Three Dog Night Longarm Quilting Co.: Let the Playing Begin

Part of getting a new technologically advanced toy is being will to just play with it. One of my biggest gripes is people who get a new iToy or such and then won't touch it or use it because they are afraid they might break it. You can't break it by hitting the wrong button. I was born on the cusp of technology being available to everyone in their home. I've used a typewriter to write papers and then in college began using computer word processors to do them. I've known both worlds. So there are times when I'm hanging out in my online quilting groups when I find it rather frustrating to read about people who have a small problem but either 1. won't try looking under different menus to see if they can find what they are looking for or get themselves "unstuck" or 2. won't call the help number. The Lord helps those who help themselves. The same goes for our new quilting technology. You can only get better by putting in the time with the machine, pushing various buttons to see what they do or don't do, and making the mistakes that take you sitting down with the manual for an hour to undo what you just did. Or in my case, my husband sits down with the manual and I go watch an episode of Big Bang Theory. Just keepin' it real here, folks.
What I'm getting at is you don't have to have expert skills to get started with your new longarm. I didn't get mine with the idea that I would sit down and be an amazing quilter from the start. I also may have been over ambitious in the amount of time I thought it would take me to learn how to use it. But I started and I didn't look back.

Picture taken from the back of the machine. I'm practicing on some material I bought and then didn't use.

When I got started I went into it like I do most things, with a bull in a china closet type of enthusiasm. Dustan who happens to be more analytical did slow me down to measure when putting my first material onto the frame. I started by free playing and drawing whatever came to mind. It was freeing and fun.

I sign my name better in quilting than I do with a pen and paper!

After a while I realized I was going to need to get to work on using my Pantovision patterns since that will be the bread and butter of this little operation. Pantovision is a program that comes with my Innova that replaces the old way of putting patterns on quilts. In the old days a longarm quilter would have a paper pattern she'd tape down to the tabletop on her frame and follow it with a stylus to make the quilting design. It required the quilter to stand behind the quilt frame and quilt from the back unable to see the quilting s/he was doing. Pantovision is a program loaded onto a small tablet that is mounted on the front of my Innova that allows me to resize my pattern, change it, and repeat it as needed. Then you follow the pattern on the tablet by moving the quilting machine. The machine communicates with the program with encoders on the rolling cage of the quilting machine.

The screen I'm looking at in the tablet loaded with my Pantovision.

I chose Pantovision over the old paper pattern way and I could easily see it as a way to quickly get up and running. I like the ability to adjust patterns in any manner that I choose. It allowed for neat storage for all my patterns versus needing to find a storage system for the paper ones. It was also a good choice since the room I have my Innova in has no space on the sides of the frame to walk behind. If I need to access the back of the machine I'm crawling under and through the frame.

Thus I started working with my Pantovision. I found out real quick that following a pattern wasn't going to be quite as easy as I first told myself. I also found that the pre-loaded patterns that the Pantovision come with aren't all the friendliest to use for new quilters. Some of them aren't very practical either. I why do I need two different versions of a gecko? I put out a plea on my Yahoo group soliciting suggestions for easy to use patterns to practice to get the hang of this longarm quilting thing. Luckily, the folks there are very nice and I had many helpful tips along with suggestions for easy to follow patterns within 24 hours. The best tip I received was practicing the leaf pattern due to the fact it had both curves and points. Another great tip was to stop when you came to a corner or point before proceeding around it. All good things to know.