What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

 Good morning, my lovelies!  Welcome to another episode of Long Arm Learning, where the focus is on honing our machine quilting skills, regardless of what kind of machine you're using.

As for myself, although I spent much of the week mired in English paper piecing of another baby quilt top, I did finally get around the impasse of procrastination and got about 2/3 of my Modern Baby Clam Shells quilted yesterday.  The hardest part was starting; I really did not want to mess it up after spending so much time on the curved piecing and the appliqué.  I ...

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Good morning and Happy Tuesday!  If you're looking for my Long Arm Linky party, that's in a separate post here, where I've written about my favorite method of joining batting scraps together.  This post is my wrap-up/reckoning regarding what I accomplished last week and what I'm hoping to get done in this last full week of September.

Looking at goals from last week, I hear the band Meatloaf singing in my head: "Now don't be sad, 'cause two out of three ain't bad!"  

Recap of Last Week's Goals:

• ✅ Load & Quilt pantograph on ...

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I tried out one of my new pantographs yesterday on this veteran's outreach quilt, and I love how it came out!  This top was pieced by a fellow member of the Charlotte Quilters' Guild and I volunteered to do the quilting.

70 x 80 Veterans' Hospice Outreach Quilt, "Flirty Bubbles" Pantograph

Now, I know that some kind of star pattern would be the first choice for many quilters, but to me, that felt too matchy-matchy.  Instead, I chose the Flirty Bubbles pattern from Timeless Quilting, because this design reminds me of baloons, confetti and streamers filling the air during ...

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 Good morning and happy Labor Day weekend to readers in the United States!  I am DELIGHTED to share that I finally finished piecing the body of my Modern Baby Clam Shells quilt top!  

I'll be adding 2" borders in the same Grunge Sky background fabric later today.  For the moment, I'm just reveling in my smooth curves and the fact that this top came out so flat and so square.  

[Note to self: Machine piecing a clam shell quilt combines Y-seams with curved seams.  Definitely doable, but it was fiddly and tedious and it took me a week ...

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Outreach Tumbler Quilt, 40" x 54", Wild at Heart Pantograph

Hello and Happy Tuesday!  Welcome back to the Long Arm Learning linky party!  I have to say, I am learning so much from what you all have been linking up here each week.  Cheree of The Morning Latte and Katy of KatyQuilts both linked up posts with terrific tips for choosing beginner-friendly pantograph patterns.  Reading through their suggestions, I realized that my disappointing pantograph attempts when I first got my long arm machine three years ago owed a lot to the pantograph patterns I was trying to quilt.  I wanted ...

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I've been quilting pumpkins and leaves on "The Quiet Road". I fell in love with the pantograph and really wanted to add a bit of color and lots of texture to this simply pieced quilt top. As I worked along however, row after densely quilted row, I wondered if it was a perfect example of a project that was completely over-quilted; maybe this was just too much. I used a TON of thread! Off the frame

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I've been quilting pumpkins and leaves on "The Quiet Road". I fell in love with the pantograph and really wanted to add a bit of color and lots of texture to this simply pieced quilt top. As I worked along however, row after densely quilted row, I wondered if it was a perfect example of a project that was completely over-quilted; maybe this was just too much. I used a TON of thread! Off the frame

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As you're unpacking your new Machine Quilter frame, you'll find some mysterious metal bits. They're bubble wrapped to the underneath of the bottom carriage with the G-clamps. You'll use the G-Clamps to clamp your side arms to your table. In this post we'll explain what to do with the other metal bits.
Every one of our frames comes with these three metal bits pictured in the photo above. The elbow shaped bit is a stylus for pantographs. The other two bits fit into a rounded triangular piece of wood to make a thread stand which ...

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