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. 

It is a busy month at the church this month with six new babies being baptized on a single Sunday so that is six little baby quilts. I have the top finished on Bess Beetle's quilt as well as - excited about that one. I have also finished the top for a quilt that I used Bunny #1 first fabric line with. I have a collection of really lovely quilt tops from members of my guild and beyond that I'm very excited about getting to (endless pouring over gorgeous thread colors.) All in all - I'm exhausted - totally in love with my longarm (we have been together now for 6 months!) and trying to find that balance between work, spending time with my gorgeous little ones and finding the odd moment to sit down (and yes - saying hello to the husband from time to time!)

 Baby Playmat with meandering square quilting design

The quilting candy are two little baby playmats I made for the new babies being baptized. Lost blocks appliqued in the middle, fun quilting designs, recycled ribbon loops for playing with or hooking on toys.

Free hand meandering squares and triangles design 

 Free hand triangles are really rather hard .... but I think it looks quite cool!

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.

At the moment I am working on the white chevrons and I'm loving how the blue & aqua stripes are standing up all puffy (not sure my photographs are showing this!)

I'm tempted not to quilt the blue & aqua stripes and leave them - we will have to see how this one works out.

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.

For this little quilt I used free hand straight lines. Straight lines on the longarm are surprisingly easy & quick. Mine are not perfect - but I've been coveting the look of plain lines for a long time and it was really satisfying to try it out. I added some whimsy detail in between some of the lines & some curves in the corner.

I added colored ribbon loops around the quilts because babies just love to explore the texture ribbons & labels and you can hang infant toys on them too.

For the next little quilt I broke the quilt surface up into 4 sections using a curved line. I quilted circles in one area, spirals in another, hearts in another and flowing lines in another. I like how breaking up the service brings an added interest to the quilt.

Looking forward to using more straight lines & dividing quilts by texture more in the future!

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?

I really regretted the seam I put in that goes across the top of the peacock - I wish I had worked out a way to have one continuous piece of fabric to avoid this seam.



My feathers are really began to come along after a little while and that seam was still screaming at me - I didn't want to waste fabric on a practice piece - I didn't know it was going to look so nice.

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.

Once this is all done I am going to cut the quilted piece into two baby quilts and give them to our church.  This is the view from underneath the frame.

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.




I find the Bear Paw pattern quite a strong and bold pattern so I wanted to use a softer pattern for the quilting. I decided to use a pattern that I had made easily on Day 5. I call it the Octopus Flower - I'll post the pattern soon.

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.