Working on the Long Arm

My Christmas Quilt is so close to being finished.  I should be able to share pictures next week.  In the mean time, I thought I'd show you a bit about how I quilted it on the long arm.  I took a few pics with the camera phone to give you an idea of how/what I do.  If you already know how this works, you can move along, but I have some friends/family who read my blog because they love me, and I thought they might like to see how it works.

 Here it is on Wed afternoon.  Waiting for me to finish the label.  I confess I'm a bit scared to wash it.  I'm not a pre-washer by nature, and there's a whole lotta red in this quilt.  Reds run.

 Ok, on to the long arm.  I did a pantograph on this quilt.  So you make a bunch of copies of the pattern, tape them along the table and use a laser pointer to follow the pattern.  I like to think of the pattern as a guide.  There is no way I can follow those lines perfectly.  Close, yes.  Perfect, no.

 This is the name and creator of the pattern.  I thought it looked kind of festive.  And I do love lots of quilting in a quilt.

 Here's the machine and the quilt all set up.  There are handles that you can use on either side.  When you follow a pantograph, you're on the 'back side'.  You are looking at the pattern and not the quilt at all.

 A shot of some decent quilting.  Good points, relatively smooth curves.

 This is a shot of the table with the pattern taped down the length of it.

It's pretty great that I get to use my Stepmom's long arm.  This would have been a beastly quilt to do at home.   I am also a pretty strong believer of quilting your own quilts, and this makes things a bit easier at times.