Spirit Song On the Frame, ALMOST Ready to Quilt... Of Partial Floats, Frame Design and Texas Hold 'Em Brackets

Spirit Song Quilt On the Frame, Top Fully Floated

Good morning, Happy Thursday, Happy Easter, and Happy Passover!  The Spring holidays have been different for sure this year, haven't they?  I got this far with loading my Spirit Song quilt on Easter Sunday before sitting down to dinner with my family, but then I had to switch gears and figure out how to sew a face mask for my son to wear to work at the grocery store for his 6 AM shift on Easter Monday.  I've been working on making more masks for the rest of my family for the last few days, while Spirit Song looked at me mournfully from across the room, whimpering "PLEASE come and quilt me!!!"

59 x 75 Quilt Top Loaded Sideways, Ready to Go

[Holy moly -- I did not realize how badly my DIY PVC light bar was bowing in the center until just now, looking at the photo!  There was a slight bowing from the weight of the light fixtures when my husband Bernie first installed it a couple years ago, but it has gotten significantly worse!  Bernie has promised to replace the PVC pole with steel and possibly upgrade the light fixtures themselves, so stay tuned for a "DIY Light Bar Version 2.0" post one of these days...  It works for now, and changing it is a project for another day when there is no quilt on the frame!]

Loading a Quilt on My APQS Machine, Fully Floated Quilt Top Method with Texas Hold Em Bracket & Quilt Top Roller Removed

Since there are long spans of time between loading quilts on my frame (while I'm busy doing piecing, applique, sewing face masks, learning choir music, puppy training, parenting, or trying in vain to get "caught up" with laundry...), I find myself wanting a quick refresher each time I'm FINALLY ready to get a quilt on the frame again.  It's not a difficult process by any means; I'm just not yet at the point where I can do this with my brain on "autopilot."  Seriously -- it is much faster (and easier on my back, knees, neck, and fingers!) to load a quilt on a longarm frame than it is to crawl around on the floor or bend over a table, basting the quilt layers together with safety pins spaced 4" apart for quilting on a sit-down machine!  My loathing for pin basting was a primary motivator for moving up to the longarm machine.

The video tutorials from APQS and others on YouTube that walk you through loading a quilt are great in the very beginning, but now that I just need a quick review of one or two things the videos seem to take forever to get to the part I want to see again.  So this post is my own personal photo reminder of "how did I do that last time?"  And I'm giving myself this link to the APQS Blog post where they review the basics of loading a fully floated quilt top here.  Wish I'd found that right away on Sunday, before rewatching an hour and a half of videos to get the information that I could have gotten in 2 minutes from rereading the blog post!  As always, I encourage any readers who are more experienced longarm quilters to share their own best practices and suggestions in the comments.  I have learned SO MUCH from all of you.

APQS Texas Hold 'Em Bracket In Place of Quilt Top Bar

As you can see in the photo above, I've completely removed the quilt top roller bar from my frame and replaced it with the APQS Texas Hold 'Em Bracket (that little partial pole that enables my hand brake to function properly without the quilt top roller bar on the frame).  I took the quilt top roller bar off because:

1. I had not been using it, since I am (so far) getting good results fully floating my quilt tops (rather than pinning the bottom of the quilt top and rolling it up on the quilt top bar).
2. The position of the quilt top roller bar on the APQS frame gets in my way, especially if I'm quilting with rulers.  Since that bar sits up above the surface of the quilt, it lifts my left wrist at an uncomfortable and ergonomically icky angle when I'm holding rulers in my left hand, whereas WITHOUT that bar I can hold my ruler with my wrist in a straight, neutral position.

See How the Quilt Top Roller Lifts My Elbows and Shoulders?

The photo above is from 2017, right after I got my longarm machine, and I have solid yellow fabric loaded for practice (partial float, so it IS pinned to and rolled up on that quilt top roller).  If I had been using quilting rulers, my right hand would still be on the right handle of the machine, but my left hand would be reaching over the quilt top bar to hold the ruler flat against the surface of the quilt.

Quilt Top Roller On the Frame, Not Doing Anything But Still in My Way

Then, in the photo above of my Tula Pink Disco Kitties quilt, you can see how the design of the APQS frame puts the quilt top roller in your way regardless of whether you're using it or not.  Compare that to the design of the Bernina longarm frame, pictured below.  At the front of the machine, you still have the backing roller bar right at the level of the quilting surface.  But instead of the quilt top roller bar sitting above that, Bernina put the quilt top roller bar BELOW the backing bar -- a much better design for custom quilting from the front of the machine.  Note that, if I was quilting mostly edge-to-edge paper pantographs from the back of the machine, or mostly computerized quilting, the position of the APQS quilt top roller bar would be just fine and possibly easier to reach for a partially floated top, or for smoothing batting each time the quilt is advanced.  I've never actually quilted a whole quilt on any other frame but my APQS Millennium frame, and these are the kinds of preferences that you can't really discover when you're test driving a quilting machine at a dealership or show booth.  

Quilt Top Roller On Bernina's Q24 is Positioned BELOW Backing Roller

So now of course, I'm curious -- are there any disadvantages to this frame style that I'm not aware of?  Bernina Q24 owners, how difficult is it to load a quilt on your frame?  Does that bottom quilt top roller pivot so you can get to the batting between the layers when advancing your quilt?  Any drawbacks?  Those of you who have owned different brands of longarm machines over the years, and those who currently own Bernina, Innova, A-1, HandiQuilter etc., I'd love to hear how those manufacturer's frame designs make certain aspects of the quilting process easier or more challenging for you.  Let me know in the comments!

Meanwhile, back to my Millie.  I bought a set of zippers for my leaders right away when I bought my longarm a couple years ago, but haven't gotten around to installing them yet.  Hence my old school pinning continues -- I've kind of gotten the hang of it and, with my slow-as-molasses creative process, I am not loading quilts so frequently that the zippers would save me that much time right now.  

Lining Up Top Edge of Quilt Top With Stitched Horizontal Reference Line

Again, reminders to self here: The top edge of my batting was ragged and uneven when I laid it out and smoothed it over the loaded backing fabric, ensuring that I had it centered and there was sufficient batting length hanging down at the front of the frame to accommodate my entire quilt.  Then, engaging the horizontal channel lock (a feature I couldn't live without!), I quilted a perfectly straight horizontal line across the top through the batting and backing fabric.  I left the blue variegated King Tut thread I'd been playing with on the machine for that,  because I've made the mistake in the past of stitching this visual reference line with monofilament thread and it is not so easy to line up the top edge of my quilt top to an INVISIBLE reference line!  After stitching that perfectly straight reference line, I carefully trimmed away excess batting approximately 1/2" above the stitched line to eliminate uneven bulk when the quilt rolls up and to reveal where my pins are positioned (I'm slightly less likely to stab myself with pins that I can see).

Quilt Top Not Attached to Any Canvas, Not Rolled Up -- Just Smoothed and Basted to Batting+Backing

I've marked the center of my backing fabric with a dark pencil mark on the selvage (it gets trimmed away anyway) and there's a corresponding white chalk mark (barely visible in the photo but I could see it well enough in real life) indicating the center of my quilt top.  I match those centers and then smooth the quilt top onto the batting, working my way out from the center and keeping the edge of the quilt top aligned with the blue stitched reference line:

Straight Top Edge, Centers Aligned

This batting was a few inches longer than my backing fabric, but I waited until after loading it to trim it on the frame to eliminate the possibility of an "I-cut-it-twice-and-it's-still-too-short" situation.  I've loaded my 59" x 75" quilt top sideways (so I can see and quilt more of it at once and have fewer stops/starts for advancing the quilt), so that excess batting length was excess WIDTH on the frame, extending beyond the edges of my backing fabric.  Once I had the quilt top in place, centered and straight, I carefully trimmed the batting excess on the sides so that it's just inside the backing fabric where my side clamps will attach.  I still have plenty of excess batting and backing at the sides of the quilt where I can throw down a scrap of fabric to do practice stitching and tension tweaking throughout the quilting process.

59 x 75 Spirit Song Quilt Top Fully Floated, Ready to Quilt

At this point, I stopped to change my needle from the 4.5 size that I like for King Tut 40 weight cotton thread to the 3.5 size that I like for ultra-fine Monopoly invisible monofilament thread.  I rethreaded the machine with Monopoly, did some test stitches off to the side in the extra batting/backing area, and adjusted my top tension as well as my bobbin case tension (TOWA gauge reading of about 150 for my Bottom Line bobbin thread is where I finally was happy with my stitches, top and bottom, with monofilament in the needle -- this is a smidge lower than the 170-200 range that Superior recommends for Bottom Line).  

Excess Batting and Backing is Great For Testing Stitch Quality

And then, happy with my stitches, I through a scrap of fabric that was pieced from strips down and did a quick refresher practice of stitching in the ditch.  

When Tension is Just Right, Monofilament Looks Like Perfectly Color-Matched Thread

I love how monofilament hides the boo-boos, when my stitching line accidentally veers across a seam line and it would be oh-so-painfully obvious if I'd used any other thread.  See below -- the camera is zoomed way in on this shot; that's why the quilting cotton fabrics look like burlap:

Monofilament Looks Like Blue Thread on Blue, But the Mistake Disappears Like Pink Thread on Pink

Happy with those stitches on the top, I lay a couple sheets of paper on top of the quilt (to block light shining down through the needle holes) and crawl under the quilt frame with a flashlight to see what the stitches look like on the backing side of the quilt.  

Magnified Backing View Showing Starting Tension (Top Left) and ending tenion (Bottom)

I can feel the REALLY bad tension by running a fingernail along the stitching line to see if my nail catches along little loops or nubs of top thread that is being pulled too far to the backing side, but I want to actually see the stitching on both sides with my eyeballs to fine-tune the tension before I start stitching on my actual quilt.

So today, I'm ready to actually baste down the top and side edges of my quilt and start quilting in the ditch (SID=Stitch In the Ditch).  I'll use my vertical and horizontal channel locks to ensure that the quilt top edges, as well as vertical and horizontal seam lines within the quilt, are perfectly straight (or as straight as possible if they weren't pieced perfectly straight to begin with) before I stitch them down, but (aside from the blue border seams), the only seams I'll be SID are diagonals shown in green below:  

Green Lines Indicate Where I'm Planning to SID

One More Important Note to Self: Even though I've removed the quilt top roller bar from my frame, which makes it look like I have a much bigger working area to quilt in, the machine still can't come any closer to my tummy when the machine throat hits the takeup roller at the back of the frame.  

This Is As Far Forward as Millie Can Go Before Her Throat Hits the Takeup Roller at the Back of the Frame

I remember from my last quilt that, without the quilt top roller on the frame as a visual reference, I repeatedly misjudged how far I could quilt towards myself before the machine throat hit the back roller, resulting in a smooth curved line of stitching that suddenly turned in into a straight line veering off to the right or left.  

There's a Six Inch "Dead Zone" From the Backing Roller to the Furthest Point the Machine Can Stitch

All the way across the frame, there's a 6" "Dead Zone" between the inside edge of the backing roller and the furthest point that my 26" Millennium machine can reach to stitch.  Ergonomically, that means that the area where I CAN move the machine for quilting is 6" farther away from my body than it needs be, due to the design of the APQS frame.  This makes me want to measure the "dead zone" on other model frames, especially the Bernina frame, to see whether my quilting area would be closer to my body with those machines for more comfortable quilting that puts less stress (from reaching) on my shoulders, neck, and upper body.  But I'm not planning on buying a different longarm machine any time soon, especially with the whole world's economy suddenly sucked into the black hole of COVID-19!  

So, for the time being, until I get better at eyeballing how far towards myself I can stitch before I need to stop and advance the quilt, I'm planning to address this challenge in a couple of ways: I can either run a horizontal line of basting stitches right at that "invisible wall," or I'll slide the machine across the quilt without stitching and put little chalk marks, pins, or something else that I can see to remind me of where my machine's needle can and cannot reach. 

Once again, this blog post has dragged on and on -- and I didn't even show you any of my cute little face masks!  I'll save those for another day, because I'm dying to start quilting Spirit Song.  

My one and only To Do for Tuesday goal this week is to complete the monofilament SID quilting on Spirit Song. 

Anything else that happens is pure gravy!

And now, for those of you who have been patient enough to stick with me throughout this long and boring blog post, you get rewarded with PUPPY PICTURES!  Here's a picture of Samwise the Brave at 5 1/2 months, wearing his cute little Julius K-9 Powerharness with custom Velcro patches that say "ASK TO PET ME" on one side and "SAMWISE" on the other:  

Sam in His Julius K-9 Power Harness with Custom Patches

I bought Sam's harness from our wonderful local pet supply store, but you can also get one directly from the manufacturer's U.S. distributor on Amazon here.  You can also order the custom patches from the manufacturer through Amazon here.  It is so hard to get a picture of this squirmy little guy that isn't blurry!  

Samwise the Kissy-Face Rottweiler Puppy

He weighs 67 pounds now and he has an awesome personality -- super friendly, loves animals and people of all sizes, all colors, and all ages, yet when there's a really bad storm like we had on Easter Sunday this courageous little Rottweiler puppy stands his ground and BARKS BACK at sky when the thunder booms -- he's fearless!  It's so funny, and much better than trying to calm a dog who has thunderstorm anxiety (Been there, done that with the golden retriever we had when we were first married).

Side View.  Why Aren't We Going Anywhere, Mommy?  Enough With the Pictures!!

I love this harness for Sam.  It's designed for working dogs (police, search and rescue, service dogs etc.) so it's durable, comfortable, and doesn't restrict his movement.  There's a handle that can be buttoned down if he was running off leash, to prevent the handle from catching on branches in the woods, but otherwise the handle is a much better way to get control of him when he needs to be held back from our 9-year-old dog who isn't always feeling as frisky and playful as Sam is.  And that big ring just below the handle clips onto a seatbelt adapter tether for the car.  Now I can take Sam with me in the back seat of my convertible, knowing that if he sees an interesting family of geese when I'm stopped at an intersection, or if I have to slam on the breaks or, God forbid, get into an accident, my dog will not go flying out of the car or strangled by a tether or leash attached to his collar.

I like this harness so much that I ordered one from Amazon for Great Aunt Lulu as well:

Lulu's Harness, Coming Soon from Amazon for My Favorite Rottie Princess!

How cute is that?  She'll have patches that say her name on one side and "ASK TO PET ME" on the other side, just like Sam's harness.  Lulu is a huge people-lover whose favorite thing on Earth is meeting strangers who want to pet her -- but she's a 98 pound, full-grown Rottweiler, so people can't tell she's friendly just by looking at her.  Bernie mentioned to me that, when he takes the puppy to Lowe's or to the Auto Zone store, everyone comes over to pet him, but when he takes Lulu, people seem to assume that she's not friendly and keep away.  They say that clothes tell a lot about a person, and I think that's true for dogs as well. I'll be interested to see whether Lulu gets more attention from strangers when she's wearing her pink "Flower Child" harness!  

Our 9-Year-Old Rottie, Princess Lulu: "I'm Not Bad; I'm Just Drawn That Way"

I'm linking up today's post with:

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

Thread Pairings for Long Arm Quilting: What Are YOUR Favorites?

My "quilting time" yesterday was spent cleaning, oiling and warming up my long arm machine so I could do 10 minutes or so of practice scribble quilting, oiling my maple butcher block cutting table with Boos Oil (haven't done that in a LONG time, since the table has been completely covered with piles of fabric!), and winding an assortment of bobbins for my long arm machine.  

Practice Scribble "Warmups" and Tension Testing

One of the things that feels newfangled to me about longarm quilting (as opposed to domestic sewing machine best practices) is how many professional longarm quilters routinely pair different threads in the needle and bobbin rather than sticking with the same thread top and bobbin as is usually recommended for domestic sewing machines.  If YOU are a long arm quilter reading this, please let me know in the comments what YOUR favorite thread pairings are.  I am all in favor of learning from other quilters' experience when possible!

When I was struggling with a variegated 40 weight cotton King Tut thread last Fall, someone somewhere told me to try using 50 weight matte polyester So Fine thread in the bobbin with my King Tut, and although that sounded very risqué to me -- polyester with cotton!  50 weight with 40 weight! -- but I gave it a try and my stitches looked MUCH better front and back with that combination.  Who knew?!  

Thread Pairing Possibilities: So Fine, YLI Machine Quilting Cotton, Bottom Line, Glide, and King Tut

Although I know that a 40 weight thread isn't ideal for dense quilting or for designs requiring backtracking, I do own quite a bit of those delicious variegated 40 weight cotton quilting threads in my stash, both large cones of Superior's King Tut as well as YLI's 40 weight cotton Machine Quilting Thread, which looks and behaves the same in my machine as the King Tut.  I am considering using a few of these threads on my Spirit Song quilt, but I only had black, white, and neutral So Fine on my shelf, and none of those options are very good for blending with the top threads.  Superior's web site said that they were not currently shipping orders due to the pandemic situation (and I did not even think to look on Amazon, duh) -- so I went to APQS dealer Quilted Joy's online store to see whether she carried So Fine.  She didn't, but she had Bottom Line 60 weight polyester and I know that thread is another favorite staple thread of many longarm quilters, so I ordered some Bottom Line cones that would coordinate with my 40 weight cotton variegated threads and that's what you see in the photo above.  [From left to right, the 50 weight matte polyester Superior's So Fine is the off-white thread cone in the back row, the horizontal spools in front are all the 40 weight cotton YLI Machine Quilting thread; the pink, peach, light blue, and solid periwinkle cones are all the 60 weight polyester Superior's Bottom Line, the darker blue cone at center back is 40 weight trilobal polyester Fil-Tec's Glide, and the two cones of blue and purple variegated thread are 40 weight cotton Superior's King Tut.]

Glide 40 wt Trilobal Polyester on Left, Bottom Line 60 wt Polyester on Right

I was delighted with how quickly my package of Bottom Line threads showed up after I'd ordered them from Quilted Joy, but I had mistakenly believed that Bottom Line was a matte polyester thread like So Fine when I ordered it.  I was surprised by its slick surface ( as opposed to the "grabby" texture of a matte thread) and slight sheen, and not sure whether the Bottom Line would be a good pairing with my 40 weight cotton threads, after all.  As you see in the photo above, Bottom Line is not hyper-shiny like Glide thread, but it's definitely not matte like So Fine, as shown in the photo below:

So Fine 50 wt Matte Polyester on Left, Bottom Line 60 wt Polyester on Right

Here's an example of two threads I was hoping to use together, the variegated King Tut in the needle and the solid periwinkle Bottom Line in the bobbin:  

40 wt Cotton King Tut on Left, Bottom Line 60 wt Polyester on Right

There is a HUGE size difference between these two threads, for one thing.  The 60 weight Bottom Line is a LOT skinnier than the 50 weight So Fine, and WAY, way skinnier than the 40 weight King Tut.  I know a lot of longarm quilters like to use a slightly lighter weight thread in the bobbin for a variety of reasons (more thread fits on a bobbin so bobbins last longer before running out, and lighter weight threads not creating as much buildup and stiffness with dense quilting, for instance), but is heavy 40 weight combined with hair-thin 60 weight too extreme of a combination?  

Then, about that surface texture thing.  I know that a matte thread with a microscopic roughness to the surface can be kind of "grabby" -- grabbing at the top thread when the two threads lock together in the needle hole to form a stitch, grabbing at Minky backing or batting and pulling it up through the needle hole, in some instances.  What I'm not sure of is whether, all else being equal, is it best to pair a grabby top thread like King Tut with a grabby bobbin thread like So Fine, or would I get better stitches if I paired the grabby top thread with a slick bobbin thread like So Fine or Glide?  After all, the visual impact of two different thread sheens is nil since the bobbin thread is only on the back of the quilt and the needle thread is only on the front.  One combination that I did NOT think to try with my 40 weight cotton thread is putting 40 weight Glide (slick, shiny polyester) in the bobbin.  Hmmm...

Anyway, while my longarm machine was warming up (running for 10-15 minutes with the bobbin removed and the needle unthreaded past the takeup lever, to distribute the drop of oil I'd placed in the hook race and to wake Millie up from her long winter's nap), I wound a bunch of bobbins and organized them in plastic bobbin cases so I'd know what kind of thread each one was.

M-Class Bobbins, Organized and Ready to Go

I wound those two bobbins with King Tut during an earlier, unsuccessful experiment -- but I can't bear to just waste the thread, so they stay wound with King Tut until I run out of empty bobbins!  I've got one case set up for matte threads (I am planning to try Aurifil 50 weight cotton in the top and bobbin at some point, since Lisa Calle told us in class that's her favorite quilting thread), and the Glide 60 and Glide 40 sections in the other case have been labeled in anticipation that I'll be trying those threads in the bobbin in the future, too.  I did use Glide 40 in the top and bobbin successfully previously, but not since I switched my machine from the L size "Smart Bobbin" to the bigger M-Class bobbins.  I also have an assortment of Magna-Glide and SuperBob prewound bobbins in my stash, so I feel like I'm ready to play now.

Possible Quilting Plan for Spirit Song, 59 x 75

...Meanwhile, I've been thinking about how to quilt Spirit Song.  (See iPad doodle above).  I like the secondary design created at the block intersections and want to emphasize that with the quilting almost as if the quilt had a diagonal setting alternating two different blocks rather than a straight horizontal setting of all the same blocks.  That means I won't be doing SID (Stitch In the Ditch) quilting of the horizontal and vertical seams between my 16" blocks.  My green lines represent where I will be doing SID, and the pale blue lines are where I will be doing additional straight lines to emphasize the diamond effect -- those are the quilting lines that I thought would look cool in the variegated 40 weight cotton threads, by the way, with no backtracking involved.  The off-white areas will be quilted with denser fills in the off-white So Fine.  Then in yellow, I started thinking about how to quilt the borders.  I sketched in some feathers first, but that was too fussy and too traditional.  But I think I'm liking the idea of extending those straight lines from the interior of the quilt out through the borders, like an echo or a ghost.  The purple variegated King Tut looks really pretty against that border print fabric, especially if it's just going to be straight line ruler work there.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking at the moment.  All is subject to change.  The most important thing I wanted to work out was which seams should be SID since I'll do all of the SID on the entire quilt first before going back to do the ruler work, and finally the fills.  I'll be loading this 59" x 75" top sideways for quilting so I can see as much of it while I'm working on it as possible, and also to minimize the downtime of stopping to advance the quilt to the next section.  

Again, those of you who are longarm quilters, please let me know in the comments about which threads you keep the same, top and bobbin, and which threads you like to pair with a different bobbin thread.  I'm especially interested in learning what folks like to use in the bobbin with monofilament thread in the needle or with metallic thread in the needle.

I'm linking this post with ·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  .