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. 

Union Jack Patchwork Quilt

This was a custom quilt that I made for a family for Christmas. The wife had seen my Union Jack Recycled Sweater Quilt and wanted a Union Jack Quilt - perfect sofa size for her husband - who was British too.

I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed quilting this quilt because I'm usually really nervous about starting the quilting process of a quilt - but all that practice must be paying off as I'm really pleased with this quilt - as is the receiving family.

The red squares are quilted using a design I first saw on Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project - she calls the design Pearled Feather. 

Sticking with Leah's site to describe the other parts of the quilt design. The white portions of the quilt are quilted in Echo Shell - but I used 5 echos on each shell.

The red diagonals are sort of like a mussel shell. 

The blue squares are quilted in a spiral that I honed from Angela Walters class on craftsy.

The quilt measured approx 92" x 52". It might be the last large quilt I quilt on Bernie (sssh don't tell him.) I felt pleased with the result.

Technical Info:
Batting: Supreme Loft Quilters Dream Cotton Batting
Backing Fabric: Wide Flannel Quilt Backing Leaf Black
Top: Blue Fabrics: Bumper 2 Bumper Tonal Dot Dark Blue, Peanuts Hugs for Heroes Netting Navy, Timeless Treasures Sketch Navy, Kona Dimensions Honeycomb Navy. Red Fabric: Christmas Peace Paisley Red, Timeless Treasures Soho Solid Broadcloth Cranberry, Moda Weave Texture Country Red, White Fabric: Various white on white fabrics from stash.
Border & Binding: Timeless Treasures Soho Solid Broadcloth Cranberry
Thread: Aurifil Quilting Thread 50 wt Dark Navy, Natural White, Carmine Red & Sulky® Clear Premier Invisible Thread in bobbin

Practice Placemats - Free Motion Feathers

I am not very good at just 'practicing' there has to be a result or product at the end of it. Perhaps this is why my French Horn and Piano career never took off!

With Christmas soon upon us I decided that I could use up some fabric and make some placemats - improving my free motion quilting as I went. My idea was to choose a theme (feathers and leaves) and make 6 placemats. Here they are:

This design is based off of Leah Day's Feather Leaves. Mine doesn't seem to look anything like her's but I like it none the less.

This design I would call a traveling feather design. Again referencing Leah's website you could use the same approach as she demonstrates in Swirling Feathers. However I did not do such tight curves as she uses in this demonstration.

Again inspiration from Leah's site - Flowing Leaves

This one is a mix between Leah's Pearled Feather and a Feather design on Page 55 of Doodle Quilting.

This one is a plain leaf inside with feathers on the outer edge of the leaf.

Then a traveling leaf/vine with one echo around each design.

Here are the placemats all together. They were a cute addition to the families Secret Santa game.