Borders and Chicken Wire

When we last saw the Farm Girl Vintage quilt, I had completed the top and had decisions to make about a border.

I didn't have enough fabric to do a pieced transition section but I wasn't satisfied with how the blue and brown fabrics looked next to each other.

I tried a flange of the (more) solid brown in between and it was enough of a separation/definition that I liked it. I didn't think I would have enough, but I did some quick calculations and realized I only needed 8" by WOF, and I definitely had that.

What I didn't have was enough of the border to go the full length! I bought two yards (72") and the longer size was 75". While working on how to solve that, I decided to add some square in square blocks at the corners. I thought the brown fabric was going to be dark blue but it didn't look as good in real life as it did in my head. The one pictured above matches the flange, but I used several browns over the four corners.

I knew I had a big chunk of yellow gingham which I thought would be perfect for the backing. Turns out it was enough for half of the back. I thought I had enough yellow fabrics to make up the difference, but I didn't.

I ended up pulling out all the fabrics leftover from the quilt that I didn't think I would enjoy using in another quilt. I cut squares and rectangles as the fabric allowed and pieced it together into a back. It took a lot longer than I was hoping, but I did manage to get it done in time to be able to take it all to the long arm store this past week! I had a couple days off and I was really hoping it would work out.

When I showed up at the store, they didn't have any record of my call to reserve the time. Also, almost everyone was gone to a show so I wouldn't have much support or help if I needed it. I was irritated, but it all turned out. The machine was available and I manged to load the quilt all by myself!

Another thing I did myself was make the pantograph pattern. I was going to do up some hexagons in Word to look like chicken wire and then thought...I bet there's already something on the interweb. And sure enough there was! So I played with the scale and when I had it the size I wanted, I printed multiple copies, taped them together and boom! I had my own pantograph paper to follow!

Here's some of the paper on the table and above it you can see the pattern on the back of the quilt.

Things were going well, but after a couple passes, when I went to check out the front of the quilt, I saw that the flange was sewn down in all different directions!

I should have basted it in place. :( I debated how (not whether) to take it out and fix it, and decided I didn't have time to take out the whole row at the store. So I picked out the stitches that went over the flange, basted the flange in place and then sewed another pass across the same row. My "accuracy" is such that I didn't double the stitching very much. This meant when I got the quilt home, I could pick out the row that was sewn first. It was more comfortable doing it on my couch and I wasn't paying $15 an hour to do it!

After some time, I had the whole quilt quilted! Here it is fresh off of the machine:

While I'm quilting, I can't really let my thoughts drift because I have to concentrate on the pattern I'm doing. But I couldn't help seeing the price tag of the machine I was using (about $18K) and later I started to think about how many rental hours it would take me to cover the cost of the machine. A lot! And in the meantime, the store can store the machine and take care of maintenance for me. :) I think it's a pretty sweet deal.

And now I've had a few days to think about the binding and I think I have settled on a plan after not having enough fabric to do what I first wanted. The challenge is to have it done before I go home for Easter so my sister and I can do a big "reveal" to each other!!

Long Arm Practice

This is putting the horse ahead of the cart because I have a lot to tell you about my marathon session at the long arm shop last Tuesday, but before I get to that, let me tell you what I did today.

When there on Tuesday, they mentioned that they were having an event today to work on Quilts of Valor. (If you're not familiar with the project, check it out here.) They invited me back and I said I'd think about it.

The idea is that some people make tops for Quilts of Valor and then many of them get turned over to long armers or, in this case, a long arm shop to be quilted. Besides events like this, the store gets many of them done at shows when they want to have the computer-controlled machine going. (A quiet machine gets no attention. A machine quilting all by itself? That gets a lot of attention!) The quilts get quilted and the shop doesn't have to waste a lot of fabric for the demonstrations.

I got enough done during the week that I decided I could go to the store for a few hours to participate. When I got there, they let me chose a quilt top and helped me get set up on the machine. Having been there working on a machine just a few days ago, it was all very familiar and doing it again so soon really to reinforce what I had learned.

The woman helping me set up recognized the name of the maker of the quilt top and told me that this woman has Alzheimers and this is the only pattern she does any more. It's touching that even though her abilities are likely very diminished from what they once were, she is still able to contribute such beautiful work.

 (I recognized the green fabric on the top because it's one of the ones I used in my Mt Robson quilt!)

Unlike Tuesday, I chose to quilt with a pantograph which produces an all-over design. I looked through the available selection and chose this triple scallop:

In this case, I followed the solid line. You can see there's also a dotted wave, but I think that was just a second option on the same pattern--not something that was supposed to be combined. (The dotted scallops on the top and bottom are there as registration marks only.)

With a pantograph, you sew from behind the machine, making the red laser dot follow the line on the pattern. You aren't watching the quilt at all! In the photo above, I would be standing behind the thread (you can just make out one of the black handles just behind the thread cone--that's where my left hand would be) and the machine is stitching on the quilt between the curvy handles you can see near the top of the picture.

We chose a gold thread with a greenish tinge and it went very well with the fabrics. It likely will be hard to see because it blends so well, but you might be able to make out the stitching in this pic:

I was largely self-sufficient while I worked. They checked in every now and then, but the machine worked well and I was remembering what I learned in the class. :)

I didn't realize (or remember) that they provided food for lunch so we all stopped for a break at the same time. I think there were three people sewing (including me), one person there to facilitate and help those who needed it, and about three employees.

As I got to the bottom of the quilt, I took a measurement of how much was left and how wide one pass of the pattern was. I had about an inch more than two repeats of the pattern so I spread them out an extra 1/2 inch each so there wouldn't be a big gap at the bottom or a "half repeat".

I also checked the angle of the last pass because although the pantograph pattern was set up to be straight as compared to the top edge, that didn't mean it would match the bottom! (Pesky changeable fabric!) I had to adjust one end about a 1/2 inch so the last repeat would look straight as compared to the edge of the quilt.

If I had thought of it sooner, I would have split that difference over the last two rows as well. But in this case, the stitching draws so little attention to itself on the star pattern that I didn't think it would be noticeable at all that the last row of stitching angles away from the second last row. But since the quilt top and bottom had a few inches of solid colour border, I knew the stitching would be very obvious there.

No one noticed what I had done and the quilt was folded up as soon as it was off of the machine to go to the next group who will add the binding and attach the label. The person who gets the quilt likely will never notice. But what they will not think is that someone didn't care while they made the quilt because the stitching is crooked or because there's a silly looking "half repeat" on the one end. That made it worth it to me.

They took a picture at the shop when I finished. The quilt was about 70" on each side and I finished in about four hours. (In my mind, I had "best-case scenarioed" my schedule and had myself leaving the shop at 2. It turned out to be 2:15 so not too bad.)

Pantographs certainly are a lot faster and I can see why people who long arm for money like using them so much.

But usually I would prefer to sew where I can see the needle moving across the fabric. It's not as interesting as you might think to make a red dot follow a line! That's not to say I didn't enjoy it because it's still a fun process and the results are good. But I would enjoy more of the process "quilting from the front."

This was a perfect opportunity for me to get more experience on a long arm. And I'm not thinking "Hey, great time to practise...on someone else's quilt that I don't care about." But there are only so many tops I can make myself. If I can work on a project like this, it's really a win-win!

Long Arm Class

At the long-arm store in December

I don't know if I mentioned it, but I went to a Christmas open house at a long-arm quilting machine shop in December. I felt I was getting close enough to needing to rent a long-arm machine to finish some quilts that I should research the possibilities.

There was a local quilt shop that offered this service the last time I checked, but I couldn't figure out which shop it was. I am assuming they no longer offer the service. While doing my online research, I discovered a shop that had opened recently. They have a store in Tennessee and this is their second location. And they were having an open house the following week.

Even though it was a bit of a drive, I decided I should go check them out. I found the store, took a look around, talked to a couple people and then asked about classes. (You have to take a class before you can rent time on a machine.) They didn't have any class times scheduled so they asked when I was available. Well, wow. So we set it up for this past Friday. There ended up being three of us in the class which was about right.

It's a three hour class and they teach you how to load your quilt parts onto the machine. (The top, back and batting are all loaded separately. They don't come together until you start quilting.) You use the machine to baste the parts together around the edges and then you sew so you can see how the machine feels.

These machines all have stitch regulators which means when you tell it you want 11 stitches per inch, that's what it does whether you move the machine fast or slow. The faster you move it, the faster the needle goes (up to 3,200 stitches per minute). If you move slowly, it will make stitches less often but all your stitches will be the same size. Really nice.

Here I am pulling up the bobbin thread before I start stitching so that it won't get knotted on the back:

Then, make sure your settings are right on the touchscreen:

Hit the button on the right handle and start to sew!

This is what I started with:

That's a bobbin sitting on the quilt surface. I had a couple
minutes to take a picture while waiting for them to fix
the machine.

Top left, a square spiral where I stitched to the center and then back out. Beside it I tried a round spiral. It looks a little squarish. I noticed the machine prefers to stitch straight side to side and straight forward and back so it's hard to get a nice curve. I tried a few more spirals and then my name which is what they recommend to get used to curves. (Everyone has very deep muscle memory of writing their name!) Then my thread broke.

I had a lot of trouble with the machine--actually two of them. You can see in the picture below that there were actually two machines set up on my table:

So when the one wasn't working right, they got me going on the other one! But then it started to have thread issues as well. I didn't lose too much time and I really got a lot of practice threading the machine and getting the stitching started! (Apparently the staff had been learning to make different adjustments on the machines earlier and not everything got set back how it should be.)

Once we had some time working on the machines from the front where we were looking at the quilt top, we moved to the back and worked with pantographs.

There's some table space at the back of the machine where you can lay out a long printed design and follow it with a laser light. As you look at the light and design and move the machine, it is stitching the pattern on the quilt while you're not looking!

By the end of the class, I had this sample of quilting (about the size of a crib quilt):

Here is a closer shot of the pantograph I did:

Can you see the horizontal rows of alternating roses and leaves?

I think the curves on my roses are still a little square but I could sense improvement even in this little bit of practice.

When I was done two passes of the pantograph design, I had 10 minutes left in class and a few more inches of the quilt so I tried some flame patterns (yuck) and some medium stipling (pretty good). I didn't like the smaller stiple stitch as much,

and then I decided to fill the last corner with a free hand elephant (can you see it?)

and some echo quilting around it (not great).

It was a really good experience! Now I have two free hours of rental time (included with the class fee) and I am trying to finish a quilt top as soon as possible to get back!!