Introducing the BERNINA 990: The Ultimate Sewing Machine

September 25, 2024 Kate Toney

Have you seen the biggest sewing news of the year? BERNINA has released its brand new top-of-the-line machine, the incredible BERNINA 990: The Ultimate Sewing, Embroidery and Quilting Machine!

This stunning new machine from BERNINA is already helping new owners all over the US create magic. Whether you’d love to know more while you are patiently awaiting your machine’s arrival or you’re looking for more information to see if this ultimate machine is right for you, I am very excited to get to share with you some of my favorite sewing features about the BERNINA 990.

Don’t worry, though! In the next two articles, I’ll also share my favorite features that’ll take your embroidery and quilting skills to the next level.

The Ultimate Machine

B 990 on a white background

The BERNINA 990 is the latest sewing and embroidery machine from BERNINA. At first glance, you can see how big and beautiful it is with an extra-large, centrally located screen! How big you ask? The B 990 has a 14” throat space (to the right of the and a 10.1” Color Touch Screen with touch gesture editing (more on that later!). The B 990 comes standard with many fantastic accessories, including the brand new Giant Hoop for embroidery.

The B 990 is the first BERNINA to have a Placement Scanner and camera, as well as the brand new BERNINA Integrated Stitch Regulator!

Some other incredible features include:

Automatic Stitch Plate Recognition. The B 990 will know exactly which stitch plate you have on without you having it tell it!
Wi-Fi Enabled. Monitor your stitchout via the BERNINA Stitchout App, plus transfer designs to and from the machine with BERNINA V9 Software.
Automatic Needle Threader. The fastest and smoothest BERNINA needle threader yet!
Pinpoint Laser. The Pinpoint Laser works in every needle position, with any presser foot, and shows the exact needle entry point for next-level precision.
Help Center. Instruction manual, technique tutorials, and more all built right into the machine. Send tutorial articles to your Wi-Fi-enabled device by simply scanning the QR code.

There are so many cool features on this machine! Let’s go more in-depth about some features that make it the ultimate sewing machine.

The Ultimate Sewing Machine

Jumbo Stitch

With the BERNINA 990, you can transform any stitch within the machine from 25% to 500% of its original size using Jumbo Stitch! Not only will this feature increase or decrease the size of your stitches significantly, it also recalculates the size of the stitches within the pattern to maintain the integrity of the stitch. Let me show you what I mean …

Here, we can see decorative stitch #1916 at its default size. Looks great on its own, but let’s have some fun with it.

Normal stitch size on the B 990

Here, I increased the stitch to 300% of its original size. I love that I can get an idea of how big this stitch will be in relation to the foot with the foot on screen.

Stitch increased 300% with the Jumbo Stitch feature

And finally 500%. Even though the stitch is too big to see the whole pattern on screen*, we can clearly see how the stitches have maintained the same length they started with instead of increasing with the pattern size.

Stitch increased 500% on the B 990

Tip: Don’t like seeing a preview of the foot while sewing? You can now turn that off within the View menu on the bottom left of the screen. *In the View menu, you can also zoom out on the stitch patterns and see the Jumbo Stitches in their entirety. You can also use this menu to change the stitch view to run horizontally instead of vertically.

Using a stylus to adjust view on the B 990

I love playing with the Jumbo Stitch feature to distort stitches disproportionally as well, effectively creating a whole new stitch! Imagine using these decorative stitches to sew a decorative pincushion or stitch them out with a twin needle to create a whole new look! I hope you tag BERNINA when you use these stitches.

using Jumbo stitch on the B 990

The Jumbo Stitch feature expands your options on how you can use all the beautiful decorative stitches within the machine. From making stitches smaller to use on doll clothes or making stitches 500% bigger to use on quilts or bags, you have almost endless options to edit your stitches exactly how you like them! For even more fun, you can save your Jumbo Stitches to embroider them onto any number of projects.

Naming Stitches/File Manager

As I have traveled and taught about BERNINA machines throughout the years, there is a feature I have heard people wish for over and over again: the ability to name your stitches when saving them to the Personal Folder. Guess what? It’s here! I can hear you all rejoicing now.

B 990 qwerty keyboard

Not only can you name the stitches, you can also create folders to save your stitches in, making your Personal Folder more organized than ever. I would save this design by selecting the Jumbo Stitches folder I created and tapping the green check mark to save.

file folders on the B 990 display screen

Here are some reasons to save (and name) your stitches:

Your favorite blanket stitch for applique projects (I like 1.9 mm by 1.9 mm for very delicate applique)
The perfect buttonhole sized to the buttons you always use
That really cute combination stitch you made, so you can add it to more projects
Jumbo Stitches to use in embroidery

And so many more! How do you see yourself using this awesome file naming function and File Manager?

Tip: This works in embroidery as well! You can also name designs and create file folders in the Personal Folder and on your USB stick in embroidery mode.

Camera in Sewing

Of course, one of the coolest new features is the camera. While I tend to use the camera most in embroidery to scan my fabric (we will talk about this later), I also love using the camera in sewing too!

As you can see, the camera can help you visualize where the stitches will land on your project, which I find particularly helpful when doing blanket stitch applique. Now I can see exactly how many more stitches I can fit on this side of the shape before I need to turn the project. Imagine how easy it would be to create this super cute appliquéd library tote bag!

Camera view turned on the B 990

The camera also works wonderfully with decorative stitches. When turned on, I can see exactly when to hit the Pattern End button to finish! It is so useful when adding decorative stitches to your garments.

There are even more features you can ask your local BERNINA dealer, too, including: