The ‘Radiant Stitch’ on the PFAFF performance icon: How to succeed

This week we’re creating a sunny cushion cover to welcome spring. In yesterday’s post, we prepared the letters for machine applique. In today’s post, we’ll start to quilt the cushion cover as a base for our phrase of positivity.

The PFAFF performance icon has menus of built-in stitches and techniques. Take a closer look at all the stitches available on the performance icon by browsing the PFAFF performance stitch chart.

To create the sun on our cushion, I used the radiant stitch technique.

Instructions on the Multi Touch Screen

I’ve used this technique previously when I created the modern baby quilt, but it’s been a while since then! To refresh my memory, I pressed the question mark located in the top right of the Multi Touch Screen, then I touched a radiant stitch. This brought up the Radiant Stitches instruction pop-up.

I discovered to my delight that I can keep these instructions on the screen while I was stitching. The Multi Touch screen is the size of a tablet making it easy to read the instructions and to have several lines of text on the screen at once. I felt confident using this technique again and excited to see the results.

Preparing the cushion top for quilting

I drew my arc for the sun using the edge of one of my cylindrical storage cups in my sewing room (I’m sure you have a few to choose from too!), and positioned it on the bottom left side of the cover. The photo below shows how the letters are placed, and the empty area on the bottom left is waiting for the sun.

I decided to use an orange thread to match the orange fabric I chose for the word ‘sun’. I wanted to make sure that the quilting shows on the white background and the orange is a bit darker than the yellow. To prepare the cushion top for quilting, I layered it with batting and an additional piece of fabric underneath. Then I pinned the three layers together. I pinned in place a rectangular piece of Inspira Fast & Easy Tear-A-Way Light stabilizer under the bottom left to stitch out the sun.

Stitching the Radiant Stitch

I attached the number 2 presser foot as per the instructions on the Multi Touch screen, and started to stitch out the radiant stitch. The red guide mark at the front of the presser foot lines up directly on the drawn line; as the machine does the work, it’s my job to keep that red guide mark on the line. To stitch, I pressed the Start/Stop at the bottom to the right of the needle for the machine to sew without using the foot pedal. The machine stops when it’s time for the next step.

When the machine stopped, I turned the cushion layers so the top edge of the arc was behind the presser foot. I pressed the Start/Stop button again, and the machine then stitched backward to produce the radiant stitch.

When the stitch was complete, the machine stopped again, and I turned the cushion cover layers to stitch along the arc. This process continued until the full half sun was stitched. To finish the sewing, I pressed the cut function button on the front of the performance icon to have both threads brought to the back of the cushion top, tied and cut.

It’s always fun to partner up with the PFAFF performance icon to create a project. The radiant stitch technique completes the sun and adds some quilted delight to this sunny cushion cover.

This is part 2 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 1: Welcome spring with a fun quilted cushion using the PFAFF performance icon

Go to part 3: Stippling with different size stitches is OK [Defining space in a quilt]