Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock... Deadline for Mission Impossible is 5 Days Away. Or 7 Days. Or 2 Weeks.

Center Row of Circles Finished Yesterday

Good morning and happy Tuesday!  This needs to be short and sweet so I can get back to this graduation quilt that's under my needle.  This quilt is for a blessing ceremony at church and the official deadline for turning in the graduates' Bibles and quilts to the church office is this Sunday, May 26th.  However, I found out that the pastors and staff won't be passing around the Bibles and praying over the quilts until their staff meeting on Tuesday morning, May 28th.  And I further discovered that, in years past, there has been more than one not-quite-finished quilt in the pile on the conference table, with pins still in them, that are picked up after the staff meeting so they can be completed in time for the Quillow Sunday service, which is June 9th.  

Everything Hanging Off the Front of the Frame is Neither Basted nor Quilted Yet

Now, if I was quilting this on a domestic machine or on one of the sit-down machines like the Bernina Q20 or the HandiQuilter Sweet Sixteen, it would be basted with safety pins and I could take it to church mid-quilting and bring it back home to pick up right where I left off with quilting it.  However, since I'm longarm quilting it, the unquilted portion is NOT basted and it's attached to the rollers of the quilting frame.  Had I attached my zipper leaders to my canvases, I could have zipped off the quilt and zip it back on again exactly as it was before, but with pinning, I'm not comfortable taking the quilt off the frame until it's completely quilted.  So that means I have until Tuesday, a week from today, to finish quilting Mission Impossible, and then after the church staff meeting I'll have another week and a half to label and bind the quilt.

Purple Background Quilted, but Haven't Touched the Geese Yet

It turns out that there's a REASON that professional longarm quilters charge so much more for custom quilting than they do for allover, edge to edge designs!  This is taking an INSANELY long time.  It took me over 8 hours to mark the quilting design on the quilt before I loaded it and after 18 hours of quilting I was only halfway done with the background quilting in the purple fabric.  

But it's totally worth it.  I made the right choice in marking the entirety of the quilting design ahead of time, due to the scale of the design that I can only see small sections of in my workspace with the quilt on the frame.  I am getting lots of practice quilting along straight and curved ruler edges.  I'm also getting lots of practice traveling over previously stitched lines -- and a little bit of practice ripping out wobbly stitches that I couldn't live with.  

Interestingly, the smaller size L bobbin on my APQS Millennium isn't annoying me as much with the slower pace of custom quilting as it did when I was quilting allover designs.  Instead of running out of bobbin thread every 30 minutes, I'm quilting for hours before I need a new bobbin.  I am using Glide 40 weight trilobal polyester thread in Violet for my top thread and prewound Magna Glide bobbins in the same color with this project.  

One more thing I wanted to show you was my custom printed Spoonflower backing fabric, designed by Wren Leyland:

Check Out the Needle Holes in My Spoonflower Backing Fabric

The jury is still out on this one.  I love, love, LOVE Wren's bold graphic rendering of Psalm 28:7.  I wasn't able to find anything as modern, impactful, and masculine in commercially printed fabrics.  However, the inks that Spoonflower uses are different from commercial prints.  It makes the Kona Solid 100% base fabric feel more like a glazed chintz, and as you can see in the close up above, this does not make for lovely needle holes on the backing side.  The edges of the needle hole are raised slightly, like what I would expect if I was sewing through something plasticky.  I'm hoping that the holes will close up and lay smooth when the finished quilt is washed, or at least be less visible.  I'll let you know.  

But now my coffee is done, an hour of quilting time has been gobbled up by this blog post, and that quilt ain't quilting itself up there!

My Tuesday To-Do is to finish ALL of the quilting on this project prior to the church staff meeting next Tuesday morning, and that includes those geese!  Wish me luck!

I'm linking up with:

TUESDAY

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

·       To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com

WEDNESDAY

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

THURSDAY

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

Making a Start: Mission Impossible is Finally Under the Longarm Needle!

I started quilting Mission Impossible last night and I'm SO EXCITED!!!  This is how it looked when I shut off the machine and called it quits for the night:

FINALLY Started Quilting Mission Impossible!

I spent four hours at the machine and got the purple background areas of four 12" blocks quilted during that time.  Since there are 48 of these blocks in the quilt, that means I have 44 hours to go -- and then I have to go back and quilt the flying geese, and then trim the quilt and bind it...  But maybe my pace will quicken up as I get more comfortable with what I'm doing, operating more on "auto pilot" without having to stop and think things through every step of the way.  One thing is for sure, I will be LOTS more comfortable and competent at quilting straight lines with rulers by the time this quilt is done!

I'm using three quilting "rulers" for this:

Tools of the Trade

The two straight rulers I'm using are Lisa Calle's Quilter's Groove Pro and Pro Mini, marked with 1/4" lines as well as handy perpendicular and 45 degree angle lines that I can match with block seamlines or previously stitched lines to keep everything nice and straight as I go along.  The smaller 2 1/2" x 6" Pro Mini is more comfortable in my hand for the shorter lines, but I switch to the larger 3 1/2" x 10" Pro size when the lines are too long for the Mini.  And that other "ruler" (that is technically not a ruler at all because it has no markings for measuring) is the custom acrylic template that Bernie made me to perfectly match the curve of my flying geese.  I shared a tutorial for making your own DIY acrylic quilting rulers in my post yesterday and you can find that here if you're interested.  Lisa Calle's rulers are available in her online shop here (and they can be used with domestic sewing machines, too, as long as you have a ruler foot for your machine).

To keep my rulers from slipping, I've stuck pieces of HandiQuilter's Handi Grip Adhesive Strips onto the large curved ruler, and it's an absolute Godsend.  It's really hard to hug the edge of a curved acrylic template with the hopping foot of a longarm machine without the ruler sliding out of place, but this Handi Grip stuff is like really coarse sandpaper that grabs onto your fabric and prevents the ruler from wiggling even on long curves like mine -- yet it's clear so I can still see through it.  Best stuff ever, and I'm going to stick it on all of my circle templates.  The straight line rulers don't need to grab the fabric quite as firmly and I slide them around a lot from one straight line to the next, so I've stuck strips of 3M Nexcare 1" clear medical tape to the back of those for a slight grip that prevents accidental sliding but enables me to move the ruler smoothly over the fabric when I want to.  The Nexcare tape is great because it doesn't have any adhesive on it; it just clings to the back of the ruler.  If I don't want it on there anymore, it just peels right off without leaving any residue and I can stick it on a different ruler.

Well, that's all you guys get for today because I have some serious quilting to do!  Have a great day, and happy stitching!

Hanging Off the Front of the Frame: So Much Left to be Quilted!

I'm linking up with:

·      Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com

·      Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/