Confessions of a Short-Arm Quilter

As I told you last week, I have discovered many new toys (tools)that make my quilting life a little bit easier… this weeks toy is…

The Scissor Spot….

The Scissor Spot

This tool is so handy that I forget that don’t have it when I work on other machines!  I attach it to my machine to hold my snips when I am quilting!  If you are anything like me you are constantly loosing your snips, or they are accross the room, or you have rolled them up in the quilt!!  Done this more than I want to know!

Holding my EZ Kut snips!

The Scissor Spot attaches to the machine with a suction cup.  The scissors stay with a magnet!

Scissor Spot on my piecing machine

If you have a machine that is computerized this magnet is not strong enough to affect the machine!  So I have one at my quilting machine and one on my piecing machine!  AND I have 2 sets of snips! So my snips are always where I am! Yeah!

Scissor spot as a pin spot! Handy dandy!

I also use this to hold pins when I am piecing or loading a quilt on to the frame.  The pins stay where I put them.  It is a quick and easy way to set those pins somewhere safe.

Stay tuned next week more toys ( I mean tools!)

Keep quilting!

I love finding new toys, I mean tools!  Lately I have found several that really make my life easier! They help from organizing, marking, quilting, and even loading the quilt!  In the next few weeks I will be sharing about each of these tools, which will be available on first at MQS May 18 & 19… and then on my website after on May 21!

Speaking of MQS… a wonderful machine quilting show with lots of great classes & vendors, I will be attending again this year. I am taking the loooooooong drive with a friend, bring all my equipment (quilt frame, machine and all!) and tools to share about!

My teaching will take place all day on friday May 18 and the morining of May 19.  The friday classes are a wonderful way to completely understand (and see!) how Short Arm Quilting is supposed to work!!  I will also have my tools, new and old, available in the classroom. All the tools I share about work well with any home quilting system.  While there are many quilting tools out there for frame quilting, not all work well with home quilting systems.

so stay tuned for more about my new tools… and for more information on MQS check out www.imqa.org.

Happy Quilting!!

Wenda

Quilting in a straight line…HOW?  

Quilting on a frame is a nice change from pushing and shoving the quilt around, but one quickly realizes that to quilt in a straight line it isn’t so easy!  The machine carriage is so sensitive to every bump and seam in the quilt that when you move the machine  in a straight line it becomes difficult to keep perfectly straight when going over multiple seams.  Moving in a diagonal line is even more difficult! 

So what can you do?  Grab a Long Arm Ruler.  Long Arm Rulers are thicker & stronger than the rulers used for rotary cutting.  They come in may different shapes and sizes.  There are round, curves, feathers, straight, wavy, clam shell, and many templates shapes such as leaves, moons, hearts & stars…

How do you use these ruler?

You need to be sure you have a RULER FOOT on your machine… to create one simply use the Teflon Adaptor by Swiftquilter,New Zealand.  It easily pops into the round ring of a free motion foot and is held in place with a little metal c clamp.  Now you are ready to begin quilting with rulers!

Teflon Adaptor, bottom edge up

Then you will place ruler on the quilt, with a little pressure down to keep the ruler in place, and move the foot along the edge of the ruler.  Remember the stitching line will be 1/4″ away from the edge of the ruler because the needle is 1/4″ from the edge of the ruler. 

moving the foot along the edge of the ruler

here’s a video that may help… ( use your browsers back arrow to come back to the blog when video is done!)

http://www.facebook.com/v/1198351561581

My favorite ruler for beginners is the Line Tamer ruler.  It has an opening in the center of the ruler.  Place the ruler over the area to be quilted, place the machine foot into the opening, and stitch along this path.  The foot stays inside the path, keeping the stitching nice and straight.  Once you are good at this, use the outside edge of the ruler for straight line work too. 

The Line Tamer ruler

Now you are ready to do cross hatching, x’s, and many traditional quilting designs!

Well I am home once again from my traveling adventures to MQX in Rhode Island and MQS in Kansas.  Wonderful events and wonderful classes! 

While I love educating and sharing all about the stuff you CAN do with a home frame system, I want to be sure I am giving you what you want… soooo….

What are your questions?  What are your concerns?  Believe me you aren’t the only one with these questions… many others share the same problems.  I want to be sure that I address the needs of my audience…

So let me know…

thanks!

Wenda

Dueling quilt frames!

Lately I have been spending my days getting ready for my Spring workshops!  Two quilt frames in the living room surrounded with lots of tools, cleaning equipment, and more quilting tools! 

I will be teaching at MQX in Providence RI on April 13-17.  And I will be at MQS in Overland Park (kansas city area), KS  on May 12-16. 

All the classes are the basics on a home quilting frame.  It is awesome to be able to SEE how this type of quilting actually works!  Also to talk to someone whe ACTUALLY has been successful on the quilting frame!  Yes I really do quilt on it! 

My travel frame. All cleaned and ready to go!

I keep it basic, but I include information on troubleshooting, tension, leadercloth, loading the quilt in 15 minutes, and turning the quilt.  Then I move into Pantographs, patternboards, and ruler work. All directed to the quilter who works on a home quilting system with a smaller machine. 

I believe in education, but we are such a visual society that we need to SEE how the system operates! 

I took classes 5 years ago looking for education and could not find any directed to the small systems, so not I teach to help those who were in my shoes then!  I never regretted taking the classes I could take, even though they were on the longarm system.  But had I had classes on my specific system I would have jumped at the opportunity! 

So, here is your chance!  Don’t miss out on classes where you can SEE how the home quilting frame works.  And be sure to say HI! I found you on your blog… if you do I have a special gift for you! 

Juki baby... happy again after a nice cleaning and oil bath.