Well it’s five or six months since we bought our longarm and I figured I should write down the things I’ve learned that I didn’t know ahead of time.

It really is as physical as they say.

I read up all I could find ahead of time, and everything more than a snippet talked about physical limitations and pacing yourself and more things that I just glossed over, because this was written with a senior audience in mind, right? I didn’t have to worry about mobility issues or anything, right? Not like I sit at a desk all day and type or anything.

Let me tell you Internet, working on a longarm all day is WORK. That machine may be on the most engineered ball bearings rail system known to man and woman kind but you’re still moving a 40 pound machine with your arms and standing for hours to do it.

And ruler work? I did a queen sized with a diagonal grid across the background, all over two days. The third day I got out of bed, raised my arms and… ow. I’m secretly hoping this helps with the aging biceps flaps though. I’ll let you know when I’m done icing my knees from standing (yes, with a mat). Heed those warning of frequent breaks and alternate tasks between sitting and standing. Stretch a lot more than you think you need. Hydrate. Remember to blink.

Sometimes it’s intimidating.

So you spent all this money, you have all the new tools, visions of complicated custom quilting in your head, a stack of quilt tops ready to go and… nothing.

One morning I walked in, saw the big hulking machine and started breathing faster. My pulse raced. Not in a good way. What have I done? Who did I think I was, Judi Madsen???

If you’re also doing this for a business, then you have all the regular business headaches on top. If you’re never run a business before, then you have the pressure of wanting to be successful as a business person too.

No pressure, right?

I work in tech for my day job, and we often reference this thing called Imposter Syndrome. Turns out it happens for quilters too.

You have to just suck up and move forward. Keep going. Shut that little voice up. Like diving into the lake on the first weekend of summer, you know it’s gonna be super cold but you have to jump in and get over it.

Also remind me to come back and read this bit again in a month.

You really are only as good as your tools.

So yeah – you’re Pinterested up, you’re on fire and you just KNOW once you get that longarm you will finally be on the road to being an awesome quilter!

Well. Yes. Eventually. It’s re-learning all over again, some days. So many more steps to remember! So many differences! But one day it comes together for you and you lean back and go… that’s not too bad. And you keep going. So much sucking at it until you don’t suck.

This was the same when we got our first digital camera. We took decent photos but then we had ideas and wanted to take better photos. So we got a new camera -and took mediocre photos. Then we took more photos and tried some things and one day there were a few really good photos.

Quilting is the same. You see all this fantastic quilting but what you don’t see is the tools used, and the practise. You also don’t see the mistakes! That’s why some days I share my mistakes too – so people know it’s not just them.

The ideas won’t stop.

So now you have the tools, you’re rested up, you’re ready to roll and there’s a hundred and two ideas. There aren’t enough hours in the day. You’ll be in the middle of one project and another will pop in your head. You’ll be in line at the DMV and the tiles will make you think. You have to unfollow people on social media because you tried to keep a list of “someday” quilts and now you’re up to two freaking pages…

Don’t ask about the notes I make myself at 3am. I can’t even read them at 8am. “But what if we just..” Shut up muse, stop!

It can take over your life.

My longarm lives in what is supposed to be the master bedroom. It’s a HUGE room. Hubby and I like small bedrooms, all we do is sleep in there. So the longarm room is the sewing room but now there’s no floor space for laying things out.

But there is floor space in our great room, if we move the dining room table off to the side… and the extra front small sitting room is only storing items so let’s put our batting rolls out there and we can use that floor space to roll out batting, and we can stash these finished quilts here and there. You can come over, but you might need to move a quilt to find a place to sit.

Since we live in the country, we try and group our errands. A lot of these wind up on times when the fabric stores in town are also open.

You’ll learn how to do maintenance whether you want to or not.

When your sewing machine makes a noise or skips stitches, you can just bring it into your local repair guy. Not so much with these beasts. They literally take up a room, it’s not gonna fit in the back of your car. This is an industrial machine so the good thing is they make these easy to access what you need, and most companies provide very detailed manuals and great support – even when you buy secondhand! That’s one reason we went with APQS.

I know many people skip regular sewing machine maintenance like cleaning and oiling, but with a longarm it’s super important. Don’t wait till the needle breaks to change it. This was most surprising to me, having used needles on a regular machine until I noticed issues. With a longarm, you get through maybe two large quilts and you can literally hear the difference with the needle getting dull. A dull needle will also start poking the batting though the backing fabric. (ask me how I found out).

It also needs regular oiling – same oil, but more of it, more often.

The up side is, since the machines are built really well and you have to work so closely with them, even the slightest change is noticeable. We had a wheel that would loosen up over time and we figured out eventually it was worse if we (I mean ME) went super fast. I could feel even a 1/4″ turn the wrong way on the bolt just by how curves went. Ron kept at it until he narrowed it down to a burr on a washer on the wheel. A teeny tiny burr! We replaced the washer and it’s been great ever since.

Since the machine goes a LOT faster there’s a lot more dust. I don’t think I even clean my bathroom as often as I dust and swiffer the sewing room. It seems constant. Or at least after every other quilt. (Also I keep my bathroom pretty clean, don’t judge me internet. I have white tiles. I get antsy after 4 days.)

If you thought the longarm was expensive, wait’ll you see the accessories.

So the machine itself is a big chunk of change. First thing you need is thread. Then you find out the huge range of colors they come in. So pretty! So shiny! I want one of everything! Wait, there’s a thread of the month club?

Speaking of thread – I have white piecing thread, white serger thread, regular white quilting thread and extra fine 60w white thread for super detailed custom work. That’s just in white.  There’s a lot of other colors too.

And the ruler work – so you need a ruler BASE for the machine, And rulers. You want circles? They come in SIZES. There’s straight lines and curves and things for working around applique and specialty shapes. Don’t even get me started on stencils.

Good thing my mom got me floor mats for my birthday. It was hard to wrap, but one less thing to buy.

Then if you’re quilting you need batting. We buy it by the roll now and our last order was 5 rolls. We have 3 left. Good thing we get a price break at this level!

Your spouse may join in.

I admit, I had a plan. I was chipping away, wearing down the husband. I thought I was masterful. Just try the beginner class, I said. It’ll be fun, I said, we can make it a date.

HAHAHAHAHA

Well now we have a longarm but we have to organize our schedule based on whose turn it is to use the thing. Which one of us has a deadline to meet? Who had a quilt on the frame last and who has to use the sewing machine?

On the up side, Ron is a quick learner and also enjoys quilting. He’s been making patterns and working on improving his skills. It’s a learning process for me since his mind is very different than my freewheeling anything goes. I’m learning how to teach to an analytical mind, and to give measurements instead of “what looks good”. And also when to walk away and not watch.  We had to learn to work together when we were freelancers so we have worked out the major communication issues, which is good. Now we’re working on working together creatively.

Last week I had deadlines, and while I was busy with my day job, he cut out, assembled, and pressed binding for a quilt I needed to finish. When I was next able to work on the quilt, the binding was all ready to go for me to sew it on.

Maybe my plan was a good one after all.

Final thought:

So there you have it – all  the extra things you need to think about before taking that final step. It’s a doozy but.. the water’s fine. 😉

I finally got around to quilting the Glimmer quilt I made sometime last year. This one was pieced with Carolyn Friedlander fabrics and I kept the colors subdued to greys and white with just a POP of the lime green.

I had done pillow sized and table topper sized versions of Glimmer but this was the first large version I had done. I wanted to make sure I really went wild with custom quilting on this.

Originally I had planned to do this on my domestic machine with lots of free motion quilting, but I loaded it up on the longarm once I had figured out the best way to start quilting.

Here’s an overview of the quilting I did:

In the background I just did allover swirls. The print is pretty busy for being black and white, so anything fancier would not show. It does create a great uniform overall texture in the background.

Then in each print I did a different free motion design.

Figure eights or L’s in the outermost rings, then ribbon candy. The next section is the green so I did a nice half leaf feathering thing. You could also call it serpentine, but it’s similar to doing feathers, except pointy. Some people refer to this as fern feathers.

The next section formed a V shape so I decided to treat both as a unit and did a swirled hook design that turned a corner. I picked this because it fit and because I’m not so good at it and needed the practise.

The inside ring I did close back and forth lines, also known as switchbacks. It’s a great dense fill and helps flatten the area, because in the inner ring I did feathers! Of course I did. I treated the edge of the block as the spine of the feather and bumped my way out from the center. Just travel back down the seam or around the block to get to the next one.

On the longarm I started at the top with the background fill and as I went back and forth I did each section as needed, even if it was a different motif. I did the whole thing in white 60w thread. This is so thin it sinks into almost any color.

For total quilting time, I did this over 3 days and my rough calculations were about 4 or 5 hours. One of those days I did hardly anything on it.

If you were going to do this same quilting on a domestic, I would do the stitch in the ditch around the main motif following the major seams first. Then I would start in the middle and do all the feathers. I would then do the next rung with the switchbacks. After that, I would likely do the next bits in quarters, travelling as needed to finish off the SID around the pieces and to get to the next sections. When the whole center motif was done, then I would start the background fill around the edges of the center and work my way out to the edges, also in quadrants.

If you have any questions, let me know!

Oh I have the best news – it took a while but it finally happened. We got word on a longarm, second hand and IN CANADA at a great price, in Canadian dollars.

Just to roll back a little, somewhere this winter my husband came into the sewing room and was watching mush and smush a queen sized quilt through my regular sewing machine. “That looks painful,” he said. “It is.” I said.

And he’d seen the basting process and how long it took.

It turns out, a longarm studio opened up in a community 2-3 hours away from me so I went up for a class. Worst case, I figured I would spend a few hundred in lessons and rental time but at least I’d get things done faster, even when including the long drive.

Ron was so interested after my first visit, I bought him along for my second visit and HE took the beginner class. He did great! And of course he was hooked too, so we started looking around. Then we got word and bit our fingernails and measured rooms and cleared out space and waited for it to get packed up and mailed all the way across the country.

(Canada is HUGE.)

 

This is our 2004 APQS Millie on a 12 foot table.

It got here just after our wedding anniversary in 8 large boxes, including a roll of batting we had tossed in our order. We spent two days setting it up.

We spent a few hours taking it apart and then putting it back correctly too.

Finally we were able to do some test runs and load our very first quilts. Then we quilted non stop, I swear. The first week the machine ran every single day. Some days we did two quilts, taking turns getting used to it, figuring things out, practising on the huge stack of my own quilt tops I had standing by to get done “some day.”

Eventually I put on the first customer quilt that had waited so patiently. And that bed sized tshirt quilt was done in 5.5 hours. It was amazing.

I can and DO finish customer quilts so much faster now. I had seven piled up. Three are already out the door to customers and two more are getting mailed out this week. It’s only been three weeks at this point.

I keep shaking my head and wondering why it took so long for us to make the jump but I guess it all happened at just the right time.

Ron and I are both quilting and right now I am catching up on customer quilts that were in the backlog. By June we should be ready to take on more quilts and do some machine quilting so all the quilters we know can get those tops done!