First things first… let me tell you about me and what this blog is about:
1. What is a Short Arm Quilter?
Short arm quilters are NOT quilters with ” short arms” or that are short… but quilters using a domestic sewing machine on a quilt frame to quilt their quilts.
2. Why “confessions”?
When I began my journey quilting on a frame I was looking for education on how to do this technique. Basically, I was looking for HELP! There were no books, videos, or classes around. So I went to a large machine quilting show and took classes about longarm quilting. I quickly learned that you do not tell that you are quilting on a domestic on a frame, as you will be laughed at. So I pretended to be a longarm quilter for 1 week to learn all I could about frame quilting. I took what I learned and translated the techniques to the home quilting frame and my little 10″ machine.
I have learned a lot since then! Many trials and errors later…
3. Why I teach:
I was asked by so many people “how do you use this thing?” that I started teaching to explain my techniques and the tools that make frame quilting easier. This has led to my travels throughout the US teaching on the home quilting frame with my JUKI TL 98Q to SHOW and explain how to use home systems. In spring 2010 my book, Short Arm Quilting, was self published to offer a tangeable guidebook. My article on Short Arm Quilting in the Dec2010/Jan2011 issue of the The Quilter magazine was written as a guide to what to look for in a domestic machine to place on a frame. In the Spring of 2011 another article will come out in The Quilter in more detail on Short Arm Quilting. Through the sharing of this information I hope to encourage, educate, and INSPIRE home quilters to USE their frames for quilting not as a place to hang the ironing!
So please join me on the new journey as I share with you information that I gather and learn myself thru 2011!
