The stitch width, stitch length, and needle positions of the machine are changed by these
buttons right here.
When you pick a straight stitch for example, it comes up at a default setting of 2.4mm
in a center needle position.
That's the little dot that's hanging out underneath the 2 and the 3.
When we start to sew, what we can actually do is change the stitch length while we're
actually sewing, yes, while you're sewing.
Just touch the button.
You'll see that you can hold it in and it will run up to its longest stitch length,
which is 5mm long, and it leaves you a little mark where normal is for the default settings
when the sewing machine came to do, which by the way, we have a video to show you how
you can override the factory settings for every single stitch in this machine.
That line is more where you want it to be, so if you're always sewing it at 3mm longer,
you can set it for that to always come up to be that setting.
Check out that video.
That's very important here.
If we made the stitch length longer, we're sewing on heavier fabrics so you don't have
to put the fabric through the machine.
Let the machine pull it through for you.
If you push clear, clear will reduce the setting back to where it started and then of course,
down between 0 and 1, do you notices these little hash marks?
That's a satin stitch range or very short stitches.
We'll do that when we do a zig-zag here too.
Press clear.
We will find that if we go to a zig-zag, stitch number 2, will set us up for a nice width
and length for the stitch.
It's a medium setting.
This one here, this will make the stitch wider, all the way up to 5.5mm wide and all the way
down.
If we go all the way to 0, we will get a straight stitch.
Again, I'm changing this while we're sewing, so it's definitely an option for you.
Take a look at all the changes that we've made just while we've been sewing, long, short,
and wide, and narrow.
Then again, we can push our clear button to return it back to a normal setting.
If we go back to a straight stitch to move the needle position, we can go ahead and move
it all the way to the far left side and the needle will hang out here on the edge of the
foot.
I often do this when I'm doing top-stitching.
I want to be close to the edge of the fabric or close to a bag edge or a band that I want
to top-stitch down.
I'm moving my needle instead of moving my foot to get a little bit more accurate feeding
and keeping as much fabric underneath the foot at all times, so you have constant touching
of those feed bags to pull it through.
You have quite a few needle positions.
You have just touch them as you go.
You'll get a crooked stitch if you go from left all the way to the right side there,
it's really easy to go, and then back to a zig-zag.
If we were to take that and shorten it down to a satin stitch, we're going to bring this
stitch length down between 0 and 1.
It depends on our thread thickness of what is going to look the best.
Here, I'll just keep going until I see the stitching really close up.
There, that's looking good.
There's a foot 20, and open-toe foot in your machine's accessory box that would be ideal
for following around an applique.
Look at the difference here.
As you see that as I got closer and closer, I eliminated the little gaps in between there
and got a nice solid satin stitch.
Another way to get a satin stitch is you have stitch number 1354 programmed into the machine
as a built-in stitch, and that will also give you a nice starting point for a satin stitch
and then you can make it any width that you want.
Your straight stitch, your width and length is all here.
What's really nice, one thing I like to do and we'll do a video on more the altered options
for these stitches, called a temporary altered memory, is let's say I have a zig-zag that's
slightly wider than I want and I go back to a straight stitch and I'm sewing a seam and
then I come back to that zig-zag, while the machine is still on, it will retain the width,
the length, and the needle position for that stitch until you push clear or turn the machine
off.
If you tweak a setting or forest it while you're sewing, it's going to remember it even
as you go from stitch to stitch to stitch, and that's one thing Bernina does really well.
Something that they've had on their machines for years even back on the old Bernina 1230s,
1130s, those options were there, and I use those quite a bit because I'm always tweaking
things a little bit to make them based on my project and my sewing ability.
Enjoy, try these out, and try all the settings so you really know how to utilize the width,
the needle position, and the stitch length.