Longarm Quilt #35 Autumn Wedding Quilt – using a panto for free motion & other firsts

My friend, Susan, had me quilt this as a wedding gift for a relative so I was REALLY nervous.  But, of course, I had to incorporate a lot of firsts - making a stencil, using pounce chalk and learning a freehand design from a panto.

It’s a small quilt using the Potato Chip pattern from our LQS, thequiltersmarket.com. I wanted some fancy custom quilting since it was for a wedding. I used a really pretty stencil from Urban Elementz called Dusty Miller for the plain blocks because I knew it would really show.

I knew the quilting wouldn’t show much in the blocks with the print fabric so I found a simpler design in my Quilting Dot to Dot book from goldenthreads.com by Cheryl Barnes. I drew the design onto stencil plastic and cut it out with a stencil burner.

The Homemade Stencil Block

The Back

I used the Aloha sashing pantograph, also from urbanelementz.com for the borders. So I used 3 different designs that had a similar "feeling". 

I didn’t want to turn the quilt to line up the panto, but I thought I could get the design into my muscle memory and quilt it freehand. I used my trusty plexiglass on top of the panto and traced over and over (and over) with a dry erase marker. (For more details about this technique, see my 8/26/13 posting.) Then I drew it on plain paper until it was in my head and it worked!

The freehand sashing!

A view of the back

I still remember taking a deep breath before quilting every block! But looking back, I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Way back: Longarm quilt #2 - This One's For Daniel

This is the very first quilt I did on my Longarm for someone. It was for my first grandson – a shower gift before he was even born!

Somehow, I only got one picture of it. :( 

When I got my longarm, I practiced on muslin, then I did a panel that I call “Is there something to do?” that I blogged about back in August.

Danny's quilt is also the first pantograph I ever did. A pantograph is a quilting design that's drawn out repeatedly on a really long roll of paper that sits on a shelf at the back of the longarm machine. You look at the paper and use a laser light attached to the top of the machine to trace the design. As you move the machine, it sews the design on the quilt. Maybe I should add a picture of the setup, huh?

The panto I used for this quilt is called double bubble and I had trouble doing nice round shapes. It makes me so nervous trying to trace the panto that I don’t do them often.

I also prefer to quilt from the front so I can see what’s going on with the quilt. You can get a little off on the panto as you’re moving across the quilt and you’ll have overlap (yes, I’ve had this happen).

This was a kit that I bought from my LQS thequiltersmarket.com . The small faux 4-patch pieces were blanket stitched on with a variegated thread. Overall, I think it turned out cute.

TIP: A different way to use pantos - Trace around a panto design many, many, many times to get muscle memory and then do the design freehand. This seems to work much better for me. I talk about this next time!

Longarm quilt #85: Warren's Flag - a beautiful collaboration

I gave you a sneak peak of this quilt in progress back on 8/31/13 - when it looked like this:

August 31

Originally my deadline to finish the quilt was January 2014, but my DH wanted to give it to his friend early so it changed to October 26 – aeeeiiii! But I got it done in time.

September 22

I’m really proud of our collaboration. Hubby picked a flag picture that he liked, then I enlarged it and traced the giant pieces onto freezer paper (that was back in June 2013).

I wanted to try curved piecing for this (a first) and it worked fairly well, but there were some tricky areas.  I’d probably just do raw edge appliqué next time because of the steep curves. DH also came up with the idea of the Vietnam service ribbon for the borders. The white stars are fused raw edge appliqué and the star corners are appliqué machine embroidery. After it was bound, I added gold cording all around the edge. (helpful hint: preshrink any trims!)

Piecing the border & embroidering the corner stars

Before quilting

Warren was a helicopter gunner in Vietnam so DH drew the helicopter that I used for the quilting. I moved my laser light to the front of the longarm, pinned the drawing on the quilt to the right of the machine head and moved it across the top as I quilted each helicopter.

I was really unsure of thread color and used Omni Light Sage with a matching So Fine Bobbin. I did SID on all the flag pieces and around the stars so there’s a lot of backtracking on the back. A tan backing might have been better.

Here's the back showing the helicopter quilting

What do you think? Different backing or different thread??

What I’d do different: raw edge appliqué for steep curves, red bias tape instead of tiny piecing on borders. A different thread color or a different backing color.

Overall, I’m very proud and happy with this quilt and want to do more flags in the future. I’ve done several Quilts of Valor qovf.org in the past and this would be a fun project for this wonderful organization. 

Longarm Quilt #89 Wind in the Leaves - what I'd change & a mystery

Every quilt is a learning process – which thread is best, which quilting design works, a new process like appliqué on the Longarm (see my 9/17/13 blog about Tootie Fruitie - A fun project on the longarm).

This is a quilt I finished over the Thanksgiving holiday in my favorite colors – fall colors. The pattern is a real simple one that I made on up my design wall and you can see the Before is kind of boring:

But I planned it that way. (tip: that’s what you ALWAYS say when it didn’t work or there’s a boo boo!).  Actually, I really did plan it this way; I wanted to use solids to accent the quilting (another first). I used Superior Rainbow variegated thread in Autumn Leaves – the perfect thread for this project:

What I’d change: I wish I had continued the swirl quilting all the way across each row of blocks instead of breaking it up with the figure 8’s. Sometimes you use the piecing as a quilting guideline and sometimes, you should just IGNORE it!

A mystery: My top was square, but I had problems with a pucker in the backing toward the bottom right side which I had to rip out. I used a beautiful purple minkee backing which I know is slippy, but I’ve used minkee before with no problem.

I used cotton/poly Legacy batting which seems more slippery than my usual Hobbs 80/20, so maybe that contributed to the problem.  Maybe I should have done stitch in the ditch (SID) first. Do you always SID if you’re doing different quilting in the blocks and sashing???

Anyhoo, this is my car quilt and I’m pretty happy with it.  Oh, don’t you just LOVE that red/orange binding with the purple backing?  Ahhhhh~