Top 10 reasons why I love the Designer Jade | 35

This week on QUILTsocial flew by exploring the many capabilities of the Husqvarna Viking Designer Jade | 35. To wrap it up, I’d love to share my top 10 reasons why I love this sewing machine. Can you guess what any of them might be? Let’s have a look.

This is such an amazing design feature. I love the fact that the storage tray securely holds the power cord and the foot pedal. In addition, there’s room for a few sewing accessories. Slide that storage tray into the bed of the Jade | 35 and it doubles as the hard case. A brilliant and practical design.

There’s enough room to the left and the front of the needle to be able to sew without adding an extension table. This from me who always sews with an extension table on my other sewing machines. Not once did I feel like my project was falling off the edges and I sewed some big projects on the Designer Jade | 35.

Once you have access to this feature, you won’t want to sew without it. This is especially true if you experiment with different types of fabrics and sewing techniques. Choose your fabric type/weight, choose the technique and let the Exclusive Sewing Advisor select the stitch and the appropriate settings like stitch length, presser foot, and tension among other settings.

If you’ve been following my reviews, you know that I LOVE that Quilter’s 1/4″ Piecing Foot. Combine that foot with the 1/4″ marking on the throat plate and it’s a perfect combination to sew that scant 1/4″ seam.

I’m a bit old school on this feature because I thread the needle without the needle threader – usually because I struggle with the darn things and my eye sight is still good enough. However I’m happy to report that this needle threader worked, first time, every time! Perhaps practice makes perfect? Anyway – I did use it a lot and it’s very handy!

The stitches on the Jade | 35 were so beautifully formed, it seemed a shame to put them on the inside of the project where they wouldn’t be seen. But that is the point. Because the tension was perfect and the stitches so nicely formed, you could NOT see them from the right side and in quilting, that’s very important.

One thing to note, I like to use a stitch length of 2.0. On most machines, I have to drop the stitch length down to 2.0, but the default on the Jade | 35 is 2.0. Nice!

OK – I’m cheating a bit because I’m combining a few things together! The Jade | 35 has a needle down function. If you’re going to do applique, chain piecing, free motion quilting and many other tasks – needle down is critical!

The STOP function is essential for machine applique to end the stitching at the end of a stitch sequence among other tasks.

The FIX function ties a knot at the beginning and end of your row of stitching. Again – this is a fabulous feature for applique and decorative stitching.

When people ask me what I look for in a sewing machine – the first thing I say is ‘what functions does it have for applique?’ This is very important even if you do just a small amount of applique. If you have the right tools, it makes the job so much easier and the results look nicer.

Ah – you noticed that I didn’t mention the scissors! They’re handy, but again, the old school in me just doesn’t use them. However that feature is handy for the embroidery part where the thread is cut automatically after you finished a thread color or the embroidery is completely stitched.

While it’s nice to have lots and lots of different stitches, sometimes it can be overwhelming. The number of stitches on the Jade | 35 is just right. There’s enough variety within each of the four menus that you’ll be busy exploring for a very long time.

The flexibility to modify stitches is amazing. You can change the width and the length. You can also mirror the stitches from end to end or side to side. That flexibility just increased (by a lot), the number of options for the stitches.

As an entry level embroidery machine, the Designer Jade | 35 certainly provides a lot of options and a lot of flexibility in what you can embroider. Let’s just say that I was very pleasantly surprised by what it can do.

And there you have it – the top 10 reasons why I love the Husqvarna Viking Designer Jade | 35. There were a lot of surprises on this entry level embroidery machine and it was a very pleasant experience to sew and embroidery on the Jade | 35.

Who should buy this machine? If I were looking for a great (full feature) sewing machine, and also wanted to dabble in machine embroidery – this is an excellent (and well priced) sewing/embroidery machine. No need for an embroidery machine with all the bells and whistles if you’ll only be doing the occasional embroidery project. You get good functionality on the Jade | 35 and it sews a fabulous stitch for your quilting/sewing projects.

That was a very fun week. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you learned a tip or two in the process of reviewing it. Don’t forget to let us know how you love your Jade | 35 and post pictures of any projects that you’re working on on our Facebook page: QUILTsocial .

Have a great day! Ciao!