How to center a quilt section in a PFAFF creative icon hoop

Have you tried the curve piecing yet? In yesterday’s post, I showed you a cute project to make while learning how to sew curves. Now I’ll show you how I quilted the project using the PFAFF creative icon, and most importantly how to center your quilt section in a hoop.

I fell in love with one of the existing embroideries on the machine and decided I would use it for this project. It reminded me of snowflakes so I picked out my Sulky rayon 40wt thread in the variegated silver for the perfect match. I used a solid light gray in the bobbin too.

But before I started to embroider, I used Sulky invisible thread in smoke tone to stitch in the ditch to ensure that the fabric would not move during the embroidery. I used the ¼” foot with the integrated dual feed system. This feature is really awesome because it means that I don’t need a bulky walking foot for any straight line quilting on the creative icon. And by a simple touch of the screen I was able to select my quilting stitch and adjust length and tension.

Once I had finished, I was ready to start quilting my embroidery. I used the exact size as in the design to make my two big embroideries in the center of the table runner. I used the precision positioning to ensure that the center of the embroidery was right in the middle of the blocks so that my design would be perfect. You can read up on how the precision positioning works in my post, 3 reasons why embroidering text has become an obsession for me.

Once the first two designs were done, I decided that I wanted to reduce the size of the design to make it fit in the circle areas all around the piece. And that’s when I learned a new trick!

When I decided to make the embroidery smaller, I chose the smallest hoop size for the project. I pressed on the hoop symbol on the screen and I had all the different hoop sizes listed. I simply had to click on the correct new hoop size I wanted: the 120X120mm. But you’ll notice that the hoop is a rectangle yet it only embroiders within a square. So how could I ensure my circle was in the right position in the hoop?

There are marks on each side of the top hoop to show where the center of the embroider area is!  So I just had to align my seams with the marks and I knew that my square center would be in the right area. Once more, I used the precision positioning to ensure that the center of the embroidery was right in the middle of the blocks so that my design would be perfect.

Hope you enjoyed learning how to center a quilt section in a PFAFF creative icon hoop. Come back tomorrow, I’ll show you how to make a face binding to finish the project.