Rebecca Grace Quilting: Natalia Bonner

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Behold: A Southern Blizzard! "Snowed In" With the Best Beginner Long Arm Quilting Tutorials

Okay, Wisconsin and Minnesnowta readers -- get ready to laugh yourselves silly. School is canceled today in Charlotte, North Carolina -- in the middle of exam week -- because of treacherous weather conditions that they are calling Storm Three:

Storm Three Pounds My Neighborhood with a Sprinkling of Snow Dandruff

Not only is school closed today, but businesses are closing as well. My in-box is full of emails from the eye doctor, interior design showrooms, etc., notifying me that they are all closed due to the "storm." All of my appointments today have been canceled, even tonight's church choir rehearsal, and I have no reason to leave the house at all. This is clearly a message from the Universe telling me to spend the day with Thoroughly Modern Millie, my APQS longarm quilting machine.

Although I've had Millie since late March of last year, I've only actually loaded quilts onto the frame twice. The first one was a huge King-sized practice quilt that I loaded in May, and the second one was a printed cheater cloth practice quilt that I loaded back in October, three months ago. I've spent a lot more time getting a feel for driving the quilting machine around to "draw" quilting designs than I have with the basic process of getting started with a quilt, so now that I'm ready for my first real quilt I've been procrastinating, apprehensive and unsure about how to begin. I'd walk into my studio and sort of circle around the longarm frame, like she and I were sizing one another up for a bullfight.

The Look My Longarm Machine Has Been Giving Me

But I'm not even the matador in this scenario -- I'm the BULL, y'all! And I've been like, "You know what? I'm just going to leave the ring and find a nice cork tree where I can lie down and smell the flowers! Or cut up the flowered fabric into triangles, or pick out flowers for a new applique project... You get the idea.

...And I Am Ferdinand the Bull, Who Would Rather Go Smell the Flowers

Ferdinand and I have the same bangs now, by the way. They look way cuter on him than they do on me.

But no; this is NOT going to be a bull fight! Longarm quilting is not a violent, barbaric "sport." No one has to die, the only bloodshed is going to be if I stab myself with a pin, and Millie and I are going to work TOGETHER to create quilty goodness and not as mortal combatants. I just need to refresh my memory on some basics, boost my confidence, and get over it already!

"Bullfight: Death of the Toreador," by Pablo Picasso, 1933

So last night I spent some time on YouTube, hunting down the best beginner longarm quilting tutorials. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video demonstration has got to be worth a million words! YouTube is great, but I wish it was organized better so I didn't have to scroll through so many videos to find what I'm looking for. There are TONS of videos showing how to quilt various freehand designs, but what I need right now are the basics that a seasoned longarm quilter takes for granted and could do in his or her sleep. That's why I'm posting these links here, so that I can quickly find them again whenever I need to refresh my memory. If other beginning longarm quilters find these resources through this post, well, that's all the better! I watched all of these videos last night and I feel MUCH more confident again. I plan to rewatch these videos in my studio today as I finish loading my Math quilt today (partial float, I think), thread the machine (variegated thread or invisible?), adjust tension for beautiful stitches on the top AND back side of the quilt, and quilt it with a simple, allover pantograph design.