The Long Arm of the... longarm (Quilt 26)

At about the same time as my new longarm system arrived, we had some trouble with telephone/internet service at our home.  I cannot explain why, but Telstra, our service provider, took 5 weeks to fix it.

Well... the long(arm) and the short(arm) of the story is that, because hubby MUST have internet access for business purposes, we had to relocate as we awaited the fix. It was a long 5 weeks, let me tell you.

But finally service was restored, and I've begun waltzing with "Matilda" (my name for the long arm machine).

Oh my... big learning curve.

But I'm coming along.

I prepared a few "sacrificial" projects (ie: things that I wouldn't curl up and die over if they didn't turn out), and have been playing. The first one to go was the smallish purple log-cabin I mentioned in this post: . It's made up of very cheap jelly-roll fabric from Spotlight (which I got at clearance prices).

And here's how it went:
First, I placed the backing fabric on the machine, right side down.

 Now I pin the backing to the "leader cloth" (which in the photo above is hanging down from the upper most support bar).

OK... now see the backing pinned to the leader cloths (below) before I tighten the bars:

And (below) the backing is now loaded and positioned.  What we do now is lay the batting on top - not pinning, just "floating" it)

Batting in position (below)

Then we "float" the quilt top over the batting - and stitch it all together with a straight line, working hard to stay within the 1/4" seam allowance.

As you can see (above) I had a little trouble staying straight. ALSO - I should have extended the stitch to a basting width (which I didn't here... ah... the things we learn)....

Once I've anchored the top of the quilt by basting through the top/batting/backing on one end, I baste the sides to secure them (topic for another post, I think).

And away we go.  I practiced quite a bit to get my free motion "swirlies" right - but if you doubleclick the image below, I think you'll agree I did OK.

 

And here we are - just bout 2.5 hours later - the entire project is quilted.  Not terribly impressive, but remember this is my FIRST ATTEMPT, and I am very pleased.  It would have taken many hours to accomplish the same thing by hand.

Off the frame and ready to bind!

One down, thousands to go.... LOL

And much thanks to faithful friend Jen - who email'd me to remind me I'd not updated my blog this week as I'm supposed to.