Long Arm Quilting

Lisa, Carol, Sandy and I went to Fabric Patch to see if we remembered anything about the class we took just a short time ago.

Between the 4 of us we figured out how to get the bundle on the machine, but then ran into lots of problems with tension.

One of the women who know the machine was called and came in to fix all the problems. She loosened the tension [who knew that got changed] and showed us how to baste the top of the quilt to the canvas by machine instead of one stitch at a time by turning the wheel by hand.

I tried to show the quilting here. This was our first quilt and we used the pantograph [sp?] we used in class [didn't want to many variables on our first try alone].

We took turns with rows, and once all the problems were fixed we managed to get that done in no time [well, maybe a little longer than that].

This was the second [and last quilt] of the day. We managed to get it on, handle breaking threads, and get it quilted in a much faster time than the first one.

Both of these are charity quilts, and I'll try to get the bindings on them before our next meeting [Charlene, the head of the charity quilt project, wants 100 finished quilts or fleece tops by the December meeting - quite a number for our guild].

This is the close up of the quilting on this quilt [same pantograph].

I'm not sure I want to do my Montet's garden this way. i may go ahead and have it quilted by check rather than do it myself.

Sandy's already talking about taking her mystery quilt with her on our next appointment with the giant machine to get it done for one of her friends she works with.

It took us 4 hours and 45 minutes [we didn't have to count the down time] to get the 2 quilted. It really is faster than doing it on the Bernina [or Brother] since you don't have to throw it over your shoulder or stuff it thru the neck. Had everything gone well in the beginning, we probably would have had 3 done on Saturday.