If you have a weak stomach, you might want to avert your eyes....

Two entire rows (at least) look just like this on the back of my customer's Pineapple quilt:

I discovered it before I began working on this quilt today, which means half of yesterday's work was a wash. And half of today's work as well. So far I have picked out most of one row. One hour = $0.

I already know that my Gammill is a lemon. Not all Gammills are lemons, I hear. But mine is and so after almost 6 years I've finally learned to give in to sub-standard results, resolving to give my customers discounts because of my temperamental machine.

But this time I blame myself. Last week I replaced the rotary tension assembly since it was clearly tired. When I replaced it, there was a clicking sound when I stitched. The new assembly was in the exact position as the old assembly, so I knew it wasn't the new part. I had no intention of adjusting the white knob, because if there is one thing I learned from my dealer it's that I was to never adjust the white rotary tension knob. The little silver stem that it turns on should always be flush with the edge of the knob - never sticking out or retracted in. "Okay. I will never touch that knob."

Twists of fate happen all the time in my life. What are the chances that I would receive this book by Gina Perkes on the same day as I installed my new rotary tension assembly? I ordered the book so I could learn some new custom quilting techniques. 

Lo and behold I come across this:

I scoffed at it, last week, and said to myself "Well Gina of course you have no fear - you're famous and every technician with breath in his lungs would hop on the first plane to help you if your adjustment backfires and your work comes to a complete stop." It was a catty remark, I know. But that's how dark my heart has become.

So today when my tension went belly-up, I scrolled every tension scenario through my mind until I finally remembered Gina's book with her fingers turning that little white knob. With my chin up, I marched over to my little white knob and fearlessly tightened it until it looked like this:

That was the only change I made. I had nothing to lose so I began to stitch the pantograph, praying and holding my breath at the same time. I stitched through an entire Baptist Fan motif and reached under the quilt to feel the stitches. They felt perfect. I kept going and felt again. Perfect still. At the end of the row, I exhaled and rolled the quilt up to where I could see the stitches on the back. I'm happy to report that Gina was right! My tension was now perfect. And, the clicking in my rotary tension assembly has stopped altogether. The new assembly was not the problem. I know that because I had secretly tried to tighten the old one the first year I owned my machine, and it made terrible train-track stitches on the top. 

As fate would have it the formula for this fix turned out to be: 

Judy C. + new rotary tension assembly + Gina Perkes + 2 cups of coffee + inspired rebellion = Perfect Tension.

After almost 6 years of using this machine, I thought that I could replace one very easy part and everything would be fine. I installed the new one with the same exact setting as the old one, and that ended up being the problem. Such is life with my Gammill.

I hope the next twist of fate brings along a buyer for our house. Which will set in motion our move to Southern California. Which will put me in the middle of a network of longarmers. Which will allow me to have actual technicians work on my machine when I need it. It sounds so surreal! Can there be a world where longarm machines get tuned up and maintained like cars? Since they cost as much as cars?

Today's post could be titled "The Brown Post". Never before have I had so many brown quilt projects being worked on all at one time! The custom quilt (above) is finished now, and I like the border. I say that because I've done this style of border before, but it never looked even. I've used stencils and wave rulers and never have they been as smooth and as evenly-spaced as they were on this quilt. I can't believe that after almost 6 years of doing people's borders it never occurred to me to approach it differently - like I did yesterday.

First, I used my centering tape to figure out the middle, which also helped me to do very basic math so I could chalk these lines:

This acrylic circle template just happened to be the right size to fit perfectly in between the chalked lines, allowing for the hopping foot's width, so I began my first wave from left to right:

When I got to the end I came back, stitching the other wave from right to left:

The corners are slightly smaller, but I didn't stress about this at all (for a change). I have abandoned the practice of driving myself crazy trying to figure out corner math. I knew that when the two corners would be joined, it would all work out and be pretty:

This morning I had the pleasure of working on this perfectly-pieced pineapple quilt. My customer asked for brown thread, so we agreed to use the medium brown in the quilt as the thread shade. I explained to her that if we chose the darkest brown, it would look kind of like a wobbly train track on the light areas. 

I chose to use Aurifil 28 wt. #4012, with the same color of 40 wt. in the bobbin. The thick brown is so pretty on this quilt! And combined with the traditional baptist fan pantograph, I think she's going to be very happy when it's finished:

And speaking of brown. This double Irish Chain is in the works for my Mom's living room:

She bought a painting and it has these exact colors in it. So I told her I just happened to have bought these fabrics a couple of years ago and I'd be happy to make her a living room quilt. She was ecstatic! 

Funny, but between the two of us we've made about 80 quilts. Yet neither one of us has ever made one for each other. Right off the bat I can tell you why: we have completely different tastes in fabric and quilt patterns. 

The perfect irony of this project is that we both like the Irish Chain pattern, and we both like contemporary florals. And here they are paired up in harmony. How did that happen!? The colors are way out of her comfort zone. In fact, she hates dark colors and can't even shop in quilt stores that specialize in Civil War fabrics. But this new quilt is different. It's warm and a bit contemporary, eclectic and a bit masculine. And that just happens to be the right formula for her living room. 

She hasn't actually seen these fabrics, so this is somewhat of a surprise. The finished product will take on a different look when I do the quilting, because I have an applique plan up my sleeve...

My customer is a cheerful, traditional, no-nonsense kind of lady. Her homespun-style quilts are warm and earthy. She has lived her life in the country, and like many women out here she has spent years of her life making quilts. By hand. The next quilt in my queue also belongs to her. It is a homespun pineapple quilt. Not paper-pieced....

The back of this quilt shows her humble attention to detail. She not only machine stitched a beautiful quarter-inch seam throughout, but she also basted down the seam allowances:

She tells me that she used to make her quilts with hand sewn seams and she has always hand quilted them herself. But alas, she has been storing these quilts away since the 80's I think, and she just wants to enjoy them now.

So, back to today's quilt. The motifs in the blocks are so simple, yet I always stress about perfection. Which means stenciling lines...

Using my favorite acrylic curves....

And the reason I go to all that trouble is so I can land right smack in the middle of this design - on the stenciled center dot...

On weekends I discipline myself to ignore my longarm work. It's tempting to dig in and pump out customer quilts by the dozens. But I've discovered that I'm not wired that way. I always admire women who can accomplish superhuman feats of productivity in between the 5 hours a night of sleep they can thrive on.

So I resolved long ago to work on my own projects - at my own pace - on weekends. Sometimes I work until I drop. That was the case this past weekend. And the reason is that I found an amazingly fun block pattern called "Urban Nine Patch" on Jenny Pedigo's  Sew Kind of Wonderful  quilting blog. This is my version:

When I came across her blog a few weeks ago, I was completely hooked on this pattern and bought her Quick Curve Ruler that makes cutting it out a breeze. Also, she has a tutorial that showed how to match the corners when doing curved piecing. I highly recommend checking out her site and all of the different ways she (and others) have made this fun block!

When a hand-quilter asks me to finish her quilt on my longarm machine, I like to approach the quilting in a different way than I usually do. My first consideration is the thread content. Hand quilters usually prefer cotton because it's the traditional choice. Then, I have to consider the thread color, because hand quilters usually like their quilting to show. Stitch-in-the-ditch is common for the foundational quilting, with a possible simple shape in each square-on-point. 

And that is exactly what my customer requested.

Any other quilt that wanted SID would be a walk in the park for me. I love doing SID. For almost 6 years I've been happily doing it with my best friend, YLI nylon thread. It's clear thread. Which means I can travel over previously quilted seams. And I can hide those wobbly areas where the piecing can't decide which side its been pressed to. There is a speed at which I have learned to SID, and I think I could even do it in my sleep.

But not today. Today the thread will be showing on every single fabric. Every ditch will be stitched with the finest cotton thread I know of - Aurifil - and every stitch will show. So I spent a considerable amount of time choosing the perfect color of thread that could be beautiful on the pale background fabric and on the darker star fabrics. Beige was not working at all. Tan was not much better. Then I picked up the Aurifil 50 wt. color that was just what I needed. It's a slightly brownish tan, color #2326. And since my customer provided a very dark brown calico fabric for the backing I was thrilled to find I had the exact color of Aurifil on the shelf in 40 wt. for the bobbin. Since the bottom was missing completely, I have no idea what color it is:

I don't normally put 50 wt. on top and 40 wt. in the bobbin. But today it had to work because the colors were just right. I didn't have #2326 in 40 wt. and I didn't have that luscious brown orphan in 50 wt. So I jumped in with resolve and hoped for the best. Even with the constant clicking of my new rotary tension assembly, the thread combination was a success all day long! 

Doing this kind of visible SID meant that I had to slow WAY down. I had to train myself to focus on each stitch as I made it, while making sure I stayed exactly in the ditch...

The texture that SID creates is just so classic. It's nothing fancy. But it really draws my eye to the piecing. 

The border might need something, but I'm not 100% sure of that yet. The center squares will probably get a design in them using a warm brown cotton thread, and I'm about 90% sure of that. 

As a footnote, I want to mention that this is the quilt I have asked many longarm quilters about - because this customer wants me to leave the backing intact so she can fold it around to the front for binding. I know this is a technique that quilters use sometimes. But none of my other customers use this technique. So I'm having to rethink how I care for the edges of the quilt top. Every stitch I make on the back will show, even the edge basting and ending stitches. They won't be covered up by a separate binding fabric. 

This isn't too problematic yet. But her next quilt is a pantograph. And in this business we typically end our pantograph rows off the edge of the quilt top and into the extra backing & batting. What I've learned from seasoned longarmers is that I'll need to redraw the beginning and the end of the pantograph so that it begins and ends within the edge of the quilt top. 

Wish me luck! And have a great weekend!

: )

This charity quilt is finished! It turns out that this quilt will be used for a local fundraiser for our hospital. So a different quilt top will be arriving today as the next "Soldier Quilt". This Lone Star quilt ended up being rather large - 85" square, and our guild's Solder Quilts are typically smaller (large lap size to twin size) and rectangular. 

I used Madeira Polyneon variegated thread #1603 on top, paired with Magna-Glide classic white prewounds in the bobbin. I used a 4.0 needle and set the SPI to 9. The tension on this quilt was so pretty! The messes it made on the back now and then were due to the current problems with my machine. I hope my new tension assemblies arrive today.

Yesterday my machine turned itself off and on randomly while I was working on the Lone Star. I literally had only one more row to finish! So I parked it for the day, waiting for Hubs to come home from work last night and rescue me. It turns out that even though I tightened the plugs, the machine's power plug (below, in the middle) had become loose over time and the prongs were not really holding it in securely. My Wonderful Husband diagnosed it within about 45 seconds, widened the prongs a bit with his bare hands, and fixed the problem completely!

On another note, the next time I say something like "I'm thinking I'll make another Blooming Nine Patch" could you please scream at me in the comment box! Please save me from myself by reminding me: 

"Remember how long it took to put those rows together???" 

"Remember how numb your thighs and cheeks were from the miles and miles and miles of stitching???"

There are only 3 more rows of stitching left. What keeps me going is this pretty combination of fabrics that I can't wait to see finished:

I used a new product on the charity quilt this week! New to me, anyway. Since my customer was not purchasing the batting in the Lone Star, I went to my stash of large batting scraps to see if I could find enough pieces to put together - instead of rolling out more batting and wasting more scraps. There is no way I have the patience to actually sew batting together. Which is why my batting scraps tend to accumulate. That is, until I found this product on Linda's Electric Quilters website:

I laid out each piece of batting on top of the loaded quilt backing (simply as a work surface), and joined pieces to each other edge-to-edge. Then I laid a strip of the batting tape on top of the join(s), and pressed with an iron. The leftover scrap, above, is an example of how nicely the pieces go together. 

My opinion of this product is that it will hold the batting together fairly well, even when rolling the quilt and when lightly tugging on the batting to keep it nice and smooth. Since I used a fairly smallish meander quilting design, I am sure the pieces will not be separating in the future with laundering and use. But if a custom, or wide open quilting treatment was used I'm not sure how well it would fare.

My huge dog, Dude, will be getting new homemade dog beds less often now that I've found an economical way to reuse my batting scraps. 

Being in the longarm business, and a member of our wonderfully productive quilt guild, I am called upon to participate in charity quilts. Since I can't actually contribute to the piecing process, I am happy to contribute to the quilting process. In order for me to keep my business balanced with my charity, I schedule one "Soldier Quilt" per quarter. 

This is the first one of the year. It is a Lone Star pattern (Radiant Star, I think) with a nice dotty background fabric. As you already know, Lone Stars are famous for having wonky sections in them. Usually it's the large setting squares in each corner, along with the center star itself. This quilt's center star was really nice and flat. And only the top 2 setting squares had extra fabric in them. 

Since these discrepancies can change the side borders quite a bit, I pulled out my centering tape measure and made sure each side looked as close to this as possible as I rolled through the quilt:

The quilting pattern I chose was an all-over meander - not too small - so I could take in the extra fabric in the top corners and border:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

As soon as I got past that area, every roll of the quilt was just wonderful. I had no surprises at the bottom (except for one - which I'll explain later...).

As far as tension, I have to thank Judy C. for commenting on my last blog post about her rotary tension discs. I changed out my rotary disc tension assembly for my aftermarket tensioner (which acts like the upper black tensioner, but looks like the rotary tension knob), and today my tension was 99% perfect again. Thank you Judy C.!! And just as a precaution, I ordered a new rotary disc tension assembly as well as a new black tensioner. Sounds confusing! But I'll try anything. 

The only tension glitch I ran into today was that my slippery Madeira Polyneon thread kept jumping out of the first thread guide before the rotary disc tension assembly. Every time it slipped out, a small loop would happen on top. So I'd have to stop and put the thread back onto the thread guide. After awhile I got tired of that, and decided it was time to be proactive. The is the engineering feat that completely eliminated the problem:

The Tiger Tape, not Elmo.

And now for the surprise: on the last row of the quilt I pulled the machine over to the closest edge of the border to baste it down. Suddenly the machine turned itself off momentarily, and then back on again - making a stitch without my consent. I went to the electrical cords and checked them all, tightening them for good measure. Back to the front I go, and it happens again. I got smart and only turned on the light instead of the power, so the machine would not put the needle into the quilt while I was moving it. Sure enough, whenever I moved the machine head onto the quilt, the power went off. When I moved it back off the quilt, it came back on again! I checked every plug once more. All of them were normal looking to me. 

So I laughed and realized that nothing more could be done until my Wonderful Husband comes home tonight. Nothing more, that is, except for a mountain of dishes and a week's worth of neglected housework.

: )

A Friday Finish!

Today the tension decided to randomly do this on the back:

Which looked like this on the front:

I tried every trick in the book to remedy it (of course). But because it was intermittently random, I was unable to figure out what it wanted from me. The sample I stitched was perfect (of course). 

The quilt I finished yesterday had a batik backing - notorious for tension issues. My machine behaved absolutely perfectly on that one.

But not today. I loosened tension, tightened tension, changed needles, slowed down, sped up, danced a jig, and (for a change) didn't curse.

Knowing what I know about my machine, I kept on going until the quilt was finished. It would not have mattered who I called or what I did to try to fix this problem. This would be another discounted quilting job because of the unexplainable tension. If you've followed my blog for awhile you may have noticed that this is a recurring problem. And did I mention how many hours I've spent on the phone with every technician I could find - to no avail? How about the hundreds of miles of driving and hundreds of dollars in motels and fuel to have a technician "help" me - to no avail? And he's the one who sold me the machine! That's another rant for another day....

The one bright spot in this day has been the beautiful Western fabrics in this quilt. All of the fabrics were good quality fabrics that were wonderful to work with. The piecing was terrific and the borders were great. I had intended to see if I could put the rose border from the backing at the top of the quilt, so that when it was turned down on a bed the roses would show. But the rose border proved to be too close to the edge of the backing fabric and didn't allow me enough room to attach the quilt top. 

Have a great weekend!!

: )

All done!

Up next is this beautiful star quilt which uses lots of western fabrics. On this one, my customer has asked for a large meander.

Here is the elegant western rose fabric she has provided for the backing. I love this fabric!