Longarm Quilt 29: New quilting techniques

This is a cute panel I got from my local quilt store that is now closed. L  See my post on 3/26; that’s where I took my first quilting class.

Besides taking classes at local shops, I have learned so much about quilting from the internet. I often stay up too late on a work night drooling over all the fantastically creative people who are willing to share their ideas. The net is where I first heard about McTavishing and ordered a couple of Karen’s books, designerquilts.com. I practiced a lot on paper, saw this cute panel and decided it would be a great place to try some McTavishing.

A panel is really a great place to test quilting designs on something useful. They’re usually pretty small so it doesn’t take as much time to complete some intricate quilting; and they make a nice finished piece to give as a gift or to decorate your home. This panel is 24x43.

I also tried out micro stippling and pebbles:

 I love the texture the McTavishing added to the background. One more look:

Great texture!

My very first quilt & a sad goodbye

This is a picture of the first quilt I ever made along with a couple of close ups.

My friend and I took a class at our local quilt store, Bella Quiltworks. It's fitting that I post about it today, because they are closing for good this Saturday.  :(

Joelee, the owner, taught that beginning class. She's retiring and we'll really miss seeing her and the great ladies who worked there. It was a fantastic place to escape to on our lunch hour!

I machine quilted this on my Viking Sapphire with King Tut variegated thread. I used a stencil to mark a cable design in the border. This was my first step towards the wonderful longarm machine I have today!

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~

A furry foot wrap

I got some really cute snuggle fabric with some of my birthday money, but wasn't sure what I was going to make with it. I always keep a little blankie under the covers to keep my feet warm and my M.I.L. mentioned getting cold at night and so ah ha! I knew exactly what to do.  I popped those puppies on my longarm (no batting needed), did some loops and hearts with blue Omni thread. Added some blue binding and voila! A super soft throw to keep the toes warm and toasty. What a fun project.

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!

What I'm working on today - a sneak peek

I got a special request from one of favorite people to see this secret collaborative project that I'm working on. My honey
  
:)  is helping me create a special quilt for one of his friends.

This is a picture of pieces of it stuck to my design wall. He picked the design, helped me with the placement of the stars and is drawing up a really cool design for the quilting. I'm sewing on some of the stars this morning and then I'm off to a class on machine quilting on your home sewing machine.

Even though I have a longarm, I want to get comfortable with quilting on my regular machine for small projects. Quilting on a longarm is very different that quilting on a sewing machine & I'm much better on my longarm.

Eye Candy & Encouragement

Isn't this a great quilt! I love the pink and orange batik on the back. The front has 2 long pink ruffles.

This is one of the first quilts I made and I quilted it for beautiful Hailey on my regular sewing machine. It didn't take long to decide I needed a longarm. I call it "Grammy, let's be butterflies."  I quilted it with loops and flowers and a swirled vine. It just makes me think of Hailey and smile. Even when she was little (she's a big first grader now), we would play and climb trees and have tea parties.

Hopefully as we look at my projects over the past 4 years, you'll see that my quilting has gotten better and you will be encouraged to persevere!

First Quilt on the Longarm

I find it hard to practice on muslin. I have no real direction and it's so different than quilting on an actual quilt top. So after a few muslin practice runs when I first got my longarm quilting machine, I quilted this really cute panel:

I call it "Is there something to do?" cause at the time my granddaughter was only 3 and that's what she would say whenever she came over. LOL.

Here's a closeup of some of the quilting:

I did wavy lines in the picture area, some very sad hooks in the frame around the picture and a triangle shape in the sashing. Wow, that's some wonky, jaggedy quilting. But I'm still proud of it. For a baby quilt, it's cute and the texture of the quilting is nice when you don't look too close.  :)  That's it for tonight.

what's on the longarm today?

Today is "whatcha workin on?" day

this is my friend, Susan's, beautiful prairie companions quilt top.


As you can see, I'm quilting seedlings and hooked swirls in alternate rows. I'm using Superior's Omni thread in Rusty on the top and a similar color of Superior's So Fine in the bobbin. I almost always use so fine in the bobbin so there's less bobbin changing. This is a big quilt; I've already used 6 bobbins and I'm just over halfway finished. This is about 108 x 120 so it's the biggest top I've ever quilted.

Previously, my daughter's birthday quilt, "Katie's Choice" won that prize. Yep, I name all my quilts. You spend so much time with them, you become close. It also helps me remember them & I add the name to the label. I might share this one next.

Here's a detail shot:

I like the way the Hobbs poly shows quilting definition. This isn't a real busy quilt so it's nice to have the quilting visible to really add zing to the top.

quilting detail - the twin quilts Part TWO!

I can't believe I forgot to talk about the embroidery part and the feathers! Here are the twin quilts again.

I quilted feathers in the red areas on the green/gray quilt. I can't even see them when I zoom in - probably cause I used Superior's So Fine thread.

I also quilted this one first. I wasn't sure how to handle the machine embroidered area and on the first one I did wavy lines in the white around the embroidery. It didn't thrill me but it was okay. In the embroidered hearts on the red quilt, I did one-way hatching right thru the embroidery with So Fine white and I was surprised with how good it looks.

If you're not into quilting, this is probably way too much detail; but if you quilt, maybe this is helpful. I study other people's quilting blogs, especially longarm quilters. I always learn a lot from their sites and everyone has great ideas. If more detail would interest you, please let me know. thanks

quilting detail - the twin quilts

For those of you who want to know about the quilting part (that's when you sew the 3 layers together -the top the batting in the middle and the backing), here's some detail on the quilting designs. For the green and gray one (the one I think of as more boyish), I quilted hooked spirals in the green border, circles in the skinny border, wavy lines in the gray and peacock paisleys in the jelly roll part.

sketch of peacock paisley

In the more girly quilt I did seedlings and hearts in the jelly roll parts around the panel and meandering hearts in the bottom bird print area. Here's a closeup of the back so you can see the meandering hearts quilting design.

sketch of seedlings

I used an oval ruler for the arches in the border. Ruler work is a little tricky so I'm still getting the hang of it.

Ah ha! here's the rest of the jelly roll part on the back:

I had a lot a fun with these 2 quilts and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. You can see the complete quilt tops in my previous post. It always helps me to see how other people quilt their tops so I hope this helps you and gives you some ideas.