I have had a love and hate relationship with my Bernina Aurora 440 from the moment I tried quilting with the BSR foot. At first I thought it was me, I was a novice after all but after a couple of years I truly believed that my machine was a lemon. She was just too fussy about certain threads when I used the BSR foot and I eventually gave up quilting all together because I ended up speaking like a sailor with any project that I attempted to quilt. The last straw was at the quilt retreat last month, when I attempted a quilting workshop and again my tension from my bobbin was all over the place. It was perfect tension when I was piecing but once that naughty foot was placed it all went to hell as usual. I had to hear the same things. ” you just need to tweak your tension” and “you need to be patient” and ” maybe it’s the thread” and even ” it’s your inexperience”. I heard it all people and this time I had enough bullshit! The machine was going to be dumped, my mind was made up!!! I got home pissed off and went online to find if I had fellow quilters with the same problem. Guess what, so many quilters in forums speaking like sailors about the same problem. It looks like I would need to retire my expensive purchase but all of sudden I read something I had not tried yet. Updating my BSR foot. Yes you heard it right. Apparently when I bought my machine in 2006 the foot had just been on the market and many had this tension problem when used so an update was created to solve the bloody problem. So I took my naughty foot to the Bernina dealer here in Perth full of hope. I told the pesky foot that this was its last chance. I got there and of course the dealer looked at me like I was out of my mind, “What u mean update your BSR”. I think he thought I got my head mixed up with the apple shop. But I explained my dilemma and told him what I read on the forum. So he took my foot and got the newest Bernina out and put the foot in and behold everyone the display said Updating…. Just like that; he started looking at me, as someone who knew her stuff and not an amateur! He told me to let him know if that helped so he could spread the word.
Days passed and the foot stayed in the bag, school holidays is here and I could not find enough time to try it. Also I was terrified that if this didn’t work I would have to retire the bloody foot and would not be able to do any free motion quilting with my machine.
So today I got my machine all ready and tried the foot. I checked my bobbin tension before stating (dealer showed me how he checks and does this). I can happily say it worked like a miracle!!! The tension is perfect and it purrs like kitten when in use. So if you are experiencing tension problems with your BSR foot it’s not your skill or your machine it’s the naughty foot who needs to be updated. Here are the pictures of before and after!
BEFORE
</aAFTER UPDATE
Little Wooden Shoe 