Ta-Da! The MonsterNormous Sample Quilt Is Finished!

King Sized Practice Quilt, Off the Frame and Onto a Bed!

I am SO HAPPY to report that my first attempt at longarm quilting is finished and off my frame.  You may recall that I bought a package of 120" x 120" king sized batting, pieced three lengths of brightly colored fabrics together for the top, and then used plain extra wide muslin for the backing.  In the above photo, you're looking at the back of my practice quilt.  It doesn't look half bad from a distance, especially for a first try, does it?  Even the pantograph looks better from the back, where the thread matches instead of contrasting, and viewed from a distance.  That's encouraging!

I did attempt to quilt a second row of that pantograph, and although there was a bit of improvement, I really didn't enjoy it.  I like seeing the stitches and the texture form on the surface of the quilt while I'm working on it from the front of the machine.  Really, if I wanted to stitch lots of intricate allover quilting designs and have them all come out perfectly without having to practice and fret and work from the back of the machine, a computer robotics system like Intelliquilter would be the way to go.   But I don't envision a whole lot of edge to edge designs going on any of my own quilts, and meanwhile, I've got lots more practice and play that I can do with free motion and with rulers.

Smooth Freehand Quilting from Front of Machine

Once I felt that I had punished myself sufficiently with the pantograph, I went back to working freehand from the front of the machine and experimented with some larger scale shapes similar to what was in the Pernicious Pantograph, as you can see above.

My Jerky Stitching Lines, Trying to Follow Pantograph from Back of Machine

See what I mean?  I almost feel like I'd be better off marking the pantograph design right on top of my quilt with a stencil and then quilting over the lines from the front of the machine.

Backing Shot of Freehand Practice

Anyway, especially looking at my quilting from the back side, where it's white bobbin thread against an off-white fabric, I'm feeling pretty good about this.  It's no masterpiece, but it's not the ugliest quilting I've ever seen, either.  It's not nearly as bad as my initial attempts to free motion quilt on a domestic sewing machine!  There are at least half a dozen different fill patterns there that look good enough to go on a real quilt, and I think that once I DO quilt them on a real quilt, with piecing lines and applique organizing the space and giving me reference points, it should come out even better.

So, YIPPEE SKIPPY!!  Onwards and upwards!

In Which Following a Paper Pantograph Pattern Turns Out to be Trickier Than it Looks

Ugh, ugh, and more ugh.  

First Attempt at Pantograph Quilting!

After spending the last few months practicing my freehand quilting skills on my new APQS Millenium longarm quilting machine, I finally slapped a pantograph pattern on the back of my frame and attempted to quilt this beautiful allover feathery paisley design by simply tracing along the printed lines.  If you look closely at the photo (click to enlarge), you may see a red dot of light on the paper design.  That's a laser light that I have lined up with my machine needle location on the quilt surface so that I can quilt from the back of the machine.  You would think this would be EASY compared to the freehand quilting practice I've been doing, wouldn't you?  I mean, all I was trying to do was trace along the black line with my little dot of light.

See the Red Laser Dot?

This is the 14" Feather Waves pattern by Anne Bright Designs.  I chose it because first of all, I like it, and secondly, I thought the extended teardrop shapes and swirly points were similar to the shapes that I had been enjoying quilting freehand from the front of my machine.  My expectation was that I would easily quilt this pattern smoothly, standing at the back of the machine and "driving" with the rear handles, tracing smoothly along the lines as the machine executed the pattern beautifully on the quilt...

But when I walked around to the front of my machine to check out my handiwork, I saw that I had quilted THIS:

Instead of Feathers, I Have Quilted Ogre Toes!!!

Blech!!  Okay, so this is after exactly 15 minutes of practice.  They say "everything is difficult before it becomes easy," so I'm not about to throw in the towel or anything.  

My observations: 

Driving the quilting machine from the handles at the back feels very different from driving it with the front handles.  I'm not sure whether this is due to the way the weight of the machine is distributed, or whether I'm just really used to being able to SEE what I'm "drawing" as I quilt with a sewing machine.  It is also possible that it's just easier (although definitely more time consuming!) to quilt on a small, dense scale than it is to do large scale designs that swoop all over the place.  I feel like I need to accelerate into a curve to get it smooth, but when I do that with these big feather curves the machine gets too much momentum going and it wants to keep going when I'm ready to switch directions, if that makes sense.  So I'm going to try slowing down.

I may also have just chosen a design that was not very beginner friendly.  So after I attempt another row or two of this pattern, I'm going to try a different design and see if that goes better.  Wish me luck!

Most Recent Freehand Quilting Practice.  See Why I Thought the Feather Waves Would Be Easy?

Meanwhile, my freehand practice has been going pretty well and I played around with rulers a little bit; that went well, too. 

Experimenting with Arced and Straight Ruler Templates

And I still (still!!) haven't gotten around to scheduling my training day with my APQS dealer.  I'm compiling a list of questions and things I want help with troubleshooting, best practices for certain techniques, etc., and pantograph quilting was something I wanted to attempt on my own before I went for training.

At this point, I'm excited to get to the bottom of my monsternormous King sized practice quilt, rip if off the frame, and load up a REAL quilt.

Happy Sunday, and Happy Stitching!  I am linking up to Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts, Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt, MainCrush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts, and Moving It Forward at Em's Scrapbag.