Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Driving a Long Arm

Today I had my big lesson on how to use a Statler long-arm quilting machine. I am now "certified!" It was fun! I did a border design, custom designs in individual blocks, and an edge-to-edge section.

Now I can take on the world! Or at least an occasional quilt. Next week I'll go back and do a Quilts of Valor quilt. I can do these for free, for practice, and a soldier gets a quilt: win-win. After a couple of practice quilts I hope to feel confident enough to do some of my own. I'll rent time on the machine and see how much I can accomplish. It'll be nice to get my own quilts done, or at least a few of them.

Here's the quilt I made today, and a couple detail shots.


the giraffe design is a little bit weird, but I just couldn't NOT do a giraffe when the option was there


BTW, the batting we used is Quilter's Dream Green - it is made of recycled water bottles! It feels perfectly normal and fine, but it's green, so it's not right for every project. It worked just fine for today.

3 comments:

BrendaLou said...

Nice, you are already doing a great job. Just a word on the Green Batts...they can tend to produce "fibers" into the air that are sharp (think babies' lungs) so you might want to make sure you don't use them for baby or kid quilts. Just a thought.

Sextant said...

Is the quilting machine like a huge sewing machine that can handle large sections of cloth or is it more or less a standard sized machine with computer controlled designs.

I think I posted a comment once on your site about a Toyota sewing machine I had seen at a mall. It was at sports wear vendor. This thing had 8 or 10 separate colors of thread all on individual bobbins and needles. You picked your team logo, mostly local high schools and colleges if I remember right on the computer. They sold jackets and sweat and tea shirts. Put the article of clothing under the needles and position and wham this thing took off with a single mindedness that was almost frightening. I can't remember how it long took, maybe 5 or 10 minutes, I am not sure but that was one busy sewing machine. Don't get it its way.

Here is what they offer now:

http://www.southwestsewingmachines.com/ProductInfo.aspx,,productid,,ESP9100

Far more complicated than the one I saw. It must have been a g00d 15 years ago. It just looked like a regular sewing machine although larger with a bunch of bobbins and needles on it.

Cool things one can do these days.

Anonymous said...

Great job on the machine. I love the giraffe! Fun to see what you've done.