Pieced backs for longarm quilters

As a longarm quilter, I sometimes shudder when a pieced back comes to my studio with the top. The best back of course is a fat back (extra wide fabric) so there is no seam at all. But the selection in the fabric stores are limited and sometimes you just can’t find what you like, so you need to piece the back with normal 45” fabric. No problem, except when there is!

The next best solution is to have as few seams as possible and they all run the same direction, preferably with the grain. But if that’s not possible, and you need to cut on the cross grain, you need to be sure to cut at a 90 degree angle to the grain, so it will stay as straight as possible. Sometimes you need to piece some smaller pieces with the seams running perpendicular to the longer seams. That’s OK as long as you are careful with the cutting.

If you cut a bit off the grain, you are now into the bias and we all know that the bias stretches. When the back is loaded onto the longarm frame, as long as all the fabric grains are straight, they will stretch taut on the frame and stay flat. But if you are on the bias at all, the back will sag at that seam as the machine moves over the quilt sandwich and then tucks are formed which often is not felt or seen until the quilting is finished. Then a lot of ripping, steaming, pinning, and re-quilting ensues to take out the tucks to get it to lay flat. That costs a lot of time and creates a lot of aggravation for the quilter.

Another issue with pieced backs are they often are brought in not being square. One side of the seam is longer than the other. Sometimes the two pieces were not the same to begin with, but often they are because a long piece is cut in half and then the two halves are sewn together on the perpendicular sides to the cut. But if you just hold them together and sew a long seam, the feed dogs of your machine will feed the bottom faster than the top and you end up with the bottom edges not together. At this point it could be trimmed, but one side is stretched more than the other and the seam does not lay perfectly flat. So what I suggest is that you pin that long side at least a foot apart to keep both the top and bottom edges even. I also recommend a half inch seam and to press it open. This then allows the back to be very flat when quilted and sometimes not even noticeable when finished.

Why do we want the backs to be square when they’re just going to be trimmed afterward? It’s because they need to be square to be mounted on the frame. I actually fold in half to find the center on opposites sides and then baste long zippers on to attach the back to the frame. When the back isn’t square, then I have more work to do, to get it square. If it’s significant, it’s an added charge to the total cost of getting it quilted.

I hope this blog has added awareness to how to prepare a back for longarm quilting. I know that all longarmers out there appreciate and nice square back!

Happy quilting!

~Jo

Do you take time off?

I took my first "real" vacation in nearly 30 years the end of April. My husband and I had a glorious 10 days in Maui and loved every minute of it.  We had no schedule except for the day we went on a snorkeling trip to Molokini......other than that, we relaxed, spent a lot of time on the beach, swam with the turtles, poked around in some shops in Lahaina, and endured the road to Hana! We also visited a wild life refuge twice! It was great to see birds we had never seen before.

My thumb and back got much needed rest and I came home feeling pretty darn good and ready to tackle more quilts, which I did right away. Now I'm back into the swing of things and love my quilting as much as ever!

I started a Block of the Month class last week, which was a pleasure. I just need to keep a couple steps ahead of them and get the whole thing finished over the summer....whoohoo!

I hope you give yourself time to relax and enjoy life whether you are working or retired. Play with fabric, take some classes, hug your kids or grand-kids as much as possible.

Maholo and Aloha!!

~Jo

Patience vs Passion

Have you ever had anyone tell you when they look at a quilt you've made and say "I don't have the patience for that". I am sure many of you have. I've asked a lot and many affirm that is true. But I disagree that you need patience...well, maybe at times....but the real issue is PASSION.

When you have passion about something, you do it no matter what. You find a way, you find the money, you find the time, you even find others who are passionate about the same thing you are. It is true with nearly any endeavor you can name.

Photographers hang out with other photographers....because who has the patience to sit for hours to get that "perfect shot" of an eagle, or hawk or sunset, etc? Again...it's not patience that they possess to do that activity. It is passion. Or fisherman waiting for a bite? Or a teacher with a room full of 5 year olds! No matter what activity, passion is what drives those who do it over and over and over again.

It is so true in the quilting world. And there are so many kinds of quilting that even within our world you can focus on just one or two kinds of quilting and be "bored" with something else. My passion is pictorial quilts. However, patchwork does not motivate me to spend hours at my machine putting it all together.....unless some really awesome pattern presents itself to me.....then maybe!

My real passion lies with the quilting process itself. To others, they love the piecing of the tops but hate to do the quilting. I really appreciate all kinds of quilts including patchwork, so as long as someone else is putting them together I am more than happy to do the quilting!

When I run across a photo I've taken or a landscape or even a portrait, I often will challenge myself to create it in fiber. My favorite topics are animals. You might have guessed that if you have seen my gallery.

So the next time someone tells you they don't have the patience to quilt, you can just smile and nod your head and let them think you have the patience of Job, but inwardly you know it's the passion to create quilts that motivates you to do another and another and another! And being part of a community of quilters is pretty awesome, too.

So happy quilting!

~Jo

Travel Bag

Well....I actually made something other than a quilt. I'm preparing for a trip to Hawaii (first major vacation in over 30 years!)....so I wanted a new bag to carry on the airplane. I bought a class from Craftsy and loved the entire process. It's called the Ultimate Travel Bag and is taught by Ann Unrein. She is an excellent teacher. The format is very easy to follow, especially since the bag was very detailed with a ton of pockets and zippers. All the seams are bound, so there are no raw edges exposed on the inside, either. Here's a few photos of my finished bag:

inside zippered mesh pocket

other inside mesh pockets

bottom of bag with buttons used for feet

This is me happy with my bag!

Hope you enjoyed my little show!

~Jo

Whole Cloth quilting

Recently I was commissioned to make a whole cloth quilt for a client. She wanted a baby quilt with hearts and flowers on it. Since she already knew the name and gender of the upcoming birth of this baby, I suggested we put her initial in the center. So I got out my big paper and started designing actual size. I drew a heart using a template I had and enlarged half of it on my printer and kept enlarging until I got it to the size I wanted. Since the heart is the center of this quilt it was important for it to be somewhat symmetrical.

Once I had the heart centered in the middle of the paper, then I could add the flowers and feathers to create the likeness of a heart, but not the hard lines. It was important to have a few hard lines of the heart, especially at the top.

After that, I just added feather vines in the corners and measured to make sure they were placed properly and symmetrical. Then I just played with my pencil to draw in the details until I was pleased with the look of it.

The next step was to trace the design onto the fabric. Since the fabric was white, it was easy to see my drawing underneath. I used a water soluble pen to trace the backbones of the feathers and the petals of the flowers. The rest I did not trace because I felt comfortable enough to do everything else free hand. I also drew hard lines for the perimeter of the quilt so I knew where the outer edges were.

Once all the large feathers and hearts were in place, then I went back and filled in the background to make those things "pop" off the page. I did very dense quilting inside the heart. The most important thing is to have the scale of the background much smaller than the motifs so they will stand out. I have found (myself included) that many quilters do not pay enough attention to scale so the image is not that effective. As I moved out from the heart, the background could be a little less dense but had to remain smaller than my smallest motifs (the flowers). Then on the outside of the large feathers creating the border I could go a bit larger there.

After the quilting is done, the quilt was spritzed with water to remove all the markings. Once the quilt was inspected for any errors and corrected, it was removed from the frame and carefully trimmed to be square and have an even amount of quilting around the outer edge. Binding was applied and it was complete.

I hope you enjoyed my process here. I really enjoyed making this quilt. Now I'm motivated to make a bigger one!

Happy Quilting!

~Jo

New Year, new website!

Well....I finally got off my duff and created a new updated website that I can manage by myself! I'm feeling pretty good about having all this power at my disposal...haha!

In the meantime, I'm still quilting quilts for my clients, creating a slideshow to present at guilds and heading up the making of a raffle quilt for the Evergreen Quilters Guild that I belong to. I have also scheduled classes at Kori's Fabric Creations in Bellingham. Check out my website for information on those. The two free-motion quilting classes are full, but we will schedule more. The whole cloth class is a great way to use your new found skills, so I have added that class, too, and it is not full, yet.

I hope to be a better blogger on this site than I was on my last blog. I may abandon that one and continue here. So hopefully I'll have a few more followers here. Thanks to all of you who do tune into my blog.

Happy Quilting!

~Jo