My Longarm Experience

I had the opportunity recently to take a beginning longarm quilting class at The Quilting Connection in Elkhorn, Wisconsin with Sue Schmieden. It was a really fun day and we created two quilts that will be donated to a local homeless shelter and I learned a lot about longarm quilting, using Sue's amazingly clever Quick Zip System which allows the renter to get going on the machine without all the time to pin the quilt to the frame - you just zip your quilt on and go! Sue rents time on her machines so of course, I immediately rented time for the following week to finish a quilt top that had been hanging around here for at least 10 years.


It's a churn dash block, done in batiks on black. I really like this quilt, and I like it even better now that it's quilted. It took me about 4 hours to quilt this full size quilt - I can't imagine how long it would have taken on my Bernina, but I know that it would have been MUCH more difficult and MUCH more stressful!! I really enjoyed the whole experience and I am certainly going to do it again!


You can kind of see the pattern I chose, it's called "Paint Splat" (or something like that) and it was really fun to do and looks nice with all the straight lines in the quilt. I chose a bright pink thread to show off the quilting (how brave!) and it really works. The binding is a fun stripey batik - I'll post a picture when I finish hand sewing it to the back of the quilt. I think I'm going to hang this down in my new studio - it really needs some quilts on the walls!!