASQ22  hoop. Now I cannot think of much more quilting fun than that!!

BTW: Leah Day is so excited about the fact that we have included some of her designs on our JANOME MC15000 + she wanted to learn how to do machine embroidery…….so she bought a JANOME MC 15000!! See her blog post about this.

I know I have done previous blog posts on this topic so you are encouraged to do a search for ACUFIL QUILTING  in the search box on the home page to see this information.

This quilt (already featured on this blog during October 2013) was ACUFIL QUILTED  in the white background part/main body of the quilt:

The white part of the quilt was exclusively quilted using the ASQ 22 HOOP and the ACUFIL QUILTING SYSTEM ON THE JANOME MC15000

I chose 2 of the circular style quilting designs included with the Acufil designs (in the ACUFIL TOOL on HORIZON LINK SUITE). I did this  deliberately as there was a lot of circular stuff going on with the embroidery designs we had used from the wonderful collection of built-in designs on the Janome Mc15000.

1. I resized these 2 designs multiple times in JANOME DIGITIZER MBX software as I wanted to redigitize each design several times so that the stitch count was increased or decreased accordingly so that I ended up with 7 different size designs.
2. I then saved each design with a name of Q1 through Q7  so that I would be able to identify which design to use on all the various sections of the white background.

The 7 templates printed & holes punched in the cross hairs for marking onto the fabric – I first resized the acufil designs in JANOME DIGITIZER MBX  to have a range of sizes of the 2 chosen designs.

1. Next I printed a paper template of each design using the HORIZON LINK SUITE template printing option. Each template has a cross hair with arrow pointing to the top of the hoop: I punched 5 holes with my eyelet punch in each template on this cross hair & then trimmed away all excess paper around each template. This gave me clear sight when positioning the templates on the quilt and auditioning which design size was best suited to fill all my irregular spaces between & around the embroidery designs.
2. Each design size chosen was marked through the template holes & then crosshairs were drawn in with a small ruler. I used an iron-away gel pen for the marking and made sure each arrow AND the design # was written in so that when I got to the hooping I would know what design to use for each hooping and what orientation to use for the hooping.
3. This did not take as long as you might at first think. I was on a roll & it went pretty quickly. Once all of my white background was marked & “filled” with proposed designs, I set about hooping each one up individually in the ASQ22 hoop with its 6 big magnets.
4. I did not even have to stand up from the machine between hoopings! Just popped off the magnetic clamps, moved the quilt to the next cross hair marking & then lowered the hard template under the needle & onto the hoop until the middle of the template was lined up with my marked gel pen crosshair. Then reclamped the 6 magnets, removed the hard plastic template & embroidered the next quilting design……….. all from my comfortable seated position!
5. Each hooping took a matter of a couple of minutes to stitch as they are just little quilting designs – no dense stitch fill here. I am not lying to you when I tell you that the ENTIRE white background was quilted in less than one day at work between other tasks I was busy with. And this includes printing the templates & marking the fabric!
6. Last of all, I laid the quilt out on a big table & checked I had not missed any spots. No, everything that I had marked was quilted.  Then I simply used the iron to melt away all my little cross hair markings.
7. Voila – one quilt done except for free motion in the blue border & adding the binding. And those shoulders of mine were not complaining loudly either…..this IS the way to go to quilt bigger quilts as far as I am concerned.

The process of Acufil Quilting taking place……………THIS is the way to go!!

One last word about marking the fabric:  There were LOTS of markings made on this quilt: both for the embroidery and quilting. I chose to use a Frixion gel pen which ironed away well.  However, the marks returned after a recent aeroplane trip – the cold temperature in the baggage hold of the plane brought some of the marks back up! I am reliably told that once I wash the quilt these marks will go away permanently.  I really do like these gel pens (Frixion is the brand name) as you do not need to wet the quilt to remove the blue wash-away pen markings – which used to be my favourite type of marking pen.  However, it would be a good idea to test the pen on your fabrics first as the pink colour I used ironed away well on the white fabric but left a white line on the blue border fabric. Again, I am told these marks will wash out but I have not verified that as a fact yet.