Saturday, August 14, 2010

Quilting!

I have been holding on to quilts from Regina and Shellie for a while because I just haven't been in the mood to quilt anything. Last month, I received my copy of the Pajama Quilter Rethreaded and the companion workbook and I have been looking at the workbook thinking of what I could use on either of these quilts.

Last week, Amy and I were chatting and thinking that we needed to designate a weekend as a quilting weekend and this turned out to be the weekend for that. With that in mind, I picked up 2 Kid Komfort kits at the Guild meeting on the 2nd to test out my machine, Squiggy, and see how it was running and quilting.

I also asked Amy and Amy S. about how they quilt and it turns out that they both float their battings and tops and I decided to try that out. It seems like it would make the process of loading a quilt for quilting much easier and quicker.

It DOES!!

Last night after I woke up from my nap, I loaded this quilt onto the frame and got it quilted in just about an hour which included the time it took to clean up the machine and quilting area and oil the machine.

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Squiggy sounds a little like an antique car engine putting along, but the stitches look great and I didn't have any issues with thread breakage.

I decided to load the other quilt on the frame and give it a go even though it was 11 PM. Unfortunately, the top thread broke twice in about 3 minutes and I gave up and went to bed. I finished it up this morning.

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I started out trying to quilt the wonky stars a la the Pajama Quilter's new workbook, but they ended up looking too wonky for my taste so I switched to regular stars.

100_2956 Whoa this picture came out way too blue! The color is more like the first 2 pictures.

And finally, I let Maisy lay on the quilt once I folded it up a little. Nemo fabric is on the back. She is looking a little sheepish because I shooed her off both of the quilts when I was trying to take pictures.

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Now, I am off to try my hand at pantos again. I have the perfect one to use on Regina's quilt, but I want to test it out before using it on a good quilt. Luckily, I found a lot of fabric to make more Project Linus quilts!

11 comments:

Sandie @ crazy'boutquilts said...

Oh sweet Maisey, she looks like she is ready for a shoo. LOL :-) Great job on both quilts! I have to rent from the LQS to quilt, but one of the ladies taught me to float the top and I loved it too. Have fun with your panto. :-)

InfinityQuilter/Knitter said...

Glad that you tried floating the top. Bummer on the thread breaking but it sounds like it's working again now?!?! How did the panto quilting go?

Poor Maisy...maybe a squeakie toy would cheer her up!

elizabeth said...

WTG JILL, YOU FOUND A GREAT WAY TO PRACTICE A NEW QUILTING DESIGN AND HAVE A USEFUL ITEM WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED. THE PROJECT LINUS WILL LOVE THE NEW QUILTS.

Michelle said...

Your quilts look great!

Regina said...

Maisy is such a hoot!!! The Project Linus quilts look great...

Jennifer said...

WTG with all that quilting; I float almost all of my tops too and it does make things go so much faster. I need to have a quilting weekend just like you guys but I have been too lazy to move my machine back downstairs!

scraphappy said...

I've tried it both ways and found that I like floating my tops. The quilting looks great. Having lots of tops to practice on is definitely the way to go with getting new patterns down. Good luck with the pantographs.

Shellie said...

Good for you Jilly. I think it looks great!

South Jersey Quilter said...

Hey Jill, I just read a book you might like. Mary Jane Maffini writes a series about Charlotte, who is a professional organizer. She has two mini dachshunds named Truffle and Sweet Marie, who are in the story a lot. The first book is Organize your corpses, and the one I just finished is called The Cluttered Corpse. They're more of a cozy, nothing real violent.
Holly

Beth said...

I still cannot do stars nicely. I got a star template to use on the long arm when I got the Gammill last summer. Its the ONLY way I can do a decent star...or a panto. I think your quilting looks great! I still struggle trying to figure out WHAT to quilt where...and when I get done, it was not as big a deal as I tried to make it! Keep up the good work!

Gina said...

Oh how can you shoo that poor little love off the quilts. Don't they all belong to her and Max

Love and hugs Gina xxx