Working Hard

I have been working hard on a number of projects. I have five Memorial quilts that I am really excited to share with you - but not yet because the families have not yet seen them.

Meanwhile I have been trying to fit in progress on various other projects.

Detail of Baby Playmat. 

Diary of a Longarm: Week 8

I have loaded a little chevron quilt that I have made as part of the Bee Purposeful which is being hosted by Corey who is the very talented lady behind Little Miss Shabby.

I thought I knew what I was doing with this quilt top so I began with repeating ocean waves along the chevrons but after running the waves 3 times I wasn't convinced. 9 whole hours of unpicking later. I began again. I had found this quilt by Linda of L & R Designs Quilting and I loved it. Every chevron stripe is done in a different design.

Dairy of a Longarm: Week 6

I have purchased some micro handles which are supposed to help me with micro/up close work. I tend to try to do quite dense/detailed quilting. The micro handles are helpful - your hands are in more of a similar position to that of domestic machine quilting - although they do reduce your working space by a few inches as they take up a little room in front of the front bar. I have been trying out some new things I haven't done before - using the Welcome Baby Blankets that I am making for our church as my experimenting ground.

Diary of a Long Arm: Week 4 - McTavishing

Karen McTavish was actually the first person I saw using a longarm who's work captured my attention and made me think 'I want to do that'. Her work seems effortless, organic and flowing. My dream would be to become a quilter of this standard - maybe after 20 years of practice? I've been practising McTavishing on our latest Kid Painted Art Quilt - Watercolor Circles. It was such a fun piece to quilt - I just went for it. I've now become obsessed with negative space in quilts!!

Diary of a Long Arm: Week 3 - Flowing Feathers

I have been finding feathers really hard on the longarm. I wanted to practice them. I still have my peacock that started my progression in feathers on my domestic machine. I decided to add some fabric to the peacock and just quilt feathers - all sorts of different feathers. Why not have both my first feather practice pieces together?

Diary of a Long Arm: End of Week 2

People give me all sorts of materials - all sorts of clothing, fabric (cotton, upholstery, antique.) Sometimes this fabric sits there for years before I find a good purpose for it. A friend of mine gave me this cotton/linen/canvas type material which has some really pretty flowers embroidered on the top. After I had washed the fabric it felt really nice. I put in a double layer of cotton batting and quilted along the embroidered pattern on Freddie.

Diary of a Longarm: Day 6-8

I have loaded the memorial quilt that I have been avoiding to quilt so long on Bernie. Loading on a longarm really is so easy and the lack of 505 spray & endless smoothing while on my knees made me feel like there is hope in this purchase.

For this quilt I was using ladies shirts. All sorts of different patterns & materials. The family wanted to use the quilt in their house in Vermont - so we agreed on the traditional Bear Paw pattern.

Diary of a Longarm: Day 5

Something is happening. Things are improving. I'm feeling happier. 

Diary of a Longarm: Day 4

I have loaded a practice piece of material onto the now named Freddie (imaginative no?) This is a piece of material I had found to practice my free motion quilting skills back in August. It is a colorful hexagon print by Michael Miller.

Here is a rare picture of me - concentrating hard. 

For perfectly straight lines on a longarm you can use a ruler - almost genius.



I'm trying to follow the shapes & patterns somewhat but dismally failing. I hope by the time I have finished the 'quilt' I will have made friends with Freddie a little bit more.

Diary of a Longarm: Day 3

For some reason I'm finding leaves, strawberries and a potential sunflower relatively easy.

Swirls & curves are still alluding me. I'm frustrated and I'm largely doing anything but play on the new machine.

Diary of a Longarm: Day 2

 
I have purchased a great fun book Doodle Quilting by Cheryl Malkowski. I'm systematically going through the exercises and patterns. I would recommend this book to anyone who is learning to free motion quilt (longarm or domestic) - the simple exercises like molar teeth then get turned into flowers and ferns ... that will make sense if you get the book.

Diary of a Longarm: Day 1

It has arrived. It is ridiculously massive. Stupidly I thought my transition could be relatively easy - it seems so much harder.

Longing for a Longarm

My debate over buying a new machine has lasted many many months. I've gone through every option - another domestic machine with a bigger throat, a quilting frame for a domestic machine & longarms - sitdown & frame. For a long time I thought I would get the sitdown version of the Handiquilters sweet sixteen - but something - and I don't know what - held me back from taking the decision. I spoke to everyone I could - owners, dealers, quilters. After much much debate & research - and driving everyone around me mad - I decided on a Handiquilter Fusion. This is truly a massive beast. It will take up most of our bedroom and eventually it will be moved into our basement.

There was a couple of things that made me finally decide on this chap:

• Cost - Handiquilter have the most reasonably priced longarms on the market that I could find. 
• Stitch regulation (or not - you can turn it off)  - the stitch regulation works like a dream - it doesn't even compare to my BSR foot.
• 24" throat - which only gives you a 20" working space - the Avante only has a 15" workspace and I wanted to ensure I had the most space I could possibly afford.  

I do love Bernie and I feel very guilty about this purchase - I hope he knows how much I love him - that I will never leave him - and I hope hone my FMQ skills on him some more. As soon as I made the decision I felt sure it was the right one - but I was also nervous of the step I was taking - a massive step for me personally - committing fully to this free motion quilting game.

I have had a memorial quilt folded up & waiting to be quilted for some time now. I was just dreading quilting the size of the quilt (Queen) under Bernie - I feel like I'm fighting these quilts. I know that my free motion skills are improving but the whole dragging, pushing etc defeats my energy supplies and will to quilt before I even sit down. I also want to make many more of these memorial quilts for families and for me to do that the quilting process will sometimes have to be quicker.

Wish me luck - I'm totally intimidated.