Next up on the rack will be this Lone Star beauty. My customer has added borders to the top and bottom to make it fit on a bed, otherwise it would've been a traditional square Lone Star quilt.

She has asked for custom quilting on it, including SID in the Lone Star center and special motifs in the large tan areas. I think there will be some puckering around the Lone Star. So I'm going to do a partial float of the top, and when it's all racked up and ready to begin I'm going to ask my customer to come to my studio and help me work out the quilting designs. She will need to see how much extra fabric there is in the tan pieces for herself. Sometimes a quiltmaker is not aware that there are issues with their quilt top. Making this quiltmaker happy is a priority for me, and thankfully she lives right down the street.

Today I completed the binding on the Breast Cancer Awareness quilt. This customer likes the binding machine finished. So I began by stitching the binding to the back of the quilt:

I joined the ends diagonally:

Which just happened to work out perfectly!

When the binding was stitched onto the back, I took the quilt to the ironing board and pressed the binding out - away from the quilt:

That was so that I could pull the binding around to the front as much as possible to cover the stitching line. To make the mitered corner, I pressed the binding over the quilt edge and onto the front of the quilt in one direction:

Then, I pressed the binding over the quilt edge in the other direction. Which, if the planets are aligned that day, results in a nicely mitered corner:

Taking the quilt back to my sewing machine, I stitched the binding to the top of the quilt very close to the folded edge of the binding:

Turning the corner isn't so tricky. I do a backstitch, lift the presser foot, turn the quilt, and then carry on with my stitching:

And again, if all is right with the world that day, the miter will look something like this (or better):

And the back will look something like this (or better):

This week is full of quilt pick-ups and deliveries. Wednesday I'll be teaching a piecing class to 2 beginners. And on Thursday I'll be 200 miles away getting some dental work done. Which will result in some "down time" for me.

Maybe that "down time" will give me a chance to catch up on some much-neglected piecing of my own quilts...

My customer had been piecing this quilt for a very long time. My vision for quilting it involved outlining the pink ribbons with SID, and then doing a freehand swirly feather throughout. As I set out to do that, I realized that I had overestimated my skill level. Several times I trapped myself and had to tie off and start somewhere else. Which required ripping out stitches. Which wasted some time.

So I decided to just relax and go with the flow of the pattern, even if my consistency wasn't what I'd hoped. It is freehand, after all. My dependency on stencils, templates and pantographs stems directly from my lack of confidence in the freehand department.

The pink ribbons needed just a bit of dimension. So I quilted 2 lines in them. The ribbons pucker a bit, but since the ribbons are the main subject of this quilt I didn't mind that. Normally, an applique needs a lot more quilting to keep it from puckering. This quilt had a much more relaxed feel to it, and my customer gave me free reign to do whatever I thought was best.

I used Aurifil 40 wt. cotton #2326 on top with Magna-Quilt cotton 50 wt. #24525 Khaki prewound bobbins from Fil-Tec. The khaki color blended in perfectly with the dusty pink dotty flannel on the back.  I used an 11 SPI for no particular reason, and a 4.0 needle because of the thick fabrics. I kept my machine moving so fast for so long that it began to squeal! So I had to give it a rest and finished this quilt last night.

The back didn't photograph too well, but it sure looked soft and pretty in person.

Today I've begun doing a freehand all-over treatment on this brown and pink Breast Cancer Awareness quilt. My customer will be donating this quilt to be auctioned. I decided to outline the pink ribbons with SID to start with, and then work my way around them with curly feathers. I'm still not sure what to put in the triangle area of the ribbon, but I do know that I'm going to quilt one line through the applique to make the ribbon design pop out better.

So far it's taking a long time to accomplish each row. I think that's because of the border fabric, which I love, but I can't see my quilting while I'm working in it! So I've got to get over that and just move on.

On Tuesday I loaded and finished this adorable baby quilt. I used the "Check and Chase" pantograph because I love the swirls. I quilted it vertically (lengthwise) in order to squeeze out every inch of the barely-3-inches of backing on the sides, and I really like how that turned out.

I used Aurifil 40 wt. cotton in the top and in the bobbin, with a 4.0 needle and 10 SPI. The thread was a creamy yellow and it looked very fresh against all of those sweet baby colors.

Here is the back:

Also on Tuesday, I finished and delivered this pretty quilt to my customer. The pantograph quilted up beautifully, and it is such a simple and flowing pattern to quilt with. It is most certainly directional, as you can see on the back.

When I began this quilt today, I was keeping in mind the request of my customer - she wants something "girly" on it. The pantograph I chose is called "Cassaundra's Rose" by Donna Reinarts of The Quilt Rack. To me, the flower on this pantograph did not resemble a rose. But it resembled a pansy! And this quilt has sweet, purple pansies in the border as well as in some of the pieced blocks.

The background fabric throughout is a sort of pink, faintly-dyed fabric. So I wanted to find a thread that could somehow pick up that pink along with this pale purple shade in the pansies:

I knew I wanted to use Glide thread again because of its frilly, shimmery look. I found this spool just waiting for the job:

The color is called "Tabriz Orchid" #40522. I paired it with Fil-Tec's "The Bobbin Line" 60 wt. embroidery bobbin thread with the same name, #13583:

It's much paler than the top thread, but it is a perfect match for the backing fabric on the quilt. In fact, it sinks right in to the fabric unnoticed.

I chose The Bobbin Line thread because it's the same thread Fil-Tec uses to fill their prewound bobbins. But their prewounds only come in white or black. So they sell the colored bobbin threads on spools and cones so that a person can wind their own bobbins. Which is exactly what I did, and the tension has been perfect throughout this quilt. And, the bobbin didn't run out until I had quilted about 80% of the quilt. The amount of time I saved NOT winding bobbins every couple of rows was surprising. I'm sold on this bobbin thread!

The first thing I did, before stitching the first row, was to line up the center of the quilt with the center of one of the pansy motifs in the pantograph pattern. I wanted there to be a series of pansies down the very middle of the quilt. I didn't want a person to look at the quilt and have off-set pansies down the center. What that produced, as the quilt was quilted, were nicely centered pansy motifs in my customer's blocks:

Although not perfect, there is a sense of order and that's what I was hoping for.

The pattern stitches out very smoothly and very nicely. The batting, which is Hobbs 80/20 Heirloom Cotton/Poly Blend, really shows the quilting texture:

I told myself I'd stop for the day when my bobbin ran out. I had no idea just how far a bobbin could go! So tomorrow I will finish up the last 4 rows of this beautiful quilt and deliver it to my customer.

Yesterday's post about this shimmery quilt left me no time or energy to post about how much I enjoyed listening to what designs this quilt wanted.

The only requests my customer made regarding the design on this quilt were that 1) it be in the All-over Plus price range; 2) it not be quilted heavily, and 3) that the red border be quilted in the same swirly pattern as the Jinny Beyer quilt from last week.

The center was originally going to be a leafy pantograph. I ordered several from Intelligent Quilting because they had a great sale. But when they arrived, I noticed one of the pantographs was grabbing me - that wasn't leafy. It is called "Simply". I ordered it because I like its gender-neutral, multi-directional, lightly-quilted look. Which is fitting for the majority of the quilts I receive. When I saw its design, I saw how it mimicked the piecing blocks in the center of the quilt with angles and curves:

So I discussed using it with my customer and she was agreeable. Not only do I love the outcome, but by some wonderful mathematical act this pantograph created secondary designs in the light-colored outer edges of the center.

The edges were very easy to begin and end inside of the pantograph area. Stitching out the pattern went quickly and I was on to the borders.

I chose to make large, flowing ruffled leaves in the outer border which I freehanded after chalking a line down the center of the border to keep the quilting even. Very straightforward and very fun.

The swirly design was stenciled into the red border, and it just barely fit. I wanted the swirls to be uninterrupted so I did not turn the stencil in the middle of the border. Nor did I use the corner of the stencil to turn the corners. I ended them in a pleasing way at each seam line instead. This red border, as well as the red corner blocks, is where I decided to use a lighter thread than the rest of the quilt. The goldish thread blended in so well that I could not see where I was going or what I was quilting. So I picked out a few beginning stitches and switched to a paler thread, Metro Embroidery Polyester #1922 with Aurifil 40 wt. cotton #2123 in the bobbin.

When it came to the red cornerstones, I wanted to somehow pull together the pantograph design with the leaf design. So I chalked a reference line using my indispensable Pam Clarke Basic 8 stencil. I also chalked reference lines on the outer edges of the quilt where my customer will be adding her binding:

I grabbed a circle template that I felt would give me the right shape in the center of the block. I lined up the reference lines, found the middle of the curve, and pulled up the bobbin thread:

The reason I started in the middle of the curve, instead of in a point, is because I wanted the entire motif to be continuously quilted. The leaves will begin and end in the curve.

Using the circle template, I stitched from reference line to reference line:

All the way back to the start:

Without removing the needle, I headed right into the first leaf and continued all the way around to the beginning:

I pulled the bobbin up again, making sure I pulled up a long tail. I tied and buried these beginning and ending threads into the quilt, and this is how it looked:

This quilt has been such a pleasure to work on. It will be delivered on Monday, and I hope my customer is very happy with how it turned out.

Next week will again be pantograph therapy for me. I am looking forward to purple pansies and frilly designs!

Not all quilting experiences are created equal.

This shimmery wall-size quilt was slated to use the exact same threads as the last quilt on the rack. The tension on the last quilt was great. The thread colors were perfect. I couldn't wait to use them again.

I touched nothing. I adjusted nothing. I began to quilt the pantograph in the center of this quilt and all was well.

And then, chaos tried to ensue. The stitches on the top were flatlining, and so were the stitches on the bottom. But sometimes they would switch off and produce small loops when I wasn't expecting it. There was nothing I could do to make the top thread happy, and the bobbin acted like I was asking it to do something unusual.

But instead of the expected chaos that could've ruined my day, I was enlightened. After almost 5 years of working with this machine I finally saw the light: my machine is not The Enemy after all.

All of these years I've been yelling at it ("for $17,000 you'd better make a perfect stitch!"); analyzing it ("okay, I'll try a different thread/needle/SPI"); threatening it ("if you mess this up for me again, you're going on the street with a FREE sign"); indulging it ("as soon as I add all of these ridiculously expensive upgrades, I know you'll be my friend"); and eventually trying to sell it ("Fine! Ruin someone else's life!").

Yet, the answer was there all the time had I just listened to all of the other quilters out there. They've said that tension is influenced by many things. And, that the rise and fall of the seemingly-sane quilter hinges directly on whether they will ever unlock the combination of those things.

We tweak at least 2 things every time we tweak. So that means we put our problem-solving at a disadvantage right from the start. Our service technicians say "just tweak one thing at a time, try the machine, and then tweak the next thing", etc. But we are genetically incapable of that. I am, anyway.

As fate would have it, this shimmery quilt caused me to discover for myself that fabric ALONE can make all the difference with tension. When I put this shimmery quilt on the rack, I didn't touch one single element of my thread or bobbin. I literally just began to stitch it exactly as I had stitched the previous quilt on the rack. Same thread. Same bobbin. Same settings.

The shimmery fabrics on this quilt are on the front and the back. They are beautiful. But they are different than regular cotton quilting fabric, which in turn causes my thread and my needle and my machine settings to react differently. My mind goes crazy when I think about how different my outcome would've been if there had only been shimmery fabric on the back alone. Or if there were only random areas of shimmery fabrics. I don't think I would've been convinced that fabric alone could cause such a difference.

And now, I am convinced. And finally at peace with my machine.

The final finish on this pantograph quilt was a success, and I owe it to the love affair Glide thread has with Aurifil thread.

I knew I wanted to use a goldish-yellow shiny thread for the meandering leaves on this quilt. I did not want any dark thread to pass across the light-colored background fabrics. I chose one of my all-time favorites, Glide 40 wt. polyester embroidery thread, in "Khaki" #24525. Here is how it looks as it crosses the different fabrics:

And as it rambles across the quilt:

In my world, shiny polyester top threads get along very well with 40 wt. Aurifil cotton thread in the bobbin. This time I grabbed the 50 wt. version instead, because the color was just right. The backing is a very dark brown, so I wanted the bobbin to be obviously gold against it. But I did not want the bobbin thread to come up to the top and make dark dots. So, color #2915 was the perfect choice for color and for tension. Here is how the back looks:

I'd like to say I made the conscious choice of using a 3.5 needle because I'm so professional. But it was more like a combination of laziness and whimsey that I decided to leave the needle in from my last job and throw caution to the wind! It turned out to be the right choice, with no credit on my part.

Pantographs can be quite boring. But for me, they are a wonderful bit of therapy. And I think it's because I know that the threads we use act like jewelry on a quilt.

These two companions are now married to each other, with hopes of making lots of beautiful quilts together.

Next up on the rack is this pretty quilt, which actually has a somewhat masculine lodge theme because of its border. There are canoes and Moose (Mooses?) on the fabric. I was stumped at first on which pantograph to use. I have this one, which is called "Bear in the Woods Meander":

While it has a woodsy theme, I don't consider it to have a lodge theme. So, I decided to take my cue from fabric in the main body of the quilt instead, which is more of a viney, meandering leaf:

Seeing the very simple leaves meandering in the green fabric, I chose "Meandering Jasmine" from Urban Elementz.

The off-white background fabric of this quilt actually has mottled gold tones. So I'm auditioning some gold threads this morning to see which one speaks to me.

On the piecing front (which is a very sparsely occupied front, believe me) I have begun the next round of paper-piecing this "Phat Tuesday" pattern by Deb Karasik. The dark red spikes are not making me 100% happy, but I'm going to try to live with it before I scrap it and make a new paper foundation to replace it. Fortunately, because I'm not an artist, I did not make all 8 spikey pieces yet. Just in case my sense of color is askew. And right now, I think it is.

Setting aside time for piecing is quite rare for me, and for any longarm quilter who quilts for others. But it does make the process more deliberate. And that helps me to be absolutely sure before I move on to the next phase.