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.

Working the Long Arm

Yesterday I headed out to my parents house to start quilting Si's quilt on the longarm.  I figured maybe some of you might not know what I'm talking about, so I took a couple of pictures for a small explanation.

 This is looking down the length of the machine.  The quilt is layered; backing, batting and then top.  (I rolled the top on the wrong way so don't look too close)

 Now the main difference (other than size) between a long arm and a home machine is this: When quilting on a home machine you have to move the quilt to make the quilting designs.  On a long arm, you are moving the machine while the quilt stays in place.  You also get a much larger area to work on at a time with a long arm.  This is the HQ 18 - which I think means you get 18" of work space in which to quilt. 

A close up of the quilting in progress.

I am about half done with the quilt.  Set up does take some time, although it is still faster than pin basting.  Plus there was some chat time, lunch time and kid loving time.  Hoping to finish it either this weekend or next week.

Learning Pantographs

Today I learned how to do a laser guided pantograph pattern on my Step Mom's Long Arm Sewing Machine. What fun!  Thanks, A, for hanging with the boys.