Chain piecing blooper

I’m a fan of chain piecing. It is quick, thread saving and also saves me the hassle of trimming/tossing those long tails of threads.

This week, I resuscitated a 2.5 year-old WIP that has all the pieces prepped and all ready to go. So I sat down to start working on the 1st step that called for 120 small blocks. I was feeding the patches almost brainlessly for about 30 mins and I thought: “The machine sounds a little weird. Need to put some oil when I reload the bobbin”. And then I stood up to stretch my legs and admire the long chain behind to machine to find that… there’s NO chain! I was probably ‘air-sewing’ for the past 10 mins or so, pushing patches through the footer when I had already ran out of bobbin thread!

ARGH. I cleaned out the machine, fitted in a loaded bobbin and said Good Night. The next evening, I started over again and took time to glance BEHIND the footer once in a while. 😉

Chain piecing

Do you know the Bernina 820 has a great bobbin warning feature that tells you that you are running low on your bobbin thread. And that each jumbo bobbin has a capacity about 40% more than the normal ones.