Cindy's Basket Quilt is Complete

As a longarm quilter, I find that I learn something new every time I put a quilt top on the frame. At the same time, it blows my mind when I take them off. As you may know, I have been on top of this quilt for 2 or 3 weeks and spent several weeks just thinking about it before I loaded it on the frame. Now is the time to take it off. All of the quilting has been completed and it is time to turn it over to Cindy. This is one of those times when you stretch the quilt out and you look at it and you are amazed at what you have done. I can't begin to tell you how good I feel when I look at something like this.

This is how we started:

This is what came off of the frame today:

If this picture looks upside down, it is.

 I have really enjoyed working on this quilt. I learned alot about longarm quilting and about myself.

Thank you Cindy.

Now, wait until you see what goes on Olivia's frame next!!  Boy are we in for a wild ride!!

Until next time,

Keep your stitches even and your seams straight,

Cindy's Baskets the Journey Comes to an End..................

I have throughly enjoyed the process of quilting Cindy's basket quilt. From the very beginning I knew it would be a journey and a test of my abilities. I could not have done this quilt justice 2 years ago. Many classes and many hours of practice later, we have Cindy's Baskets.

The large daisy in the basket was the major thing that Cindy wanted done. I left it to last in hopes I wouldn't be so uneasy about stitching it. I drew this daisy for two weeks and it just became more and more ugly. I couldn't draw it!!  So, I had decided that I would print it out and stitch through the paper and then remove the paper.  Welllllllllllll, I was at a guild meeting on Monday night and I happened to mention it to a longarmer friend (Teresa) and she mentioned how she does stuff like that as though she is running a pantograph. I'VE DONE THAT TOO!!!!! I had totally forgotten about using that technique!! Teresa doesn't know it yet, but she saved me at least 4 hours of time. See, it's good for longarmers to share, we do that alot.

So, I enlarged the motif to the size that I needed for the quilt.

Then I traced over this on a sheet protector:

This way I could get perfect placement in the basket. I positioned the needle in the center and then went around to the back of my machine and turned on the laser light.



The light gave me perfect placement of the actual pattern for the daisy.

Notice that the copy is positioned in the reverse for proper placement on the quilt.
This is how the set up looked once I had it ready.

I took this picture before I turned the pattern around. Keep in mind that the needle is where the laser light is.

Once I had it in position I stitched it out.
PERFECT!!!!
Each basket took about 5 minutes to set up and stitch. How cool is that???!!!





This is how it looked after it was stitched:

So, the daisies are all in their baskets and I took another hour to do some stitching in the baskets themselves. My journey is complete. I love my job.

Tomorrow I will take this off of Olivia's frame, clip threads, trim the quilt and hopefully, get some really good pictures. I can't wait to show off the finished quilt.

Thank you Cindy for allowing me the honor of quilting one of your beautiful quilts. It has been a BLAST!!!!

A FANTASTIC QUILT RETREAT

One Loose Thread Quilting Presents

Summer Quilt Camp for 2014

Gravatt Conference Center, Aiken, S. C. 

August 14 - August 17, 2014

You have been asking and now it's time to :

Register for Summer Quilt Camp 2014!!

Become a 'Frayed Knot' with a sit and sew with One Loose Thread at beautiful Camp Gravatt.

This is a UFO event. You work on your own projects and just have a relaxing good time. 

All meals are provided by the fantastic Gravatt kitchen!  No dishes to wash!!! 
Walking paths all over the camp so that you can get your daily exercise. Walk by the lake and just lose yourself in your surroundings.
Nothing is structured except meal times.

Your fee includes:
Neat and clean lodging in either Cole Lodge or Our quaint cottages.
The rooms in Cole Lodge sleep 2 and have their own bathrooms.
The cottage rooms have 2 adjoining rooms, each sleeping 2, with a shared bathroom.
9 meals starting with dinner on Thursday night and ending with lunch on Sunday.
Ironing surfaces furnished by One Loose Thread
Raised cutting surfaces
Snack Area
Excellent lighting
Lots of Laughter
Of course, a few surprises will be thrown into the mix. 

Registration forms are on the 'Registration page'

Any Questions should be directed to :

One Loose Thread Quilting, 630 Planters Drive, Columbia, S. C. 29209

Attention: Joyce Greer

630p@bellsouth.net

P. S. Also mark your calendars for

Fall Fun Quilt Camp: November 4 - 7, 2014
Think Spring Quilt Camp: February 19 - 22, 2015

Check out http://www.oneloosethread.blogspot.com/ for other fantastic retreats that we have planned just for you.

Cindy's Baskets-Continued

Saturday morning we started the SID (Stitch in the Ditch) around all aspects of the blocks. Any longarmer will tell you that this is one of the most difficult things we do on a quilt.

Cindy had picked certain parts of the published pattern that she liked and she brought me a picture of the "suggested" quilting. Oh boy, did that help out a lot.

I decided to pretty much follow their diagram and ditch everything. I could have actually spent an hour or more on each block and never cut a thread. However, I am changing thread for the feather work, so that wasn't going to work for me.

If you follow the lines in the patterns you can go all the way across the top and back without cutting your thread and doing a restart. It took me a row, but, I finally figured out the thread path. You would think that saved me some time, right? I must be the slowest longarm quilter in the country. It took me a full 6 hours to ditch this top. But, boy!!! does it look good.

I took the day off today to work on some of my own stuff.....It's Sunday after all...and I will be back with Cindy's quilt tomorrow after a little trip to the Dermatologist and getting up close and personal with a scapel. If everything is working correctly, I think that I will either start the background fill or the piano key border. Just not sure yet. I am not going to use this background fill that is shown in the pattern, I want to use something else...we'll see.  I will say that this wool batting is quilting beautifully.

Have a good evening and remember to check out the 'Sewing in the Summer' retreat for August. Spaces are filling and I don't want you to miss this fun retreat.

Keep your stitches even and your seams straight,

Cindy's Baskets---First Day

I have spent the day basting the basket top on the frame for Olivia and I to work on. Olivia is my hand guided Gammill Classic Plus.

I don't have robotics hooked to her. We just dance along all on our own.

There is one thing for sure now, I know every piece of fabric in this quilt top. I know where the problems might arise and where we can just coast along. There is so much bias in this top that you have to expect some fullness, so I wanted to get that out of the way to start with.

 Look at these three pictures and you can see how all of the bias edges in the quilt can effect it. Cindy did an outstanding job of piecing this together without a lot of distortion in the quilt. I expect to find some distortion but always hope for just a little. Some piecers can do this well, some not so much.







In the first picture you are looking straight down the frame. In the second I am at a slight angle. In the third I am shooting at a greater angle. You can see that there is some 'waving' of the top.









The real problem with this top comes with that beautiful pieced border. I love them. I use them alot on my own quilts. But, they can be a real PIA when it comes to quilting the top. As you can see in some of these pictures, we have a few issues to deal with.

The trick here is to 'tame' the border. Truthfully, I am not really worried about this amount of fullness. It is really minimal and will be 'sucked up' with the quilting.

One thing I would suggest though for future reference, ALWAYS stay-stitch your borders. Makes no difference if it is pieced or not, if you stay-stitch, it will help to keep your borders stable. This can be even more important with a pieced border or borders with mitered corners.

OK, I have it all basted on the frame and I did run horizontal basting stitches across about every 6 inches. There are also over 500 pins in this top, so, it is not going anywhere. I got to the bottom of the quilt and this is the "WHOLE" 2 inches of backing that I had left over.

I was also concerned about the clearance of the backing roller with the full quilt on it. I have been able to determine that I will have plenty of clearance and not have to worry about that. If the 'sandwich' had been to thick to clear the machine, I would have just un-zipped it from the backing roller and moved it to the front roller on my frame...........Love zippered leaders.

OK, so we are finished for today. In the morning we will start anew. We will SID (stitch in the ditch) until the cows come home. At that point the whole quilt will be stabilized and all of the basting will come out and all of the pins, and then the feathering fun begins............I love this quilt!!!!

Hope you have a good evening. I have a nice glass of wine and I am heading out to grill me a steak. See you tomorrow.

Basket Quilt by Cindy B !!!

Cindy B. brought this into the studio on March 24, 2014. It is absolutely beautiful and I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. She had sewn it from a kit and pattern from Fons and Porter in the September/October 2010 issue of their magazine. It appears to be perfectly pieced----Cindy does things like that---and it lays flat and square. She brought a copy of the 'suggested' quilting pattern with the top, so that I would have a 'jumping off' point to work with. There was a feather daisy in the handle area that she particularly liked and wants me to use. 

Of course this came in at a very busy time and she was in no rush for the quilting, so I put it in line with the other custom quilts.

Fast forward to Thursday, May 22, 2014 and look what is happening:

I have it partially loaded. I say partially, because on something this size and involved, I baste the whole quilt in before I take the first stitch. That way, I don't get to the bottom of the quilt and have big surprises waiting for me. You know, like, very wavy borders or backing that is to short. Yes, even though I measure and take all of the necessary precautions, I can reach the bottom edge of the quilt and have surprises. That is why I totally baste something like this totally down. I will be rolling this quilt back and forth on the rollers and I don't want anything to shift. This process will take most of today.............yes, I said most of today....4 to 8 hours. If it is to be done right.........that's what it takes. (Why does custom quilting cost so much?)

Dream Wool batting is being used on this project. Absolutely love Dream Wool. I will be using Superior threads. Bottom Line in the bobbin and Omni (my favorite) in the top.

I will post as I go so that you can see the process that I go through. Right now, back to basting and pinning.

MAY MESTER 2014 RETREAT WITH ONE LOOSE THREAD

I really like to have at least 1 teaching retreat a year. The first time we did 'One Block Wonder' with Beth Karr and 'Spiral Lone Stars' with Sara Quattlebaum. Next time (last year) CI Karen Conley started us on our journey with Judy Neimeyer patterns. This year, I brought her back to South Carolina for a 'Wedding Ring Marathon'. We had a great time.

I already have people requesting that Karen visit with us next year and carry us further on our journey. If you are interested, let me know.

Now I will only be 2 events behind posting pictures.

We had a fantastic 4 days with CI Karen Conley. The Gravatt Staff made our stay just perfect.

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May thanks to the 'Frayed Knots' that attended May Mester 2014. Without you, none of this would be possible.