The piercing power of the Husqvarna Viking EPIC 95Q

Don’t you love the 5 top features we looked at yesterday on the Husqvarna Viking EPIC 95Q? Don’t you love those great accessories, and how about the fun of personalizing your sewing machine? As you probably guessed, there’s so much more. Today, we’ll look at more of the fantastic built-in help features of the EPIC 95Q, and we’ll take a look at some of the great sewing features too. Let’s get started.

Husqvarna Viking EPIC 95Q

In addition to the amazing lighting system we saw, the size of the workspace is huge. There’s more than 12″ to the right of the needle, so if you’re quilting a large quilt, sewing a bulky garment, or any home decoration project, you have loads of brilliantly lit workspace for your project.

Over 12” of brilliantly lit workspace

Here’s another feature that’ll make you a better sewist. The EPIC 95Q has incredible piercing power. Imagine you’re sewing a quilt top with bulky seams, or you might be hemming a pair of jeans. That extra bulk can do crazy things to your seams. The machine can kick the fabrics to the left, the stitches get smaller, needles break, and all kinds of awful things can happen. However, with the incredible piercing power of the EPIC 95Q, those nightmares are a thing of the past.

Here’s a very bulky seam (there’s a diagonal seam on the reverse side). Typically, sewing machines do crazy things to get through the bulk. But look at this gorgeous seam. The stitches are the same length and they’re perfectly straight.

Perfectly formed stitches over a bulky seam

There are two reasons why this seam looks so perfect. The first one is the penetration power. I can sew through 32 layers of quilting cotton with no skipped stitches! Wow!

A single seam secures 32 layers of quilting cotton

The front of the seam through 32 layers of quilting cotton

The back of the seam through 32 layers of cotton

And the same great stitch quality is possible even through 14 layers of denim!

Fourteen layers of denim stitched together

I wasn’t able to add any additional layers as the presser foot was at the maximum height. I was impressed that I still got the same stitch quality. Imagine going over bulky seams, hemming jeans, making tote bags – the EPIC 95Q can handle anything!

Stitching through fourteen layers of denim

Not only does the incredible piercing power make this possible, but the Exclusive Sensor System helps deliver perfect stitching. The Exclusive Sensor System consists of three features. First, the Sensor Foot Lift automatically lowers the presser foot whenever you start to sew – no need for a presser foot lever. While this feature may seem simple, when both of your hands are busy holding your project just so, this is a fantastic feature. Buttons on the function panel allow you to raise and lower the presser foot manually, and the extra lift (double touch on the button) raises the presser foot even higher and drops the feed teeth, so if you need extra space, you’re good to go!

The Sensor Foot Pivot, when combined with the Needle Up/Down function, allows the presser foot to raise ever so slightly when you stop, which enables you to pivot your work without you having to raise or lower the pressure foot. When I do applique and quilting, this feature is indispensable.

The third component is the Sensor Foot Pressure, which continuously senses the thickness of your material and automatically adjusts the presser foot pressure to provide even feeding.

A word of advice here. If you’re speeding along through lumpy and bumpy seams, the sewing machine will speed through the work. However, you may not be happy with the quality of the stitches. I suggest you slow down when going through thick layers, to allow the Sensor Foot Pressure to sense the actual thickness and give you a nice straight seam with the consistent stitches you saw earlier. You don’t have to slow to a turtle speed, but slow down enough to let the features on the EPIC 95Q do their job.

I’ve been working with a lot of bulky seams lately, and I’ve been experimenting. Just a little reduction in speed has made a huge difference in getting over the bulky seams and not have the machine kick my fabric to the left, or sew a bunch of tiny stitches as it gets hung up on the bulk. I’m thrilled with the results!

I want to return to some of the built-in help features on the EPIC 95Q. There’s a lot of great features on this machine, but how do we access them? How do we even know what’s possible? Let’s go back to the JoyOS Advisor. In addition to sewing techniques, like the overcast stitch I showed you yesterday, you’ll also find tutorials for Quilting Techniques. Clicking on any one of those tutorials (and this is only one category) will provide you with basic instructions for basic quilting, applique, and binding techniques.

The Quilting section of the JoyOS Advisor

Then there’s the Knowledge Center. Oh my, the Knowledge Center is full of great information. When you get your EPIC 95Q, you’ll have a lot of questions. How do I thread the machine? How do I wind a bobbin? And many others. You’ll find tutorials with videos to show you exactly how to do these tasks. And the best news? Those tutorials are very patient! If you need to watch them every time you want to rethread your machine, that’s okay. Or if you haven’t been sewing for a while and need a refresher, the tutorials are always there. It doesn’t get any better than that.

The Setup Machine menu selection in the Knowledge Center

Here’s another great feature when you’re looking for help. Have you ever had the frustration of wanting to look something up in the User’s Guide and can’t find it, or you don’t even know the name of the feature? Well, no more with the EPIC 95Q. The entire User’s Guide is built right into the JoyOS Advisor. Wow!

Remember the Quick Help from the other day? Well, if you’re looking at the screen and don’t know the name of a feature, it’s easy to use Quick Help. And through Quick Help, you can access the User’s Guide.

The welcome page for the Built-in User’s Guide

However, you can also access the User’s Guide by browsing through it in three different ways. This allows us to choose whichever method we prefer, or whichever method works best for the topic.

See the three small icons in the top right-hand corner? Starting from the right, the first way to access the User’s Guide is by the Table of Contents – just like the hard copy!

The Table of Contents of the built-in User’s Guide

Selecting any of the 11 chapters of the User’s Guide will take us to the subtopics within. What’s nice about seeing it on screen is that it’s much easier to flip through the chapters as the entire list of subtopics appears, and you choose which one you want. You don’t have to search through the pages to find the topic you want.

The list of subtopics in Chapter 6 – Sewing

You can also access the built-in User’s Guide by browsing the Index – the same as if you had the physical copy in your hands. Selecting any of the letters will give you a list of the topics starting with that letter.

The Index of the built-in User’s Guide

And even better, I don’t need to flip through the User’s Guide to find the particular page the topic is on. I can select the topic, and the appropriate page pops up on the screen. How easy is that?

Selecting a topic from the Index of the built-in User’s Guide

For example, if I want to know more about the Spool Caps, I select the topic, and the information (exactly as formatted in the hard copy User’s Guide) appears on the screen. It’s easy to close the menu (on the right) to see all the information about the spool caps.

Information about Spool Caps appears on the screen

It’s easy to open and close menus – select the button to open a menu and select the same button to close it. The buttons are like toggle switches, they turn the features on and off. With the screen color I’ve chosen, whenever a feature is selected, it turns pink! In these screenshots of the Built-in User’s Guide, you can see the pink button in the bottom bar of icons. It’s pink because I’m currently in the User’s Guide, so that highlight helps you to identify where you are.

The two previous ways to use the built-in User’s Guide are the same, but easier (no flipping of pages) than if you had the physical copy in your hands. But along with Quick Help, which you can’t have in the physical copy, here’s another great way to access the User’s Guide. You can search the User’s Guide for the information. Yep, the third way of accessing the User’s Guide is to simply open up the Search function and type in a topic.

The Search function for the built-in User’s Guide

As you may know, I’m a big fan of reading the User’s Guide. The User’s Guide offers so much information right at our fingertips! Along with all the built-in tutorials, videos, and other information in the Knowledge Center, you have the equivalent of a sewing instructor and your dealer at your disposal all day, every day!

Well, it’s time to wrap up for today. I’ll be spending the remainder of the week with some actual sewing on the Husqvarna Viking EPIC 95Q, so be sure to come back to see more incredible abilities of this sewing only machine.

Have a great day!

Ciao!

This is part 3 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 2: 5 top features to love about the NEW HV EPIC 95Q

Go to part 4: 5 key tips for perfect applique on the EPIC 95Q

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