Check out the blog post on 21 April where we mentioned the Big Canadian Quilt Bee. Let us show you how we put our Janome MC15000 Horizon to work to quilt one of these charity quilts destined for Ronald McDonald Houses across Canada.
Please note that we are able to do a similar quilting-in-the-hoop or ACUFIL QUILTING technique on the following other Janome embroidery machine models: Janome MC11000; MC12000 and MC500E. (pictured above). You may also remember a recent post from Guest Blogger and Artisan Sherri over at Thread Riding Hood where she showed us step-by-step how to achieve this process using our Janome Skyline S9 sewing and embroidery machine. SO……lots of options with our various Janome embroidery machines. Please visit your local Janome Dealer today to find out more about how a Janome embroidery machine opens up incredible new techniques for QUILTING!! Ask your dealer specifically to show you Acufil quilting which comes standard on the Janome MC15000 and is available as an optional accessory KIT (quilting hoop an software) for the Janome MC12000 (only while stocks last) and MC500E (also MC450E and MC400E).
You are also most welcome to do a search in the search box (right hand side of the screen) for many, many posts on this topic: Acufil quilting. Just type Acufil quilting in the search box, make a cup of coffee and read up!
Step 1 of the quilting (after the quilt top & backing had been sandwiched with batting) was to ditch stitch between all the blocks. We used the Janome acufeed flex foot SD (with ditch quilting guide) which feeds the fabric layers through just wonderfully – due to our box feed and 7 point feed dog system! There are 12 slab blocks in this quilt so I had 2 vertical rows and 3 horizontal rows of stitching. This anchors everything. We chose a serpentine stitch (Quilt menu on the Janome MC9400 stitch # 20 but this stitch is available on quite a number of our machines. We used a variegated cotton thread which worked well on this multi-colour scrap quilt.
Next was to choose the quilting design. We selected 2 designs which may be found in the Quilting category on the Janome MC15000. Of course, other quilting designs could just as easily have been used.
We positioned 2 designs on the edit screen of the machine and make a few edits like copying to diagonal corners, resizing , positioning in relation to the centre lines of the hoop. Then we used the great MONOCHROME function to remove all the colour stops and have the design stitch in 1 continuous hooping from start to finish. This is why thew design look pale in the picture above as it kind of greys the colours to all 1 colour. There were 6 different designs combined in this hooping so we did not want to have to “babysit” each section. Each stitch out was 6 minutes so 12 x6=72 minutes + a little time for the re-hoopings so this really did not take long at all. AND we were able to get on with other work while the JANOME MC15000 DID THE QUILTING FOR US!!!!!
There it is….busy working for us ……Note that we hang the quilt over a chair in front of the machine to prevent drag of fabric against the hoop.
We did not remove the hoop from the machine even once during the process of quilting the 12 blocks. All we did was move the hoop forward using the icon on the Ready to sew screen as pointed out in the pic above. We recommend using the extension table which comes standard with the MC15000 for ALL embroidery but especially for this Acufil quilting as it does support the hoop and allow for easy re-clamping of the magnets once each hooping is repositioned and clamped with the hard template and magnets.
Close up of the action!
And a pic showing the hard template and magnets in place – Obviously we removed the template before sending the hoop back to stitching position and pressing stop/start to quilt . Then we could get on with another task – Now this is what we call labour saving!!
Quilting completed …….sending love and hearts to sick kids their families at Ronald McDonald Houses in Canada
QUILTING IS DONE!! All we need to do is bind it and we will 100 definitely use the Janome Quilt Binder to do this. We estimate it will take less than 25 minutes to bind the entire quilt.
Have you got involved with making slab blocks and quilt tops for The BIG CANADIAN QUILT BEE? Are you planing to come to Quilt Canada in June and join in the fun and action as hundreds of people sew blocks, quilt sandwiches and bind quilts???? Janome is a proud sponsor of Quilt Canada and the Big Quilt Bee. We sure hope you are sewing up a storm?? ……such fun and such a worthy cause……..AND a great way to “pull together” and celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday!
Janome Life 