LAQ#25 Still Learning and Quilting Encouragement

At our LQS sewingroomtucson.com, folks gather monthly to make quilt tops for charity and then have Longarmers volunteer to do the quilting. What a great way to practice your quilting! You can test out different techniques and designs you've been wanting to try and the customer is always happy.

This is only the 25^th item I ever did on my Longarm, and I wanted to be brave and try some fancier quilting. So I made a quilting plan to do separate designs in the blocks and inner and outer borders.

I did a wavy paisley “vine” along the large outside border and half feathers in the inner border.

I had recently watched Pam Clarke’s Designs with Lines DVD, homestitches.com and thought this was a perfect quilt to try special designs in each block. (They would probably have looked better if I had chalked some lines using Pam’s stencil, which I bought later.)

Encouragement:
·         You gotta start somewhere or you’re never gonna get better.
·         Nobody was born a perfect longarm quilter!
·        You WILL get better with practice

• Keep previous quilting samples so you can see your improvement (don't compare your quilting to others)

Ewww, maybe I shouldn’t show you the back, but I'll share my bobbles; everybody bobbles.

Here are the half feathers I quilted on this charity quilt:

And here are half feathers I did on a top about 40 quilted items later:

Hopefully, they look more consistent and like I have better control of the machine! I do get frustrated with my slow progress, especially when I look at the work of Judi Madsen of www.greenfairyquiltsblog.com or Angela Walters at quiltingismytherapy.com. Man, oh man, do they do aMAZing work!!!  (Oh yeah, don't compare your work to others, pout).  But I have to remember that they've done hundreds of quilts, i.e., tons of practice; and I'm not at 100 yet.  Your quilts will always look better after you wash them and put away the magnifying glass! lol.

You just have to keep trying :)

longarm quilt #44 A Fun Project on the Longarm - Tootie Fruitie

This is a really cute little girl quilt I did for my greatniece a couple years ago:



I got the idea from watching Linda Taylor's quilting show on the web. Pam Clark was a guest and she quilted the background and then added the applique all with the longarm. I fussy cut the flowers and used loops and zigzags to attach the shapes.

I used King Tut thread in Harem and peach So Fine in the bobbin. The Harem variegated thread had the perfect colors to go with the flowers. I also added those crazy 3-d strips to the sashing with the longarm.

I took a 2" wide strip, folded it in thirds and sewed it down the middle on my DSM. Then using a scribble stitch with the longarm, I added folds and "ruffles" to add some dimension. It would also be cute with buttons. I used Hobbs Polydown batting so all the different background quilting really showed up and added more fun dimension.  A little different view:

By the way, I keep a list of quilts with notes so I can look back & see what I've actually accomplished and that I'm getting better with practice. I'm really happy with how this turned out; I may need to do another one like this soon!