Silent Saturday

Ask Your Machine Quilter

Well sort of a night out with the girls! Recently I was in charge of my quilt guilds monthly program and go figure, I talked about machine quilting! After a few questions to some of the guild members I decided it was past time to have "The Talk" with the ladies in the group. You know the "Why we ask for the things we ask for" and the "Let me try to explain WHY I need your backings to be larger than your quilt tops" kind of talk.

At first I thought this was going to be the easiest program I have ever done, then I sat down and started listing everything I wanted to talk about. It didn't take more than five minutes to discover "easy" wasn't the best word to describe the program! What to do before you bring your quilt for quilting, batting, threads, pressing, backing, borders, ruler work, and lets not forget marking tools. So I set down and got to work on typing up everything that I could think of. Typing by the way is not a strong point for me, and being dyslexic tends to get in the way especially when I want something to turn out perfect so not to embarrass myself too much. I typed up the book over five times before I was satisfied that the last edition wasn't too terribly bad to try to fix! Thank goodness I have a good proof reader in the house!

By the time I was near the end I had a  little mini book to hand out to the guild members So I thought I might as well add a few questions and answers to the back of the book for easy reference.  I quickly realized however that, #1 I wanted questions from people who weren't me and #2 I had no clue where to get those questions! So what's a Bad Ass Quilter to do when stuck with a tough task? As other Bad Ass Quilters of course!

Luckily for me I am a member of The Bad Ass Quilters Society so I hit up the group's Facebook page for a little help! I wasn't expecting so many questions but when Bad Ass Founder Maddie Kertay posted the questions to the big wall I was bombarded! I want to say a big old THANK YOU to Maddie and the rest of the Bad Ass Quilters that helped me out with questions! If you all hadn't helped me out I'm not sure what I would have finished up the mini book with!

[caption id="attachment_75" align="aligncenter" width="300"] My Quilting Machine, a Gammill Optimum Pro[/caption]

I had tons of samples and tools to bring along and show, photos, longarm rulers, samples of quilting, threads, batting types, and a number of quilts to show. My friend and fellow machine quilter Sharon S. brought in samples of her quilting to share and talk about as well another machine quilting friend Karie W. who gratefully played the part of Vanna White for me! (Thanks Girls!)

[caption id="attachment_78" align="aligncenter" width="300"] A selection of my favorite rulers, most from Jamie Wallen and Dusty Farrell[/caption]

The group had a lot of questions on threads so it helped to have the samples to show what a thick thread looked like compared to a thin thread. To show them all i picked a filigree feather design and quilted it out in every thickness of thread that i had available to me. Different fiber types, cotton, polyester, and rayon samples also helped to show some of the thread choices available. I also want to say Thank You to  Joy V. (Custom Quilts of Joy)for the help with some extra threads to quilt up some samples with!

[caption id="attachment_77" align="aligncenter" width="300"] A few of the samples i brought to share[/caption]

Batting was the next up, why pick puffy poly, why pick a flat batt, what was my favorite and what would I prefer to never have to use were some of the questions that came up. In my business I will pretty much quilt with any batting that the customers what to bring me but I do have favorite and not so favorite batting, I don't really know a quilter that doesn't. For me, if I have /need to use a Puffy Polyester batting I LOVE the brand Quilt King. It comes out of the plastic bag with nearly no wrinkles so I can start using it right away and even if I quilt closely together it doesn't get too stiff from all the quilting. I also love pretty much anything from the Quilters Dream Batting Company, especially the Dream Poly and Dream Puff. For my least liked favorite I would have to pick Hobbs Polly Down. It is stuffed so tightly into the plastic bag that it is almost always badly wrinkled to the point where I have to let it rest for a few days or stuff it in the dryer to get the wrinkles out before I can use it.

[caption id="attachment_76" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Setting up the quilt for quilting[/caption]

All in all I think it was a pretty good night, even if for some reason I forgot to print the one page that was the most important for the mini book, forgot to show Sharon's sample of her Block Work, forgot to get ANY photos of the program stuff once I had it all setup, and lets not forget that the program went a "bit" longer than it normally does. I have received a number of thank you's from the guild members as well as feedback on the different things we talked about.

If you would like to see the mini book I handed out you can view, download, and/or print it here: Ask Your Machine Quilter (including the forgotten page!)

But please remember that the info provided is MY OPINION and thoughts, and I am 100% positive that not all machine quilters feel the same way, think the same way, or want the same things that I want. So PLEASE be sure to "Ask Your OWN Machine Quilter" before believing anything that I have in my handout as being written in stone!