Have you ever tried to get up and over the jeans hem that's really, really thick?
I'm going to show you how you use the height compensation tool that came with your Bernina
and see how easy it is to go over it.
I'm also going to take a little detour and show you how you can a little topstitching
and cheat with the blind hem foot.
So I'm going to start off by doing just a 5/8-inch seam.
I'm going to use stitch number five.
That's that security stitch.
I'm going to do a couple stitches forward and back for me automatically so I didn't
have to hold the reverse button in.
Sew all the way down to the end of your project.
That's the reverse button one time.
We have that in another video if you haven't seen that yet.
All right, let it finish.
Pull that open.
Now normally what I'd do is I take this and press it open, but we're going to try something
real quick.
I'm going to have this seam, I've got it kind of pressed over to the left side.
Switching to the blind hem foot.
Now an edge stitch foot, foot number ten for the Bernina is a foot I use all the time,
but in a pinch if I don't have that foot and I'm not doing center needle position because
that blade goes all the way down through the foot so it's not ideal for everything, but
I can cheat just a little bit.
What I'm going to do is put the blade so it's sitting right in the seam that I just did.
I'm going to take a straight stitch and move the needle position to the far left so that
little dot is hanging underneath the zero for the stitch width.
To do some topstitching I'm going to go ahead and lengthen out the stitch length.
If you don't, those stitches start to look a little small, and all I'm doing is just
kind of holding that open as I stitch and I'm watching the blade go right down the seam
of my fabric.
Look what you get here.
You're going to find a perfect set of topstitching.
How easy is that?
Now if it's too small, the stitch length's too small, kind of gets a little teeny, it's
hard to see, when you lengthen it out, I went to three, it looks really good.
Back to a regular foot.
Now to talk about when we start to fold that up all the way, oh gosh, you know how it usually
is.
It's usually folded up a couple times, one, and two; how thick that gets when you sew.
Now first off a lot of people will want to stitch from this side because they can see
where they are in relationship to the seam, but that's not topstitching.
Topstitching is called topstitching because you sew from the top.
All right, I'm bringing the stitch, needle position back to the center.
I'm going to go ahead and just set that up.
I would have pressed this and pinned this, but just for today I'm just going to go ahead
and set this in here.
Also, make sure that your stitch length is still a little bit longer.
All right, so here's what you want to do.
Set the machine so the needle stops in the down position, needle down.
Then with your height compensation tool, it looks like this in your accessory bag, I'm
going to open it up.
I'm going to use about two levels worth.
That's going to help me get up and over this seam.
So here's what's going to happen.
You'll notice when your foot starts to go up a mountain, so here's how it's going up,
this is where people start to help push it and then they break a needle, or those stitches
start to get so small that well don't look good, but if you stop, I'm going to just take
one more stitch.
Yup, I definitely need it.
What we're going to do is we're going to level this foot out so lift up the presser foot
behind, take your tool put it underneath the presser foot right up to that needle that's
staying in your fabric, and then when you lower it look how level it is.
This is like when they take the ships through the Panama Canal.
They bring them in and they lift them up to the next level.
By having level pressure against this foot, against your feed dogs, you're going to have
even stitching.
The machine doesn't care how much fabric's underneath as long as the foot is level.
Watch this.
Just go ahead and stitch.
We're now on the seam area.
You can see where I'm going to come off of it in just a few more stitches, but before
I come off of it I'm going to stop.
When you just normally sew oftentimes you get a long stitch or a skipped stitch.
That's not good either.
Take your same tool that kind of popped out the back when it was done and being used,
butt it under a toe and just like this you can just bring the foot, it's going to stitch
kind of half on this, half of the back is still on the seam, and just pretty much go
forward far enough that you, when you take this out, I'm going to lift the foot up, lower
it down that the foot is now level back on to your fabric.
How easy is that?
All right, so I'm going to bring my needle up and let's take a look at those stitches.
Now I would have switched to a denim needle because often this is much thicker than this
particular piece of fabric, but isn't that nice how easy it is to get up and over such
a thick seam?
Another place to use this is let's say you're starting right near an edge and when you lower
down something on a really thick fabric you sometimes get hung up on that back part and
lots of little stitches again you're trying to help push it through and that doesn't work.
Take the same tool put it underneath your foot so it feels like there's something behind
it and you'll be able to start right on the edge of your fabric with no problem whatsoever.
So if I want to start here just go ahead and guide it.
It thinks it's level so it's going to stitch and away you go.
So give that a try.
That is one great tool that Bernina includes with all their machines.