Tag Archives: Donna1

Long Arm Quilting #1 Donna – Time, Bobbins, and Batting: Oh My!! And Some Long Arm Tips Too

At about 12:30 PM Saturday afternoon, I decided that I was going to get three quilts done on the long arm. By 6 PM, I knew that wasn’t happening, and by 12:30 AM Sunday morning, I was sooooo ready to call it a day. That sounds like I’ve been hanging with Mr. Darcy for 12 hours, doesn’t it?  Well, admittedly, not all that time was spent quilting.  I tend to take a LOT of breaks, not to mention I was feeling slightly icky for most of the day.  Woke up with a headache (which explains the late start), felt pretty woozy most of the rest of the time, and of course I had my mandatory Facebook breaks.  If I could only stay off the internet I’d probably get a lot more done. The other thing of course is that even when you’re at the machine, you’re not always quilting.  There’s time to load, time to advance, time to wind bobbins, time to check the tension, time to pin & unpin zippers, time to baste, time to oil…. the list goes on and on.  I’d love to hazard a guess as to how long the quilting actually took, but I can’t.  Maybe next time I’ll remenber to run my stopwatch. Anyway, I did actually get two of the three quilts done that I was hoping for, and the third?  Well, maybe in the morning (later this morning) I’ll load it into the frame so at least it can stop being a permanent fixture in my livingroom. This post is about some of the lessons learned from Donna’s quilt, and then later I’ll post up photos of her entire quilt. I struggled quite a bit in the beginning just figuring out the thread I was going to use. If you’ll recall, I ordered 7 cones of thread for her quilt because the color cards I had just didn’t identify a clear winner.  I also had a minor scare when I realized that I hadn’t actually labeled the pictures I took of the thread when I first auditioned them, so I had to audition the thread all over again.  In the end, I settled on King Tut #909 Egypsy Rose (which is a lovely blend of deeper pinks and oranges) for the top thread and So Fine #415 Cherrywood (which is a really deep wine color) to match the back. This was a pretty scary proposition if you think about it: using 40 weight & 50 weight thread, light & dark toned threads, and a solid fabric for the quilt back.  Couple that with unfamiliar batting and it sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Well, that’s all part of the plan!! It was a great learning experience, and I’ll share some of those lessons with you now while I can still keep my beady eyes open to type. First let’s talk about batting.  When I sent my call out for quilt tops, I asked people to provide their own batting so I could try different kinds.  So while I am going to do a little batting-bashing as we go, it should not reflect on the individual quilter AT ALL, because lots of people purposely chose some battings in order to give me variety.  Hopefully it helps people understand why some long armers will not use certain batting, or why a batting may not be appropriate for long arming even though the quilter might accept it. The batting in this quilt was Mountain Mist 100% Polyester Batting.  On the package, it says “Uniform Thickness.”  Ummmm…. no, it’s not. Here’s a section with a weird flap that’s extra thick: And no – that’s not a wrinkle.  I pulled on it to smooth it out and realized very quickly that nope, it was an extra flap.  You can also see spots where the batting is clearly not uniform, with holes and thicker deposits.  I also kept finding these plastic shavings embedded in the batting: And since I didn’t want to run over these with my needle, I had to fish them out.  Also, because of the various thicknesses and random high spots, whenever I needed to do a tension test, the batting kept getting tangled in my hopping foot: I wish I could say this would be my last encounter with Mountain Mist, but I do believe some other folks sent me a sampling of it in other lofts. On a positive note, the extra loft that polyester batting has in general, is quite useful for quilts that aren’t perfectly pieced.  There’s a certain amount of give & take with the batting, and you can usually smooth over puckers with it.When you’re choosing a batting for a quilt, you have to take lots of factors like that into consideration. Do you want the quilt to shrink around the stitches when it’s washed to give that “antique” look?  Then you need to use a natural batting like cotton, bamboo, or wool.  Do you want the quilt to be extra warm? Use polyester batting.  Do you want the quilt to be really flat? Go with a cotton blend without the scrim layer. You also have to consider the quilting pattern – will you be quilting densely or doing a large meander?  Some battings you can only stitch 2″ – 4″ apart, while others allow you to stitch up to 10″ apart.  Keep that in mind too.I definitely much prefer backing fabrics that are NOT solid.  It really just calls attention to mistakes and makes it difficult to hide your stops & starts as you go along.  Still, it was a great illustration of how practicing starts & stops is necessary.  It did finally sink in that I need to use the manual hand-wheel (which is on the front right side of my machine next to the tension knob) to position the needle instead of using the needle up/down button and eyeballing it. (Sorry Donna, didn’t come to that epiphany until a little later in your quilt, and really wish I’d thought to do it when I was doing all that ruler work!)  With that said though, I managed to survive the experience and live to tell about it. I also have a really good example of why you absolutely must stay-stitch seams that are on the outside edge of your quilt: Quilts get a lot of abuse while they are on the frame; they get stretched a bit, smoothed, yanked, rolled, poked and prodded to make sure they stay absolutely square on the frame.  If you don’t stay stitch the edge, your seams can come apart, and this isn’t something that the long armer can really fix once it is on the frame (sorry Donna!  I basted it down but you may want to take a hand needle to it too.)  I had actually chosen the quilting to do on this quilt long before I settled on the thread – I knew I wanted to use one of Leah Day’s designs for the main part of the quilt.  Since the quilt had two contrasting borders, I wanted to provide some separation there, so I chose to do Trillium Leaves on the outside and some Reverse Loops on the inside: When starting work on the long arm, I always baste the top edge so that it is straight on the frame, then I baste the sides down to the edge of my quilting area.  This serves two purposes: one, it keeps the quilt from shifting, and two, it gives a visual guideline so I don’t bump into the rail with my machine as I’m stitching along and mess up a section of quilting.  It’s like a boundary line that I can come close to but not cross over. I also quilt the outside borders first, and work my way into the center of the quilt.  This is the exact opposite of quilting on a table top machine where you quilt from the center out! This design is completely done by free motion, and it’s up to me to decide where to go next, how to best fill in the shapes, plan a path so I don’t stitch myself into a spot that I can’t get out of, and make it as random as possible so your eye keeps moving over the quilt and there aren’t any obvious patterns.  The goal is to have a complete pass that fills the quilting space without breaking threads (intentional or otherwise.)  Sometimes, that’s not possible; I have a habit of stitching out my bobbins, so sometimes I’m going merrily along and the bobbin will run out.  In that case, I usually have to rip out a good 3-4″ of quilting to get to a good place to restart.  The absolute best place to restart stitching is in a point, or where two or more lines intersect or overlap. The WORST place to restart is along a curve, especially with contrasting or thick thread.  I managed to hit the trifecta on more than one occasion… My last comment is about bobbins.  Because I use so many different colors in my long arm quilting, I don’t like winding too many bobbins, but at the same time, it is annoying to stop quilting to wind a bobbin when you’re in a groove.   The other thing is that if you happen to use the same thread in the top and bobbin, but you only have one cone, needing to wind another bobbin means having to cut your threads, wind another bobbin, and then rethread the machine completely.  I am terrible at estimating quantities of things, and bobbins are no exception. I have a little sheet for each quilt that I’m using to document information about the quilts as I finish them.  The information includes the size of the quilt top, the thread used in both top & bottom, the type of batting, and how many bobbins were used.  I’m hoping to use this information to help me get better at estimating what I need to finish a project.  In the case of this quilt, I initially wound two bobbins, but I ended up needing 1-1/2 more bobbins to finish.  You really can’t go by the size of the quilt to estimate bobbins; it’s all about the density of the quilting. I do feel more comfortable using different weight threads in the top & bottom, but you do have to resign yourself to tension needing to be more closely watched and checked, and also that you’re going to get some amount of pokies no matter what you do.  Because the back was solid and the front was a lot busier, I tended to err on the side of the top tension being too tight, in order to make sure the top thread wouldn’t show on the bottom.  I wasn’t always successful, but I think overall I did a pretty good job at keeping them imbalanced in my favor.  I’m hoping that a run through the washing machine will take care of most of the pokies as the quilt relaxes more. And with that… I’m pooped!  I’ve taken photos of Donna’s finished quilt and it’s all folded & ready to be delivered tomorrow.  At my current rate of productivity though, I’d say odds are pretty good that she’ll see the quilt in person before the photos go up on my blog.  To endless possibilities, Ebony

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