Pieces ready for sewing with the quarter-inch foot
Using the start/stop button to sew
Thread cutter
Unfortunately, there’s some waste with
this block design, but the off cut can be
used elsewhere — I’m hoping — or for
another project. The piece being used is
to the left and the off cut is the piece to
the right.
Start, stop & speed control
and the bottom of the icon is slow, slow,
slow. I want a bit faster than the slowest
position and click the check mark to enter
my selection.
In order to make a complete block, a
mirror image of the piece needs to be
cut. To do this, cut one piece with the
fabric right side up and one with the
fabric wrong side up. This goes for both
the Eclectic Elements feature fabric and
the background blue fabrics.
Sewing a test piece
Sewing the pieces together means
sewing on the bias because the edges
are cut on a diagonal through the square.
With the IDT system engaged on the
Pfaff Creative 4.5 machine, there should
be no issue with stretching or distortion
of the fabric. The IDT system ensures an
even, smooth feed of the fabric under
the foot and over the feed dogs.
Picking the foot
My choice of foot for this sewing job is
the quarter-inch foot with the guide. It
keeps all the pieces aligned perfectly
because they’re butted up against the
guide and cannot wander.
5-inch squares
If you don’t want to use the foot control
while sewing, it’s easy to use the start
and stop button. Simply press the button to start sewing and press it again to
stop sewing. The button is found on the
front of the machine beside the up and
down buttons for the presser foot.
I press the start button to sew and it
takes off like a rocket and the seam
is sewn in no time. I didn’t even have
time to hold onto the fabric before I
was pressing the button again to stop!
I guess I didn’t check to see what the
speed was set at. When I’m sewing
without the foot control, I prefer to go at
a slower speed because I feel I’ve more
control over what I’m doing.
The speed control is found on the home
screen of the LCD screen. In the picture
below, I’m pointing to the speed control
icon with the stylet.
You can tap on the icon to change the
speed or hold the stylet down and a
larger version of the icon will appear
with a slider button. Hold the round
circle with the stylet and slide it up and
down to position on the speed you
prefer. The top of the icon is fast, fast, fast
Squares sewn into pairs
The speed control icon is straight forward
and easy to use. I did have to look it up in
the manual to learn where to find it on the
screen because the icon wasn’t obvious to
me as “speed control”. Now I know where
it is, I’ll definitely be making use of it.
Sewing the block together
I’ve been sewing the pieces together to
create the 5-inch blocks for the hour glass
block. Chain sewing has definitely made
the process much faster. When finished, I
used the thread cutter on the side of the
machine to disengage the pieces from the
thread and machine.
The thread cutter is found at the side of
the machine. It’s a little round piece with
a groove along the top to slide the thread
into where it gets cut.
I’ve arranged the 5" squares into piles to
make it easy for sewing them into pairs.
I match a light and a darker piece together
in order to get some contrast within the
block.
Finally, the pairs are sewn together to
make a 9½" block.
The hour glass block
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spring 2015
9