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Friday, February 15, 2013

Another quilting lesson learned

What should have been an easy quilting job turned into a very difficult one.  After discussing it with the customer it was decided that an edge to edge design would be good.  I have a kind of elegant pantograph that seemed to be perfect.  As I began, I noticed there was a bit of drag, but I thought it wouldn't be a problem once I got past the border which is kind of a thick velvety texture. 

Even though my Millennium has the new bliss drive system which makes it so easy to control, it was not easy to keep my lines smooth.  I am used to working from the front of the machine, so I continued to quilt thinking it was just a matter of getting used to being behind the machine.  After finishing the first row of the design, I went around to check it out.  I could see that this was not the look I was after!  The fabrics are not your typical quilting cottons.  I would describe them as more like lightweight upholstery/decorator fabrics and because of the added bulk there was some places where the top appeared to be "pushed" one direction or another depending on which direction I was stitching.  So began the tedious job of un-stitching everything!  What took me about 5 minutes to stitch took me about 3+hours to unstitch.  It was even more tedious because the stitches had almost disappeared into this puffy quilt.  Perhaps this would have worked if I had changed the height of my hopping foot, but I always work with thinner batts so I didn't want to change it only to have to change it back again.  Moving back to the front of the machine was my solution.  I have so much more control when I'm on that side.  It was a good lesson learned and I know this will be a warm quilt that will be loved for years to come.

1 comment:

  1. Here we have a prime example of why I don't ever want to quilt for other people! : )

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