Something Old, Something New

One of the reasons I love longarm quilting is the variety of quilts I get to quilt for others.  I have done small projects, large projects, new projects, projects that have been in the works for years.  Each quilt is beautiful and tells its own story.  It's fun when I take in a quilt to hear from the maker why they made their quilt and what it is going to be used for or to whom it is going to be given.  I love a good story so it always makes me happy when someone is finish up a quilt.
The quilt I'm sharing today came to me from a good friend, Carol, who I met 10+ years ago on our state bicycle ride, Biking Across Kansas.  Carol lived in the town next to mine so our paths would cross frequently over the years with bicycling and friends.  Carol is the fun loving gal everyone wants to hang out with because she has great stories and genuinely cares about you.
When Carol contacted me she told me about her quilt.  She had found an old quilt top in an antique store in a little town, Weston, Missouri, across the river from my hometown.  She thought it was beautiful and brought it home.  It needed a few repairs but who doesn't have many years of good living. It was small squares (approximately 2"X 2") of various fabric pieced together by hand. She wanted it quilted and thought it would make a good gift or look cute laid across a sofa or bed.  She was right this is going to look gorgeous where ever it is displayed.  On a different note if you happen to come across an old quilt like this in the future keep me in mind! I'm looking for my own special antique store find.

A variety of the various fabrics that made up this quilt

I brought it home and repaired the large gaping holes where the seams had come undone. Some were a much looser weave which caused the hand stitch to come out and need some repairs. The fabrics were a hodge podge of choices from different decades. The fabric itself had held together well and it was in good condition.  Although the quilt had originally been hand pieced I machine sewed the gaps back together with my machine.  The original piecer apparently had my impatience with hand sewing and had several places where she had gathers in the fabric from trying to match all the seams.  I left the original gathers in the quilt as it was part of what made it unique.

A close up of the quilting pattern I chose for this particular quilt.  

When I was ready to quilt I decided to use a plain white backing as that to me seemed the most authentic color backing choice that would have been used had this quilt been finished during its early years.  I did take some time in choosing a pattern to quilt on the quilt.  I knew I was going to pick a pantogram from my Pantovision software. The pattern I chose was due to to the fact that this quilt was old and even though I repair some seams the rest of the seams would benefit from the additional stability offered by a dense quilting pattern.  I chose the pattern and made it small enough that on nearly every seam it is crossed twice by quilting stitches and in some places it is crossed a third time.  This added stability will help the quilt handle use and provide needed structure.  Often times people think that machine quilting an old top takes away from all the hand work the original person did and that old tops should only be hand quilted.  My quick off handed remark always is that if the original piecer had wanted it hand quilted she would have got that done in her lifetime.  Since she didn't it's up to me to finish the best way I know how.  But the reasons I mentioned before about the machine quilting help preserve the quilt for more generations to enjoy.  

The finished quilt.  For whatever reason the lighting wasn't the greatest and it is a little washed out in the picture.  The above photos do a better job of showing off the bright colorfulness of this quilt.  

I finished this quilt for Carol by adding the binding and hand sewing it down using a blind stitch on the back.  This past weekend it was used as a wedding gift.  Hopefully the new couple will love the something old passed down to them on their new journey through life together!

Speeding Up My Quilting Process

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).

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?

Quilt of Valor Take Two

After my first go at quilting a Quilt of Valor quilt, I was a tad bit hesitant to go straight to the second one I had waiting for me in the closet.  So I took a break and thoroughly enjoyed quilting the brown heart quilt from eBay.  After recharging my batteries on the eBay quilt I was ready to tackle my second Quilt of Valor (QOV) quilt.  I carefully checked the backing for any flaws in the fabric and did find a small stain on the edge this time before I was halfway through quilting.  So I carefully loaded the quilt so the stain would not be on the finished portion of the quilt.

Locked, loaded and ready for quilting.

I then chose a pattern for this beauty.  I have a very fun loopy flower but the flowers on the fabric of this quilt were more pointy.  So I went into the pattern library of my Pantovision software and started looking around.  That's a place I had visited since I got my machine and decided those patterns were way to hard for me.  This time they didn't look nearly as daunting and I found a cute and simple pointy flower that I thought accented the flowers in the quilt print nicely.  I had never used this pattern before and normally I would try it out before I went to work. But I had already loaded the quilt and decided what the heck I was just going to go for it.  I started slowly and the pattern proved not to be too difficult.  Six weeks ago I would never have thought of just going for it without hours of practicing.  What a difference some quality time at the machine makes in workmanship and quality.

A picture of the quilting on the top side of the quilt.

Finishing this quilt didn't take too long. I finished it up Friday night because my good bicycling friend, Susan, was coming over to see my new set up.  So I wanted to get it off the frame and load some practice fabric so she could try out this new monster taking up a bedroom in our house.  I also was heading to Wichita the next morning for a meeting so it worked out nicely so I could deliver both of the QOV back to the coordinator who lives there.

A picture of the backside of the quilt when I was finished quilting.  

The lessons learned while working on this quilt were more of  confidence building type instead of the workmanship side of things. Since these flowers were more pointy I had to concentrate to make sure I stopped at each point before returning back down so I had a true point on the petals of the flowers.
I delivered both QOV Saturday morning and traded them in for a new QOV that I will quilt up here in the next few weeks.