Reckless driving is driving with a "willful or wanton disregard for the safety of people or property," as defined by Florida Statute 316.192. Examples include high-speed driving, swerving, unsafe lane changes, and fleeing a law enforcement officer. Reckless QUILTING is deciding on a whim to conduct an experiment on a quilt that you've been working on (and striving for perfection on) for nearly four years. Friends, I admit it: I am a Reckless Quilter, guilty as charged.
When one of my longtime clients reached out to me recently to ask whether I could possibly quilt this 40" x 42" baby quilt in time for her granddaughter's birthday, I had already loaded my Deco quilt for custom quilting but I was procrastinating getting started. I actually agreed to do this baby quilt for Carrie in order to "light a fire under my behind" and force myself to get my Deco quilt either finished, or lightly quilted from top to bottom with enough stabilization and basting to secure all three layers so I could safely zip it off my frame (my long arm frame has zippered leaders for just this purpose) and zip on another set of leaders for the baby quilt.
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| Carrie's 40 x 42 Strawberries Baby Quilt |
But alas -- the time came when I needed to get the baby quilt on the frame and, since I had indulged myself by doing some decorative quilting as I went along instead of sticking to boring stitch in the ditch as planned, my Deco quilt only had quilting securing the three layers for the top third of the quilt, with the quilt top, batting and backing loose for the bottom two thirds of the quilt. What would happen if I took the quilt off the frame just the way it was, I wondered? Would I be able to get it loaded again afterwards and complete the custom quilting without any issues? I consulted the Internet, and the Internet had no answers for me.
HYPOTHESIS:
If a custom quilt in progress is attached to a long arm quilting frame with zipper leaders, and if it is possible to remove and reattach a basted quilt using these zipper leaders, then I should be able to remove and reattach a partially quilted, UNbasted quilt with the zipper leaders.
So I unzipped all three leaders, carried the monster quilt-in-progress over to the pool table in the room next to my studio, and dumped it there for about four or five hours while I loaded and quilted the little baby quilt with an edge-to-edge design.
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| Yes, I Ripped My Deco Quilt Off the Frame and Dumped It On the Pool Table |
The baby quilt would have gone faster if Windows hadn't decided to start installing an update that froze my Q-Matic software after the first row of quilting. Still, the Deco quilt wasn't off the frame and in a heap long enough to get all wrinkled. Mainly I piled it on the pool table because I didn't want it to drag on the floor in the game room and get any dust bunnies or whatever stuck to the batting.
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| Strawberries Loaded Sideways on Purpose |
The Strawberries quilt was loaded sideways deliberately, by the way, for two reasons. First, both the quilt top and the backing fabric had directional motifs that both needed to be right side up on the finished quilt. I like to load the Minky with the straight selvages pinned to my leaders to avoid the risk of stretching the Minky with my backing clamps. But most importantly, I felt this particular edge to edge design would look better on the quilt if the rows of strawberry vines were quilted vertically rather than horizontally. It disguises the "row by row" quilting effect that you get sometimes with pantograph quilting patterns and makes it look more organic to my eye.
Carrie liked my suggestion of Glide thread in Mint for this quilt when I showed her my thread pick against her backing fabrics, but she was less certain how the Mint thread would look across the red and dark pink fabrics:
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| Mint Glide Thread Over Hot Pink Fabrics |
See? It actually blends in better than a more typical white or off white thread choice. That's because there would be so much more of a value difference between an off white thread and the deep reds and pinks. The Mint thread is just a little darker than the background fabrics, and a little lighter than the reds and pinks. I always audition potential quilting threads across all of the major fabrics in a quilt, because I am a very careful and conscientious quilter when I am working on OTHER people's quilts. I am only fast and dangerous with my own projects!
Here's what Carrie's quilt top looked like before quilting. Such a sweet pattern and I love the variety of prints she used. That's the other reason I agreed to quilt this for Carrie -- I knew it would be fun and a nice break from the stitching in the ditching!
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| Carrie's Quilt Top Before Quilting |
Like I said, my Deco quilt was off the frame for less than 8 hours. Are you dying to know what happened when I tried to put it back on the frame? Okay. I probably should have taken pictures as I was doing this for the sake of Internet Posterity, but woulda shoulda coulda etc.
METHODS:
First I zipped the Pickup Leader back onto the frame. That's the bar at the back of the frame, and that's the top edge of the quilt where all three layers were secured with quilting. I rolled that up onto the Pickup bar to the point where I'd left off quilting.
Next, I flipped the quilt top and batting layers up and out of the way so I could focus on the backing. I zipped the bottom edge of the backing onto the Backing Leader at the front of the frame and rolled it up as evenly as I could manage with those other layers still sort of in my way -- remember that this is a gigantic 102" x 102" bed quilt so there is a lot of fabric and bulk to wrestle with and it's a lot easier to load a quilt one layer at a time. Or maybe I just have more experience loading a quilt one layer at a time and my familiarity with that process makes it seem easier. It definitely didn't seem easy the first time I tried to load a quilt...
I thought I had that backing layer rolled nicely and evenly, so I pulled the batting down and smoothed it out over the taut backing and let it hang down in front of the machine as usual. Last, I zipped the bottom edge of the quilt top onto the Quilt Top leader (also at the front of the frame) and rolled that up as straight and evenly as I could. It's actually easier to roll a pieced quilt up straight because you can use the piecing seam lines as reference points to be sure you aren't rolling one side of the quilt top tighter than the other side -- this is actually a real thing to watch out for, because your dominant hand tends to roll tighter than your non dominant hand, or maybe it's the other way around.
RESULTS:
Anyway, once I'd finished reattaching the zipper leaders and rerolling the quilt onto my frame, it looked pretty good overall, but the quilt is sagging on the frame on the left side and I suspect the backing is the culprit. Especially with large quilts like this one, I often have to roll the backing all the way from one roller to the other a couple times to get it straight and smooth with no sagging on the left side (it's always the left side!).
It was late by the time I got to this point and I decided to call it a night. The quilt is no longer in a heap; it is "safe" now that it's back on the frame and I will fuss with it and finesse it more when I'm ready to start quilting it again.
CONCLUSIONS:
While it is possible to remove a partially quilted but unbasted quilt from the frame and reload it for quilting later, it is more time consuming and there is a greater potential for issues compared to zipping off a partially quilted but fully basted quilt that has only two zipper leaders in play and all three layers of the quilt secured down the entire length of the quilt. In retrospect I would have been better off stitching a grid of basting stitches down the unquilted bottom two thirds of the quilt prior to removing it from the frame if I didn't have time to complete the ditch stitching. Live and learn.
Don't worry; I'm sure I can get it right again when I have time to fuss with it! Next time I post, I'll let you know how that turns out, and I'll share my Stonefields appliqué progress with you!
I'm linking up today's post with my favorite linky parties:
MONDAY
Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts
Monday Musings at Songbird Designs
TUESDAY
To-Do Tuesday at Quilt Schmilt
WEDNESDAY
Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter
THURSDAY
Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation
FRIDAY
Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts
Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre
Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty
TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday
SUNDAY
Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué
Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts
Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework
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