Long Arm Quilting: #24 Ellen Finished Quilt & How I'm Picking The Rest Of Them...

This weekend was incredibly busy!  I did manage to finish all three quilts that I set out to do this weekend which is awesome.

The next one on the list was from Ellen.  She actually sent me two quilts, but this one was just so small I thought I could get it done really quickly.

This time, I remembered the stopwatch.  Start to finish, it was about 2 hours to do this quilt, which included loading, bobbin winding, and the actual quilting.

Ellen's quilt gave me some specific challenges that I want to use as illustration.  This isn't meant to be a dig or bashing of Ellen's quilt AT ALL.  That is not my intent and I hope no one looks at it that way.  I think it's been pretty taboo in the quilting world to really talk about the issues and things that can and will go wrong, but I've said before that it's not all sunshine & roses, and I really want to be candid about the what & the why so that everyone can benefit from the experience.  The only place I've seen it discussed is a video spoof & song some wrote that says, "I Can Quilt That Out!"

I've talked a lot about how important it is to make sure your quilt is square if you want to have it long arm quilted.  This is a benefit to you because if you send it square, it will get quilted square, and you get the bonus of having the quilt perfectly basted for you to attach your binding.

If you don't square your quilts before sending them out, several things can happen:

1. The quilter will square it for you, and you might not like what they do.  Plus, they will charge you for it.
2. The quilter will load it as-is, and take tucks & folds where necessary, and you might not like what they do.
3. The quilter will refuse to quilt it, and return it to you as-is, and you may not like that either.

Sometimes, the quilt can be squared with only a minor shaving that would not be noticeable, and other times, there's just no way to square it no matter what you do.  That was the case with Ellen's quilt:

If you notice the right side is fairly square, but the other three sides are not, and there's no way of trimming it or easing it to make it square without significantly impacting the design.

Here is one spot where it is going to cause the most issues:

That's a pretty big pucker and definitely presents a challenge.

Because of the puckers & general unevenness, I opted to float the quilt top entirely (which means that it wasn't attached to any of the rails) and baste it down wherever I could get a complete line of stitching.  In some places, the basting stitches are as much as 1-1/2" to the interior of the quilt.  I'll remove those stitches before sending the quilt back to her, but I had to be able to keep the quilt from creeping around as I went.

I chose Whirlpools from Leah Day for the quilting and adapted it for the long arm, keeping the spirals and echoes very loose and big.  This kept the puckers from being as obvious on the quilt and it kept me from having to take pleats in the quilt.  The thread is Superior So Fine #450 Spring Green.  The batting was not branded, but it had the consistency of felt and quilted up just fine.

In the end, Ellen won't be able to cut a perfectly square line on the edge of the quilt to attach her binding, but she should be able to just trim the edges from block to block and it will be fine.  The quilting creates enough movement across the front that your eye doesn't really get a chance to settle on whether a line is straight or not.

While quilting this, I noted that it's really difficult to make big sweeping curves when you're tensed up, so definitely relax your shoulders and arms if you want to do big curves.  I quilted this super-fast (the stitch regulator beeped at me on more than one occasion when I was outpacing its ability to regulate.)  The curves are very organic and I like the way this one turned up.

Loved having the busy backing!  Even though the backing is brown and the thread is green, the pattern is busy enough that you don't really notice the stitching & it makes a nice texture.

Now, that's the last of the quilts that I had picked out of the closet on my own.  The remaining quilts will be completely left up to chance.  My target is to finish all the quilts by Christmas, so if I work on 2-3 a month I should be able to meet that.  Of course, I do have about 5 customer quilts due before June and 2 of my own that have to get done, so I may slack off over the next couple of months & then need to pick up the pace later this summer.

So if you want to know who's next, here's how I decided:

So #3 Clair - you're next!

To endless possibilities,

Ebony