Grace Q’nique16X Home Quilting System

The Grace company knows our heart. We as quilters create quilt tops, we get our backing ready but getting them quilted, that's the issue. The Grace Company has created a machine to use with the QD frame. The unique 16 X Elite, the perfect machine for the space that we as quilters want to be able to cover the glide ability, the usability, all the tools on board. So let's look at the machine. We've got a machine now that will give us that distance that we really desire 16 inches from needle to throat. We know that our domestic machines, even if we have a higher end machine doesn't give us quite that space to cover maybe a 12 inch block or 10 inch block that we want to create a design within the 16 inch throat on. This will give us that ability to cover a very large area. Now, the machine also has wonderful lighting and as we get older, lighting becomes really important. Even if you're a young quilter, we've got lighting that's on board in the throat area here that can be adjustable to higher or lower light. We've got a light right over the needle. So you can see as you're setting up your machine ready to put that needle in the perfect position to start. Now, there are always times when that lighting being adjustable is really important. There have been times when I have been long arming and I'm, I'm almost long arming in the dark because I'm using a low contrast thread. But it's hard to see where I've already quilted by being able to adjust that light down. It gives me the shadow line so that I know where I have been in the past, so I can keep moving in the right direction. So the ability to adjust that lighting on board is really important. The other thing that's really nice with this machine is that um, we can wind our Bobbins on board. So the built in Bobbin winder at the base or at the back of the machine here, it has its own spool pin. When we buy thread, we always buy more. Usually in pairs. Um The most common ways for a long armor to buy thread is in pairs, we usually have a second spool that we just set up to do the Bobbin so that we don't have to un thread our machine. So by having a spool pin available on the top here, that's set aside just for winding our Bobbin as our working means that we don't have to take time to wait to wind a bobbin when we run low. So having that on board ability, not having to figure out well, where am I going to set up the Bob and winder in my space? It's attached to your machine ready to use. The other thing. Now, when we get into setting up our machine, getting it all threaded and ready to go is that the handles are so important. The unique 16 X Elite is just as unique as you. And I, I'm short, I have shorter arms. So being able to reach across the um quilt top is important. But having those handles in the right position for your body style or type is important. Now, one of the places that can be adjusted is here. The other is the, where it's attached to the machine can be um swiveled up and down depending on the height of the quilter. Maybe you're teaching a young person to quilt who is a little bit shorter. So maybe we want to swing that down and then heighten up the screw. So that's easily adjusted there just to swing the handles either up or down and then the multi position on both sides of this machine. These quick levers give us the ability to make the handles longer so that you can reach without having to lean over or injure your shoulders, trying to crouch over too much. You can easily reach all the way to the entire quilting area by adjusting those. And if you'd like to swing them up so that you can reach the buttons with your thumb. Some people would rather have it in a position like this. Some would prefer to have the handles closer to the surface totally up to you. As you get more comfortable with your machine, you will decide where that comfort zone is and they very easily then just clip into, into place. Let's see. And get this one swung around. I like them just a little bit lower so that my hands are right there so I can jump in if I need to pull the thread out to start and start. Um start and stop a design. So now that we have our handles adjusted, we have our lighting ready to go. We've got a bobbin ready and filled. Let's look at the tablet. The Qni 16 X Elite has an onboard tablet. It's a small tablet, but it has so much value added to it. There are so many wonderful things. All of the instructions are built right in so that it steps you right through. It also comes with a really wonderful instruction booklet and we have settings on our first screen so that we can play with that brightness of our lights. Um We can have the needle area in a brighter light if we want. Um As you slide down through it, it talks about whether or not you want your needle um to be in the down position, especially if you're doing some um maybe some ruler work or something really precise and you don't want to have your um stitching do a step. You want your needle in the down position so that you can start exactly where you want. So you can set that. You can do an over speed. A machine can only can do quite a few stitches in and it will, it will keep up with you. But if you want a warning sound to come up, you can set that to remind you slow down. Enjoy the process. So there is um a a setting for that. We also will be looking at um some of the tools where you can set um a parameter and it has a warning so that you don't go outside of that, say in a little while we're going to do some stitching just in a rectangular shape here. And I'm going to show you how we can set the parameters so that we have a warning if we get close to that edge to remind us to stay within. Because sometimes when we're quilting, we get kind of busy, we start thinking, oh, I'm just going go everywhere and all of a sudden it's like wait, I wanted to do a certain stitch in a certain area so you can set the machine so that it knows this is like the little fenced area that you wanted to stay within and the little beep will come up so that if you get the outside of that. Um You, it will remind you kind of stay in that area, finish what you're working on and go on to the next thing we have. Um Also whether or not you want um your stitch length to be measured in inches or in centimeters even. We um they, they have thought of everything. So they accommodate if you use metrics. So you can go through the settings, set it to be unique just to you. So the Qni is just a machine for you, then we can go to the toolbox within the tool box. We have the way to measure in inches or in centimeters. Like I said, we can switch it over to centimeters. If we want, we can measure a diagonal across the block and find out how many inches that is. We could um double check, maybe if we want to know um how long a board or a cross is or how deep a block is. So we've got three ways to measure and the machine will hold those measurements. So if you need to back and reference those, then um we can go into the calculator so that you don't have to be fumbling through a drawer or running to another room. Say I want to divide my border into increments of so many inches. You've got the measurements that you've taken earlier. You can use those numbers divide real quickly here and don't have to leave your studio. So you've got that on board calculator. Um easy to use. The next thing that they have is a Bobbin estimator. So you can go in and name your Bobbin um On this one, I named it the Variated Lavender. So that I remember OK, I'm using that color thread in my project because you might have two or three projects going at the same time. And if you label those, then you can keep track of how much thread you have on the Bobbin. As you wind a Bobbin, you have a full bobbin. It will let you know you can set it so that, you know, you have it 100% it's full all the way. And as you use that Bobbin, then later as you're stitching, you can set a reminder or a warning so that when you get below 20% it will let you know the little Bobbin symbol will turn yellow on your main screen. If it gets down to like five, the 10, 5, between 10 and 5% you know that it turns red, it's time to probably think about do I, can I complete the little piece that I the area I'm in? Is it time to change the Bobbin so that you don't all of a sudden are stitching and go. I just lost a Bob Bob and chicken and we call it as quilters, whether or not we can finish what we're working on before the Bobbin runs out. So having that warning, either with a light by the symbol changing colors or you can even set a little warning. So um sound to go off so that you remember, oop, I'm getting close to the end of my bobbin so that you can see here, the Bobbin symbol is green means I'm ready to go. The next thing on the tool in the toolbox is the edge warning system. This is a really fabulous, um, addition because a lot of us want to stay within a certain area when we're doing maybe a border or a specific block. And when we get going and we get close to that edge, sometimes we totally forget about it. The machine will let us know, oh, you're close to the edge and you can pick whether or not turn it off completely. Maybe you're a seasoned quilter. You don't need that edge warning, but you can also have it at a half an inch within a half an inch of that border or within one inch. So you kind of have a little bit of a warning system to stay within that perimeter. And what you do is simply go in and you're going to mark off the top left corner and the bottom right hand corner. And then the machine will figure out the math of saying, hm, you're gonna stay within this area or I will give you a little warning so you can set that up the last thing in the toolbox is a project um calculator for hours. So if you want to know how long it took to do an entire project, it will keep track of the time for an individual project. And how many stitches you actually used within that project? Sometimes that could maybe amaze us of how many stitches we put into a quote. And then, and over the lifetime of your machine, it will keep track of the number of hours so that you will know when maintenance and when oiling needs to happen. And it will tell you the overall number of stitches that you have stitched over the entire life of the machine. So those are the tools within the toolbox. Let's get to stitching the Qni 16 X Elite can do some wonderful things. We've looked at how to set up the frame. We've looked at all the wonderful features of the machine. Now, let's see it in action. I talked about putting in that warning so that um in the toolbox, you could set a warning so that we know the area we want to stay within the frame is smaller. So you may be moving your quilt in order to attack one portion of the quilt at a time. And we don't want to bump into the frame even on other machines. We have that issue of bumping into the frame. And when we do our quilting kind of gets an elbow in it and it veers off in a bad direction. So with the warning here, we can put in a perimeter that we saw on the, on the little tablet that we can put in an area to stay within. So we won't bump into the frame. So let's do that. Now, the machine can come as far to the left before it starts to bump into the frame itself and to the back. So we're gonna set our perimeter back there. We're gonna set it a one inch warning. We're ok here. But when we get to the other side of our quilt, that's where we're gonna wanna make sure that we can have that flow in our quilting so that it will look beautiful when we're finished. So we're gonna pull to the bottom right hand corner and as close to the frame as uh as we can and then it will tell us when we get into, we wander into that one inch area so that we keep our quilting. Nice. See the pink light comes up. That's my warning light telling me I'm close to the edge, maybe get back into the quilt so that I don't drop off the edge. There's my warning letting me know, don't go any further. I don't want to bump into the phone. That means I'm getting close to my left border or my right border. I'm sorry. So I'm gonna work my way down this direction. Take a break there, the unique. 16 X Elite. It's Elite. It's perfect. It's getting your quilts done.