Spirit Song On the Frame, ALMOST Ready to Quilt... Of Partial Floats, Frame Design and Texas Hold 'Em Brackets

Spirit Song Quilt On the Frame, Top Fully Floated

Good morning, Happy Thursday, Happy Easter, and Happy Passover!  The Spring holidays have been different for sure this year, haven't they?  I got this far with loading my Spirit Song quilt on Easter Sunday before sitting down to dinner with my family, but then I had to switch gears and figure out how to sew a face mask for my son to wear to work at the grocery store for his 6 AM shift on Easter Monday.  I've been working on making more masks for the rest of my family for the last few days, while Spirit Song looked at me mournfully from across the room, whimpering "PLEASE come and quilt me!!!"

59 x 75 Quilt Top Loaded Sideways, Ready to Go

[Holy moly -- I did not realize how badly my DIY PVC light bar was bowing in the center until just now, looking at the photo!  There was a slight bowing from the weight of the light fixtures when my husband Bernie first installed it a couple years ago, but it has gotten significantly worse!  Bernie has promised to replace the PVC pole with steel and possibly upgrade the light fixtures themselves, so stay tuned for a "DIY Light Bar Version 2.0" post one of these days...  It works for now, and changing it is a project for another day when there is no quilt on the frame!]

Loading a Quilt on My APQS Machine, Fully Floated Quilt Top Method with Texas Hold Em Bracket & Quilt Top Roller Removed

Since there are long spans of time between loading quilts on my frame (while I'm busy doing piecing, applique, sewing face masks, learning choir music, puppy training, parenting, or trying in vain to get "caught up" with laundry...), I find myself wanting a quick refresher each time I'm FINALLY ready to get a quilt on the frame again.  It's not a difficult process by any means; I'm just not yet at the point where I can do this with my brain on "autopilot."  Seriously -- it is much faster (and easier on my back, knees, neck, and fingers!) to load a quilt on a longarm frame than it is to crawl around on the floor or bend over a table, basting the quilt layers together with safety pins spaced 4" apart for quilting on a sit-down machine!  My loathing for pin basting was a primary motivator for moving up to the longarm machine.

The video tutorials from APQS and others on YouTube that walk you through loading a quilt are great in the very beginning, but now that I just need a quick review of one or two things the videos seem to take forever to get to the part I want to see again.  So this post is my own personal photo reminder of "how did I do that last time?"  And I'm giving myself this link to the APQS Blog post where they review the basics of loading a fully floated quilt top here.  Wish I'd found that right away on Sunday, before rewatching an hour and a half of videos to get the information that I could have gotten in 2 minutes from rereading the blog post!  As always, I encourage any readers who are more experienced longarm quilters to share their own best practices and suggestions in the comments.  I have learned SO MUCH from all of you.

APQS Texas Hold 'Em Bracket In Place of Quilt Top Bar

As you can see in the photo above, I've completely removed the quilt top roller bar from my frame and replaced it with the APQS Texas Hold 'Em Bracket (that little partial pole that enables my hand brake to function properly without the quilt top roller bar on the frame).  I took the quilt top roller bar off because:

1. I had not been using it, since I am (so far) getting good results fully floating my quilt tops (rather than pinning the bottom of the quilt top and rolling it up on the quilt top bar).
2. The position of the quilt top roller bar on the APQS frame gets in my way, especially if I'm quilting with rulers.  Since that bar sits up above the surface of the quilt, it lifts my left wrist at an uncomfortable and ergonomically icky angle when I'm holding rulers in my left hand, whereas WITHOUT that bar I can hold my ruler with my wrist in a straight, neutral position.

See How the Quilt Top Roller Lifts My Elbows and Shoulders?

The photo above is from 2017, right after I got my longarm machine, and I have solid yellow fabric loaded for practice (partial float, so it IS pinned to and rolled up on that quilt top roller).  If I had been using quilting rulers, my right hand would still be on the right handle of the machine, but my left hand would be reaching over the quilt top bar to hold the ruler flat against the surface of the quilt.

Quilt Top Roller On the Frame, Not Doing Anything But Still in My Way

Then, in the photo above of my Tula Pink Disco Kitties quilt, you can see how the design of the APQS frame puts the quilt top roller in your way regardless of whether you're using it or not.  Compare that to the design of the Bernina longarm frame, pictured below.  At the front of the machine, you still have the backing roller bar right at the level of the quilting surface.  But instead of the quilt top roller bar sitting above that, Bernina put the quilt top roller bar BELOW the backing bar -- a much better design for custom quilting from the front of the machine.  Note that, if I was quilting mostly edge-to-edge paper pantographs from the back of the machine, or mostly computerized quilting, the position of the APQS quilt top roller bar would be just fine and possibly easier to reach for a partially floated top, or for smoothing batting each time the quilt is advanced.  I've never actually quilted a whole quilt on any other frame but my APQS Millennium frame, and these are the kinds of preferences that you can't really discover when you're test driving a quilting machine at a dealership or show booth.  

Quilt Top Roller On Bernina's Q24 is Positioned BELOW Backing Roller

So now of course, I'm curious -- are there any disadvantages to this frame style that I'm not aware of?  Bernina Q24 owners, how difficult is it to load a quilt on your frame?  Does that bottom quilt top roller pivot so you can get to the batting between the layers when advancing your quilt?  Any drawbacks?  Those of you who have owned different brands of longarm machines over the years, and those who currently own Bernina, Innova, A-1, HandiQuilter etc., I'd love to hear how those manufacturer's frame designs make certain aspects of the quilting process easier or more challenging for you.  Let me know in the comments!

Meanwhile, back to my Millie.  I bought a set of zippers for my leaders right away when I bought my longarm a couple years ago, but haven't gotten around to installing them yet.  Hence my old school pinning continues -- I've kind of gotten the hang of it and, with my slow-as-molasses creative process, I am not loading quilts so frequently that the zippers would save me that much time right now.  

Lining Up Top Edge of Quilt Top With Stitched Horizontal Reference Line

Again, reminders to self here: The top edge of my batting was ragged and uneven when I laid it out and smoothed it over the loaded backing fabric, ensuring that I had it centered and there was sufficient batting length hanging down at the front of the frame to accommodate my entire quilt.  Then, engaging the horizontal channel lock (a feature I couldn't live without!), I quilted a perfectly straight horizontal line across the top through the batting and backing fabric.  I left the blue variegated King Tut thread I'd been playing with on the machine for that,  because I've made the mistake in the past of stitching this visual reference line with monofilament thread and it is not so easy to line up the top edge of my quilt top to an INVISIBLE reference line!  After stitching that perfectly straight reference line, I carefully trimmed away excess batting approximately 1/2" above the stitched line to eliminate uneven bulk when the quilt rolls up and to reveal where my pins are positioned (I'm slightly less likely to stab myself with pins that I can see).

Quilt Top Not Attached to Any Canvas, Not Rolled Up -- Just Smoothed and Basted to Batting+Backing

I've marked the center of my backing fabric with a dark pencil mark on the selvage (it gets trimmed away anyway) and there's a corresponding white chalk mark (barely visible in the photo but I could see it well enough in real life) indicating the center of my quilt top.  I match those centers and then smooth the quilt top onto the batting, working my way out from the center and keeping the edge of the quilt top aligned with the blue stitched reference line:

Straight Top Edge, Centers Aligned

This batting was a few inches longer than my backing fabric, but I waited until after loading it to trim it on the frame to eliminate the possibility of an "I-cut-it-twice-and-it's-still-too-short" situation.  I've loaded my 59" x 75" quilt top sideways (so I can see and quilt more of it at once and have fewer stops/starts for advancing the quilt), so that excess batting length was excess WIDTH on the frame, extending beyond the edges of my backing fabric.  Once I had the quilt top in place, centered and straight, I carefully trimmed the batting excess on the sides so that it's just inside the backing fabric where my side clamps will attach.  I still have plenty of excess batting and backing at the sides of the quilt where I can throw down a scrap of fabric to do practice stitching and tension tweaking throughout the quilting process.

59 x 75 Spirit Song Quilt Top Fully Floated, Ready to Quilt

At this point, I stopped to change my needle from the 4.5 size that I like for King Tut 40 weight cotton thread to the 3.5 size that I like for ultra-fine Monopoly invisible monofilament thread.  I rethreaded the machine with Monopoly, did some test stitches off to the side in the extra batting/backing area, and adjusted my top tension as well as my bobbin case tension (TOWA gauge reading of about 150 for my Bottom Line bobbin thread is where I finally was happy with my stitches, top and bottom, with monofilament in the needle -- this is a smidge lower than the 170-200 range that Superior recommends for Bottom Line).  

Excess Batting and Backing is Great For Testing Stitch Quality

And then, happy with my stitches, I through a scrap of fabric that was pieced from strips down and did a quick refresher practice of stitching in the ditch.  

When Tension is Just Right, Monofilament Looks Like Perfectly Color-Matched Thread

I love how monofilament hides the boo-boos, when my stitching line accidentally veers across a seam line and it would be oh-so-painfully obvious if I'd used any other thread.  See below -- the camera is zoomed way in on this shot; that's why the quilting cotton fabrics look like burlap:

Monofilament Looks Like Blue Thread on Blue, But the Mistake Disappears Like Pink Thread on Pink

Happy with those stitches on the top, I lay a couple sheets of paper on top of the quilt (to block light shining down through the needle holes) and crawl under the quilt frame with a flashlight to see what the stitches look like on the backing side of the quilt.  

Magnified Backing View Showing Starting Tension (Top Left) and ending tenion (Bottom)

I can feel the REALLY bad tension by running a fingernail along the stitching line to see if my nail catches along little loops or nubs of top thread that is being pulled too far to the backing side, but I want to actually see the stitching on both sides with my eyeballs to fine-tune the tension before I start stitching on my actual quilt.

So today, I'm ready to actually baste down the top and side edges of my quilt and start quilting in the ditch (SID=Stitch In the Ditch).  I'll use my vertical and horizontal channel locks to ensure that the quilt top edges, as well as vertical and horizontal seam lines within the quilt, are perfectly straight (or as straight as possible if they weren't pieced perfectly straight to begin with) before I stitch them down, but (aside from the blue border seams), the only seams I'll be SID are diagonals shown in green below:  

Green Lines Indicate Where I'm Planning to SID

One More Important Note to Self: Even though I've removed the quilt top roller bar from my frame, which makes it look like I have a much bigger working area to quilt in, the machine still can't come any closer to my tummy when the machine throat hits the takeup roller at the back of the frame.  

This Is As Far Forward as Millie Can Go Before Her Throat Hits the Takeup Roller at the Back of the Frame

I remember from my last quilt that, without the quilt top roller on the frame as a visual reference, I repeatedly misjudged how far I could quilt towards myself before the machine throat hit the back roller, resulting in a smooth curved line of stitching that suddenly turned in into a straight line veering off to the right or left.  

There's a Six Inch "Dead Zone" From the Backing Roller to the Furthest Point the Machine Can Stitch

All the way across the frame, there's a 6" "Dead Zone" between the inside edge of the backing roller and the furthest point that my 26" Millennium machine can reach to stitch.  Ergonomically, that means that the area where I CAN move the machine for quilting is 6" farther away from my body than it needs be, due to the design of the APQS frame.  This makes me want to measure the "dead zone" on other model frames, especially the Bernina frame, to see whether my quilting area would be closer to my body with those machines for more comfortable quilting that puts less stress (from reaching) on my shoulders, neck, and upper body.  But I'm not planning on buying a different longarm machine any time soon, especially with the whole world's economy suddenly sucked into the black hole of COVID-19!  

So, for the time being, until I get better at eyeballing how far towards myself I can stitch before I need to stop and advance the quilt, I'm planning to address this challenge in a couple of ways: I can either run a horizontal line of basting stitches right at that "invisible wall," or I'll slide the machine across the quilt without stitching and put little chalk marks, pins, or something else that I can see to remind me of where my machine's needle can and cannot reach. 

Once again, this blog post has dragged on and on -- and I didn't even show you any of my cute little face masks!  I'll save those for another day, because I'm dying to start quilting Spirit Song.  

My one and only To Do for Tuesday goal this week is to complete the monofilament SID quilting on Spirit Song. 

Anything else that happens is pure gravy!

And now, for those of you who have been patient enough to stick with me throughout this long and boring blog post, you get rewarded with PUPPY PICTURES!  Here's a picture of Samwise the Brave at 5 1/2 months, wearing his cute little Julius K-9 Powerharness with custom Velcro patches that say "ASK TO PET ME" on one side and "SAMWISE" on the other:  

Sam in His Julius K-9 Power Harness with Custom Patches

I bought Sam's harness from our wonderful local pet supply store, but you can also get one directly from the manufacturer's U.S. distributor on Amazon here.  You can also order the custom patches from the manufacturer through Amazon here.  It is so hard to get a picture of this squirmy little guy that isn't blurry!  

Samwise the Kissy-Face Rottweiler Puppy

He weighs 67 pounds now and he has an awesome personality -- super friendly, loves animals and people of all sizes, all colors, and all ages, yet when there's a really bad storm like we had on Easter Sunday this courageous little Rottweiler puppy stands his ground and BARKS BACK at sky when the thunder booms -- he's fearless!  It's so funny, and much better than trying to calm a dog who has thunderstorm anxiety (Been there, done that with the golden retriever we had when we were first married).

Side View.  Why Aren't We Going Anywhere, Mommy?  Enough With the Pictures!!

I love this harness for Sam.  It's designed for working dogs (police, search and rescue, service dogs etc.) so it's durable, comfortable, and doesn't restrict his movement.  There's a handle that can be buttoned down if he was running off leash, to prevent the handle from catching on branches in the woods, but otherwise the handle is a much better way to get control of him when he needs to be held back from our 9-year-old dog who isn't always feeling as frisky and playful as Sam is.  And that big ring just below the handle clips onto a seatbelt adapter tether for the car.  Now I can take Sam with me in the back seat of my convertible, knowing that if he sees an interesting family of geese when I'm stopped at an intersection, or if I have to slam on the breaks or, God forbid, get into an accident, my dog will not go flying out of the car or strangled by a tether or leash attached to his collar.

I like this harness so much that I ordered one from Amazon for Great Aunt Lulu as well:

Lulu's Harness, Coming Soon from Amazon for My Favorite Rottie Princess!

How cute is that?  She'll have patches that say her name on one side and "ASK TO PET ME" on the other side, just like Sam's harness.  Lulu is a huge people-lover whose favorite thing on Earth is meeting strangers who want to pet her -- but she's a 98 pound, full-grown Rottweiler, so people can't tell she's friendly just by looking at her.  Bernie mentioned to me that, when he takes the puppy to Lowe's or to the Auto Zone store, everyone comes over to pet him, but when he takes Lulu, people seem to assume that she's not friendly and keep away.  They say that clothes tell a lot about a person, and I think that's true for dogs as well. I'll be interested to see whether Lulu gets more attention from strangers when she's wearing her pink "Flower Child" harness!  

Our 9-Year-Old Rottie, Princess Lulu: "I'm Not Bad; I'm Just Drawn That Way"

I'm linking up today's post with:

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

Millie's DIY Spa Staycation With Bernie, My Reluctant Sewing Machine Technician

It is amazing how quickly a man who is not interested in taking apart your sewing machine changes his tune upon learning how EXPENSIVE it is to ship the darned thing back to the factory to have it worked on by someone else.  Meet my newly cooperative sewing machine technician:

He's Not Just a Cutie; He's HANDY!!

My husband Bernie can take just about anything apart and put it back together again to get it working: lawn mowers, ovens, cars, air conditioning units, computers, commercial espresso machines...  We were all scheduled to send Thoroughly Modern Millie (my 2013 APQS Millennium longarm quilting machine) back to the Iowa factory for "Spa Servicing" -- but I had a change of heart.  The folks at APQS say that a spa visit (factory refurbishing, essentially) isn't necessary until a machine has seen 9-10 years of heavy, daily use in a business setting.  Although my machine was used as a rental in an APQS dealer's shop before I adopted her in 2017, that's only 3 years of heavy business use and I've only quilted a few quilts in the two years I've had her.  SO...  There's really no way she needs to have all of her guts swapped out for new parts yet.

So last week we got out the manual, turned to the back with the Maintenance and Troubleshooting appendices are located, got on the APQS forum to see what has worked for others facing similar issues, and Bernie took the covers off my machine and got busy with his tools!  Here's what all we did:

• Wiped down the rails, cleaned the wheels, removed the needle plate cover, and cleaned the hook assembly area
• Checked the hook for burrs, found a burr that could be classified as a gouge, and filed it smooth with emery cord
• Checked the thread guides and needle plate for nicks, burrs or grooves (did not find any)
• Gave the hook a WD-40 "bath" and re-oiled it
• Checked the encoder wheel and adjusted it to the tightest position
• Checked the motor brushes and blew out the carbon dust from the motor
• Checked that the wicks were touching moving parts inside the machine head and adjusted the one that wasn't touching anything
• Adjusted the needle positioner
• Adjusted the hopping foot height (and finally got the foot level this time)
• Checked and adjusted the mag collar sensor
• Removed, disassembled, and reassembled the tensioner device

Basically, we did our own Spa Visit at home.  As expected for a machine that's only a few years old, my Millennium did NOT need all of her wear and tear parts replaced.  Thread guides were fine, motor brushes were fine (previous owner may have already replaced them because they are nearly brand new), and I didn't find any grooves or issues with any of the thread guides.  Angie at APQS Tech Support helped us over the phone and emailed PDF instructions with very clear photos that were a huge help.

The biggest issues we found were:

• The encoder wheel needing adjusting to snug back up to the carriage again, because the little rubber wheel was worn enough that it wasn't always in contact with the carriage when the machine was moving.  That can cause irregularities in stitch length in regulated mode.  
• The gouge in the hook.  I don't think I've ever broken a needle on this machine since it's belonged to me, but SOMEONE did!  Perhaps it happened when someone was renting the machine before I purchased it.  The APQS manual says that, if you break a needle, you definitely have a burr SOMEWHERE that you should find and file away before continuing quilting, but I can imagine if the needle broke during someone's rental session why they would want to keep quilting if they weren't experiencing any problems with thread breaking or anything.
• The hopping foot not being perfectly level, which can contribute to some of the directional tension needle flex issues I've been having
• Last but not least, my tension assembly was not working correctly before and it is SO MUCH better now!  Something was jammed in too far and pinching the takeup spring before, so that no matter how much I loosened the tension dial on my machine, the upper tension did not loosen at all.  Even when I loosened the tension dial to the point that the discs weren't even touching, I still felt a heavy drag on my thread when I pulled it through the eye of the needle and my stitch samples still looked like my upper tension was too tight.  I thought I was going crazy that I couldn't get good stitches for any other thread but Glide, but my tension assembly was stuck at the right tension for Glide and it was like it wasn't adjustable at all.

After doing all of that, I played with So Fine thread and made sure I could get a pretty, balanced stitch with that, and then I threaded up the machine with some King Tut variegated cotton thread.  I am a MUCH happier camper now as far as tension is concerned!

APQS Tension Assembly

We did place a parts order for Millie.  She's getting a new encoder wheel -- encoder wheels are kind of like the hooks on your bra band.  They should fit snug on the loosest setting when you first get them so that as they stretch out (bras) or wear down (encoder wheels), you have a couple of adjustments you can make to get them snug again before you need to replace them.  Angie from APQS also suggested flipping my carriage wheels (rather than replacing them just yet) -- that's like rotating the tires on your car.  We'll do that when we change out the encoder wheel.  But I also ordered a few other goodies that I'm excited about:

Texas Hold'Em Bracket: A Place Holder for the Quilt Top Roller, So the Hand Brake Still Functions

• I'm getting a Texas Hold 'Em bracket, so I can take the quilt roller off my machine and get it out of my way without impairing the functioning of my hand brake
• I ordered a new tension assembly, even though the old one is working better now than it did before.  It's a $22 part, and tension is a really big deal on a quilting machine -- I want my stitches to look as good as they possibly can
• And, while I'm at it, I ordered the parts I need to convert my Millennium from the smaller L "Smart Bobbin" to the larger M bobbin.  Woo-hoo!  

"Smart" L Hook and Bobbin Case Top, Larger M Hook and Bobbin Case Bottom

M Bobbins and Prewounds on Left, L Bobbins and Prewounds on Right

My parts should be here by end of day tomorrow, but we won't get a chance to do anything with them until Sunday after church.  My kids are in a production of The Sound of Music at our church with performances Friday evening and Saturday afternoon, and one of my sisters is in town this weekend, too.  But I'm looking forward to getting reacquainted with my newly-rejuvenated longarm machine next week!

Longarm Learning Curve: Directional Tension Troubles

Good Morning, Lovelies!  I've had both teenagers home from school since Thursday due to the Red Cross taking over their high school as an emergency shelter for Hurricane  Tropical Storm Florence evacuees.  Here in Charlotte, we're expecting heavy rains and flooding, and I'm hoping we don't lose power because I need to do some SEWING!

Charity Quilt is On the Frame, Ready for Quilting

I've been stalled out with some Technical Difficulties for the past week.  I know we learn more from these challenges than we do when it's all smooth sailing, but it's still frustrating when something is obviously set up wrong and I can't for the life of me figure out what it is.  I volunteered to quilt a couple of tops for the charity quilters at my church, thinking that it would be a great way to serve AND get some more practice with my longarm quilting machine (which I have not touched since I finished my Tabby Mountain Disco Kitties quilt at the end of May).

So I picked up two tops from the church quilters over a month ago, including batting and backings for each, and then I proceeded to panic about them because:

1. The backings they gave me are sheets.  One is a cotton/poly blend and the other is definitely synthetic, with kind of a microfiber silkiness to it.  I know right off the bat that, because bed linens are woven with a much higher thread count and much tighter weave than quilting cotton, these backings are going to make it much harder for me to get a decent looking quilting stitch.
2. Since this group normally ties all of their quilts rather than quilting them, the batting they gave me is a high loft polyester, and what's more, the batting has a really uneven consistency.  In the thickest spots, the batting is nearly three times as thick as it is in the thinnest spots.  I have never seen anyone use batting like this for machine quilting and I worry that it is one of those "not suitable for the longarm" battings that, like the bed sheet backings, will introduce all kinds of additional challenges with shifting quilt layers as my presser foot snowplowed through the slippery, super puffy quilt sandwich.
3. As for the quilt tops themselves, they are not quite like the quilts I piece myself.  Not all of the ladies who serve in this ministry are quilters, so the tops have 1/2" seam allowances instead of 1/4", they are not quite flat and square, and although seams have been pressed to one side, there are places where a more experienced quilter would have done a different pressing plan to reduce bulk where seams intersect.  But my biggest concern is that, like the quilt backings, many of the fabrics used in the quilt tops appear to be sheets, drapery fabric remnants, or scraps of garment fabrics.  

After a couple weeks of agonizing and consulting with several more experienced longarm quilters, I decided to take advantage of the JoAnn Fabrics Labor Day 50% off coupons to give myself a fighting chance with these projects.  I bought two Fairfield Low Loft Polyester battings to replace the thick battings supplied by the church group, and I bought an inexpensive extra wide cotton quilt backing fabric for one of the tops so I wouldn't have to use the slippery microfiber sheet.  I have enough of a learning curve as a beginner without further stacking the odds against myself, right?

Pinning the Quilt Top to Canvas Leader, Occasionally Stabbing Myself With Pins

So I loaded the first quilt on my frame with the new low loft polyester batting and the cotton/poly sheet backing, threaded up my machine with a neutral cream colored So Fine #50 quilting thread, and proceeded to do some test stitching off to the side of the quilt top, on the excess batting and backing.  Stitches looked lovely from the top side, but look at what was going on below deck:

Bobbin Thread Flatlining, But Only When Quilting In Certain Directions

Aaaarrgh!!!  Folks, I am not a woman who is afraid to adjust needle or bobbin tension on a sewing machine.  I understand the science of balanced lock stitch tension, and if I needed a refresher, there are a ton of tension troubleshooting videos and tutorials online to refresh my memory.  This is a different beast -- directional tension problems that only happen when I'm moving the quilting machine away from myself and/or to the left.  After an entire day of fiddling around with top and bobbin tension, I could not see ANY improvement whatsoever.  

The Internet was able to tell me that directional tension problems have nothing to do with top or bobbin tension -- this problem is caused by needle flex and/or bobbin backlash.  I'm using a lightweight cardboard prewound bobbin in a size L bobbin case with the check spring in place just as it should be, so my bobbin shouldn't be spinning backwards when the machine switches direction.  And, as for needle flex, the only recommendations I could find online were to make sure the quilt wasn't stretched too tight on the frame and/or to use a larger needle.  I was already using a size 4.0 needle initially and I had loosened the quilt tension to the point that it was dragging around with the machine head.

I had read that tightly woven fabrics such as batiks and bed sheets can behave better with a SMALLER needle, so I took a couple of new needles out of their packs and just did an informal "stab test" to see how easily each one could penetrate my quilt sandwich.  Sure enough, the 4.0 that performs so beautifully with quilting cottons had some significant resistance trying to go through this charity top made of sheets and drapery fabric.  When I stabbed the needle straight down on top of the quilt, there was a slight hesitation before the needle punched through the fabric.  The size 3.5 needle went right through easily.  And I have to say, after struggling with this project for a few days, I enjoyed randomly stabbing it with needles.

But the needle change didn't solve the directional tension problem, so I finally broke down and put a call in to APQS Tech Support on Wednesday (which I should have done a LONG time ago!).  The first thing they had me do is check that my hopping foot was centered, level, and set at the correct height -- approximately one business card thickness from the stitch plate when the needle is in its lowest position.  I would never in a million years have thought to check that, but my hopping foot was set so low that it was touching the stitch plate in its lowest position and there was no way I could have crammed a business card or even a regular piece of paper underneath the foot.  So we got that set correctly in a matter of minutes with the help of Tech Support, but then I had to run kids to activities before I had a chance to do any further test stitching.

On Thursday evening, I fired up the longarm, said a little prayer, and stitched the following test squiggles:

Most Recent Test Stitches, Top Side View

Lovely stitches from the top side, right?  But this is what the back looks like:

Same Test Stitches, Backing Side View

AAAAARRGH!!!!  It is maddening that the stitches can be so beautifully formed and then just flatline randomly like that.  Well, it's not really random; it's happening only when the machine head is being moved to my left and/or away from me.  

Well, the VERY KIND AND PATIENT woman at APQS Tech Support said that checking the hopping foot height was only the first step on her list of troubleshooting, so I'm not giving up yet!  I just haven't had a chance to call back during business hours yet.  So far in Charlotte all we've seen from Tropical Storm Florence is wind and steady rain.  I'm going out for a walk with my husband as soon as I finish my coffee, and then I'm headed back up to the studio to get Miss Millie straightened out.  I've got her plugged into a hefty UPS so no worries about damaging the machine if there are power irregularities from the storm.

But one thing I really must do is make myself a larger test sandwich off to the side of the quilt that's loaded on the frame, because these little 4" swatches are way too small and I'm running out of room with the excess batting and backing at the sides of the quilt top.  Also, I'm going to make that practice sandwich out of 100% cotton top and bottom, NOT sheets, and scrap batting that I would normally use in one of my own quilts.  Getting beautiful stitches with high quality materials is really my goal, and if the stitch quality is compromised somewhat when I'm quilting through sheets on a charity quilt, so be it.

Wish me luck!

My Daily Thread Scribbles, a Few Snafus, Yet Steady Improvement

Good morning!  If you've come here looking for inspiring photos of lovely projects, I'm sorry to have to disappoint you.  I've just been plodding away at the enormous practice quilt I loaded on my new APQS Millenium longarm machine.  I bought a package of 80/20 cotton/poly 120" square King batting from JoAnn's and pieced three different colored fabrics together to create the top, with solid muslin for the backing, and I'm "scribble quilting" this practice piece a little bit each day until the entire thing is full of quilted doodling.  Hopefully when this comes off the frame I will see a big difference between my initial efforts at the top of the sample quilt and what my quilting looks like at the bottom of the quilt.  But a REAL quilt is going on the frame when this practice piece comes off, no matter what.  The only way to get better at anything is to KEEP DOING IT!

Longarm Scribble Quilting Gradually Improving

So the big excitement is that after advancing my quilt a couple of times, I finished up all of the yellow fabric at the top and I'm now quilting on the hot pink fabric that makes up the middle portion of my sample quilt.  Yay!  I chose three different fabrics on purpose, to keep it interesting.  After all of the pink is quilted, the last fabric at the bottom of the quilt is a turquoise blue batik.

I am seeing a little improvement, and learning a lot along the way.  I am most pleased that my curves are getting smoother, my circles are looking rounder, and I'm doing a better job of quilting closed shapes where a line of quilting stitches must meet up exactly with a previous line of stitching without crossing over, like in the paisley motif.  I'm satisfied with my stippling, those little hook things, and loopies (how do you like that for technical terminology?!).  The paisley fill needs work but it's much better than it was initially.  What have I learned?  Well, for one thing, I've learned to SLOW DOWN, especially on the larger curves.  When I try to zoom around a large curve too quickly, that's when it starts looking like a rounded box instead of a curve.  If I move the machine slower, I have better control.

I'm keeping a list of questions for my dealer, since I still haven't scheduled my day of training with her (totally my fault, not hers).  I know that I want her to take me through loading a quilt step-by-step.  I got this practice quilt loaded onto my frame by referencing my owner's manual and several YouTube videos, and it's fine for my immediate purpose of learning how to "draw" with my machine, but if this was a real quilt I'd be freaking out about a couple of things:

Yikes!  Quilt Pulling In at Edges!

So when I first loaded the quilt onto the frame, I basted about 1/4" from the raw edge of my top along the top as well as along the left and right sides, and attached my little clamp thingys (which may or may not be attached to my frame correctly, and may or may not be exerting the correct amount of tension) to my backing fabric only.  Then I quilted everything I could pretty densely, advanced the quilt to the next unquilted area, basted down the left and right sides, and quilted that area densely before advancing again, and so on.  See how much my quilt is pulling in from the edges at the bottom of the area I've finished quilting?  See how the unquilted quilt top on the roller is so much wider than the already quilted part, creating those diagonal wrinkle lines?  I know that quilts "draw up" as they are quilted, and the amount of that quilt shrinkage is proportional to the amount of quilt stitching.  But I'm also concerned that I may have stretched my quilt top horizontally as I loaded it onto the quilt top roller, trying to smooth it out from side to side.  And even if this shrinking quilt phenomenon is normal and to be expected, I still need to know how to deal with it properly in order to keep my quilts nice and square with STRAIGHT edges throughout the quilting process.  Because this is what is happening with my practice quilt as I advance it, and this would NOT be cool if it was a real quilt:

Icky!!!!

This is how nice and straight and smooth everything is when I advance to a new section of the quilt and baste down the sides:

Basted Quilt Edge is Nice and Straight as it Should Be

...and this is how that same side looks once the quilting is completed in that section and I've advanced to the next area of the quilt:

...But the Quilting Pulls It In Badly From the Sides, and then THIS!

A few thoughts.  First, I have started out by loading up the biggest sample quilt that fits on my frame, and I've been quilting densely from side to side.  The large size of this quilt plus the high density quilting are exacerbating an issue that I might not have with a smaller quilt.  If this was a real quilt, I would either be stitching an allover edge-to-edge pantograph design that was more open than my quilt doodle scribble stitching, so it would not draw up as much.  And finally, even if this was a real King sized quilt that I wanted to have dense custom quilting, I would probably do all of the stitch-in-the-ditch quilting first to stabilize everything before going back to do the detailed quilting in each section.  That would give me a lot more control than two little basting lines spaced 120" apart from one another.  Still, I'm looking forward to finding out exactly how my dealer loads her quilts at my training, because there are sure to be tricks and tips she has picked up over the years for getting the best results possible.

One more little yucky-poo -- I discovered a couple of pucker pleats on the backing side of the quilt with the last advance:

See Those Little Pleats?

They are minor, to be sure, and if it was a real quilt they might not even be noticeable once the finish quilt was washed and did that crinkly puckery thing that quilts do when laundered, but the goal is of course to have NO pleats.  So I need to be more careful about making sure all three layers are nice and smooth every time I advance the quilt, before I start quilting again.  However, when I look at that picture above, before I even notice the two little pleats, I notice how beautiful and even the stitches are on both sides of the quilt, top and bottom.  I just loaded my machine up with Glide thread top and bottom and out come gorgeous stitches without my having to adjust anything!  I'm very happy with the APQS stitch regulator, too.  

In Matching Thread, Those Wobbles and Oopses Would Be Near Invisible

Honestly, I'm surprised by how well this is going.  I had read all of these horror stories of quilters who invested in longarm machines that they were never able to use successfully, and I fully expected to be discouraged and regretting my purchase of by now!  I thought it was going to take me months of practicing every day before I could attempt to quilt a REAL quilt without fear of ruining it with ugly, wobbly stitching.  However, although I'm nowhere near ready for heirloom feathers, I definitely feel like I have a handful of simple freehand quilting motifs that I could execute reasonably well on an everyday quilt top.  I daresay my thread scribbles are starting to look halfway decent, and this is a high-contrast thread that I'm using, not a blending thread like I'm going to use on a real quilt.  I'm feeling a little impatient about finishing up the practice quilt so I can get one of my real quilts on the frame!

Seriously, this is SO FUN!!!

See how much better my little "olives" (double circle loops) are looking after just a few days?  I tell myself that I'm going to do practice quilting for 30 minutes and then do something else, but then I get into a groove and lose track of time. 

I Marked a Grid Outline in Chalk for This Pattern

In the picture above, you can really see that I still have a lot less control over the movement of the machine on the diagonal versus true horizontal or vertical motion.  So I'll keep working on that.  What else is left to practice?  Well, two things, and I'm not sure which order I'll tackle them.  I want to be sure to try out a few rows of pantograph quilting from the back side of the machine, and I want to get the acrylic ruler base on the machine, switch back to the ruler presser foot, and practice quilting some straight lines and arcs with my rulers.  I know I will want to stitch in the ditch around my bear paw blocks, and I need to get comfortable with that technique before I try it on a real quilt.

Hmmm...  I just remembered that I have a little pile of orphan blocks sitting in a corner of my studio, reject blocks from various projects that I didn't end up using because they were the wrong size or whatever.  If I piece those together into a little practice top, they would be perfect for practicing stitch-in-the-ditch with a ruler!

But first:

1. I'm going to sew the borders on that Bear Paw quilt TODAY and set it aside for quilting.  

2. Time to make another pineapple log cabin block!  31 blocks are finished, 11 more to go.

Of course, if I don't get away from this computer, I won't accomplish anything at all...

Happy Stitching, everyone!

I'm linking up with:
·       Let’s Bee Social at http://sewfreshquilts.blogspot.ca/
·       Midweek Makers at http://quiltfabrication.blogspot.com/
·       WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com 
·       Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/