Today's post is a more technical post. Part of doing quilting for Quilts of Valor (QOV) is trying to be quick on the turn around time. Not my strong suit this past month with school wrapping up. But with summer here I have a little bit more time to quilt. I've found an easier way to get my QOV quilts done in less time and it has nothing to do with becoming faster on the quilting end (although that never hurts).
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| The Quilt of Valor I was working on when I took these pictures. Isn't she beautiful? |
Instead of using paper pantographs, which are long rolls of paper with the quilting pattern drawn on them, I use Pantovision. Pantovision is a program designed by ABM Innova. I happen to love it because it makes the old fashioned roll paper patterns obsolete and digitizes everything instead of me trying to find a place to store the paper rolls. Let's just say, I wasn't blessed in the organizational area of life, I'm treading water at best. I'm a fan of anything that takes paper clutter out of my life.
To make my QOV quilting go smoother I've found a way that works for me. What I've done is I have taken my most popular QOV patterns and saved them as QOVStars, QOVvines, etc so I I know that these are the patterns that I've used on previous QOV. It is also helpful because most QOV quilts are about the same size usually within a few inches. Then to make the process easier I've taken and resized all my patterns so I can easily get a set number of passes (usually 4) before I have to roll my quilt. Knowing that I've done this I do not have to worry about checking before I start quilting if I have enough room on my final pass before rolling. I know I'm good to go because I've set this pattern up so it fits without needing to check to make sure I'm not going to run out of room. Nothing stinks worse than starting a pass of a pattern and then bumping into the back of your longarm and trying to pull it down to finish the pattern. It is also nice because I used to spend a lot of time moving my pattern on the screen up and down after I rolled it each time trying to figure out where I was again.
I haven't downloaded the latest Pantovision update so this is my "old fashioned" way of advancing my quilt. I load each quilt and quilt my first four rows. My first row of the 4 rows is usually a partial row where I am only quilting in the parts that are on the quilt and the pattern is actually hanging off the top of the quilt on the batting.
Each time I start a new row I mark where I start on the batting with a dot. After I complete the row I come back and line the sew head up with the dot.
Then I check my screen to see how far off I am. Here I am only about a 1/2" off to the left.
To fix it I scoot the pattern over with the arrow keys to line it up. (I'm off just a tad to the north in the picture because I'm trying to do too many things with too little hands.)
Once I'm lined up on the screen I go down to the next row and put my needle down in my starting place on the quilt. I always start off the quilt on the batting and then sew my way onto the quilt. I also mark with Sharpie. It doesn't bleed through the batting and it will be cut away after I finish quilting. Then I put my needle down back in the black dot and start sewing. When I'm through I'll come back to my dot, adjust as necessary like before and go across again.
Here you can see all 5 dots. The dot at the very top is from the previous 4 rows that I did before I rolled the quilt top. It is how I know far to roll my quilt which I explain in the bottom photo. The next four dots are the four passes I made this time/roll. As long as I line up with the previous dot before I move down I'm good to go.
Below is a picture of me lining up the fourth row from the previous quilting before I rolled it to the top. It then becomes a measuring point which you can see on the sewing area but doesn't affect my quilting. What I do is after I finish my 4 passes I roll my quilt to the very top of the frame. I stop when I have my sewing head pushed as far up to the quilt take up bar as possible and the black dot from the 4th row is now nestled inside the sewing head hole. If you look closely in the picture you can see the dot and the take up bar where the quilt is rolled onto in the picture. Since I'm lined up on that dot I can now move down and start quilting immediately without having to make any adjustments on my Pantovision screen.
Hopefully this gives you some new things to think about when you are quilting. I've found it very helpful to have resized my patterns to fit a certain number of passes on my quilting area. The time I save is definitely the time it took me to figure out how to resize my patterns to get 4 passes in each time before I rolled it to the next.
What have you done to make longarming easier for you?
