T-shirt Quilt Delivered!

Today I delivered the quilt to Nancy and Shel Ferdman for their daughter, Katharine.  It was the t-shirt quilt.  I had worked on it for quite a while.  It was fun.  She had sent some really cute tees.  She chose a backing that was bright and perfect for a college student.  It was challenging quilting it, because it was such a large and heavy quilt.  Bill helped me put it on the frame.  Once on, I found that it was hard to roll the top tightly on the  bar.  One of the blocks had her letter from high school on it. It made that block so much thicker.  I ended up leaving the tension off of all the bars, just trying to keep them as taught as possible manually.  After a prayer for help, I was amazed at how well it went.  I had the whole quilt quilted in just 2 hours!!!  I meandered the whole thing, using a variated thread from Superior threads. 

Here is a close-up of the quilt, as well as showing how cute the backing was!

This quilt was so big, Bill had a hard time getting a picture of the whole thing!

Halloween Quilts

I made a Halloween quilt for Tim's family several years ago, when the boys were little.  It was a "cutesy" one.  I decided the boys needed a more grown up quilt for themselves now.  I found some neat fabric and made them each a quilt that was roughly 45"x60".  This one is for Jimmy:

And this one is for Jason:

I ordered a glow-in-the-dark thread and used that in the machine(not the bobbin) for the quilting.  I practiced until I was able to do a continuous-line spider web.  It was alot of fun trying that.  Here is a closeup of the quilting:

The fun began when I turned the lights off in my studio while the quilt was still on the frame!  It was really neat!  There was a very delicate yellow spiderweb showing up on the quilt!  I think it would have showed more if I had filled in an area instead of the stitching like this, but it was still very neat!!!  Needless to say, the boys, as well as their mom and dad, thought it was pretty cool!



Pauline's quilt

I spent several days last week and yesterday afternoon and evening working on a quilt for a woman that works at TEA.  Her son graduated from high school and is going to University of Central Florida.  She made a beautiful quilt for him using all batiks. It is gorgeous!  She used a pattern from a Kaffe Fassett book.  She has a black batik for the backing and it's 108" wide- I love it... no seam!  I made a pantograph pattern to use, with the logo for UCF in it- a Pegasus.  It is big meandering and then the Pegasus.  I had to learn how to offset the quilting so that one row started with the Pegasus design in it and the next one started with the meandering.  Luckily for me, I found good instructions on the internet.  Now if I can just remember what to do!  :-)   I used an orange thread for the top and bobbin.  It was alot of fun.  Last night I finished it.  It really looks nice.  Hope Pauline likes it!


This shows the quilting.  Pegasus is the logo for UCF so I did continuous line quilting involving the Pegasus.



Pauline's quilt was fun working on.  I loved the batiks she chose.  Maybe some day I'll do one with batiks!

T-shirt Quilt

Friday afternoon and evening I worked on cutting apart the teeshirts and ironing the interfacing to them.  I spent 6 hours on them.  I made myself a pressing board just for this task.  I covered a piece of 1/4" plywood with a quilted silver ironing board fabric that I bought at Joanns.  It worked just great for this project!

I finished putting the interfacing on the tee blocks on Sunday afternoon.  I worked all afternoon today trimming the blocks so that they all measure 14 3/4 " (I know that's a wierd measurement... I would have liked them to be smaller, but there was one tee shirt that made it necessary for that size.)  Next step... cutting the fabric to frame each block, the sashing and the intersecting squares.

Work In Progress (WIP)

I'm working on a new quilt now. This is for some special friends of ours who have an anniversary coming up.  It's a throw size.  I put it on my frame and started following a pantograph called "Swirls".  I really enjoy using the pantographs. 

Each time I quilt is a learning experience.  With the last quilt I did, I drew up a pantograph, only to find that it was too big for my machine (meaning that I couldn't sew the whole design without having to move my quilt up on the frame.) It was 13" tall, and the throat on my machine will only accomodate a 12-12 1/4" tall one.  The next one I did, I made 7" tall.  It worked fine, but if I'd have made it 6" tall instead, I could have sewn 2 rows of the design before having to roll the quilt.  Live and learn!  With the Swirls panto, I made it so that 2 rows were 10" tall (which was nice because I could then print them off on regular computer paper.)

I had a little trouble with the first couple of rows of quilting.  It would do fine until I got to a seam, and then it really bogged down.  I thought that maybe I didn't have the take up bar (the one that is in the back that is where the 3 layers of quilt- quilt top, batting, and backing- roll onto after they have been quilted) up high enough.  I moved it up, but still had the same problem.  I then realized that a vertical bar holding the take up bar had moved and was no longer at a ninety degree angle.  I tightened that.  Still drag...   What's wrong?  I had Bill check it when he got home.  He thought that I had the take up bar too high.  I moved it back down and, "voila"!  Worked great!!!

I finished the quilting yesterday and had such a good time!  Boy, do I love this machine!

Next project?  We'll see...

By the way, I'll post pictures of this quilt later!  I don't want my friends to see it and ruin their surprise!


Now I can add the picture.  My friends just celebrated their 46th anniversary. 
I made this quilt for them because they have always enjoyed the seashore. 



Our bedspread on the frame



 The third quilt I made was actually for us, can you believe it?  I already had the top put together before I got my new machine.  I love the fabric! It's from Hobby Lobby and is brown, tan, and teal with gold metallic outlines. I had tried quilting it on the sewing machine that I had originally gotten with my new frame.  It just didn't work out.  Even though the machine had a speed control on it, my stitches were not even.  The speed control is supposed to make sure that no matter how fast or slow I am moving my machine on the frame, the stitches will all be whatever length I set them to be.  Not true with the original Babylock.  However, with my new CJ, it is beautiful!  I used a pantograph called popcorn, and a variated thread that was the same colors as the fabric!  Beautiful!  I used solid brown for the backing, so the stitching really showed up nicely!  I was amazed at how easy it was, even though the quilt is over 100" long and wide!  It took me roughly 5 1/2 hours to quilt the whole quilt!  Never could have done that without the frame!  The quilt was so heavy, it would have really been a lot of work!



The Popcorn design shows up nicely on the back











I'm in business!

 

I got my first order on the 4th of July! A co-worker of Bill's asked me to quilt a quilt for her parents' 50th anniversary.  It was a 69"x69" quilt.  Around its border were blocks that different family members had signed.  In the center was a machine embroidered block with their name.  I decided to use a pantograph that had hearts in it.  It was a littler un-nerving to be working behind the machine.  That's where I stand when I use pantographs.  The laser light is on the back of the machine and I have that light follow the pantograph, which is on the frame table.  Bill stood in front of the frame and watched as I sewed.  I had to be careful to not stitch over the beautiful embroidered block.  I meandered in the sashing between all of the border blocks.  I used a variated thread, which showed up beautifully on the back of the quilt.  I really had fun with it- and appreciated Bill cheering me on.

The beginning

On Saturday, July 2, 2011, I got my long arm quilting machine. We brought it home and set it up. Thankfully, I have a spare bedroom for it. We put the frame up at the 5 foot size. I have to say, it was a little intimidating. I put a muslin "practice quilt" on and played away, I was amazed and excited with how smooth it moved.

My first "real quilt" was a 36" square baby quilt. Was I ever excited when I had it quilted in 20 minutes! Amazing! I meandered with hearts all over it.

I'm hooked!