I Quilted on a Long Arm!

How cool is that?!  I got to quilt on a long arm!

My mom and I took the long arm certification class at A Quilting Place in Omaha yesterday.  It was lots of fun.  We were 2 of 5 students in the class.  We each recieved a set of zippers for loading a quilt onto the machines.  Then we each got to pick out a panel to quilt a baby quilt for practice. 

So why did we take this class?  Well, you can take this 6 hour class to learn how to use the machines and then can bring in your quilts from home and rent the machines by the hour.  Jackie will also quilt them for you if you'd like, but how much fun is that?  I had a blast learning how to use the machines and am excited to try it again on some of my own projects. 

Want to see a few photos?  Okay!

Here's my mom quilting her quilt.  Notice the knee-bend, Dad.  (He says to bend your knees for just about everything.  Going ice skating?  Bend your knees!  Going skiiing?  Bend your knees?  Painting a wall?  Bend your knees!  Eating breakfast?  Bend your knees!  Okay, maybe not those last two were an exaggeration, but not by much!)



This is the panel she chose.



Aren't the chicks fun? 



Here's a photo my mom snapped of me quilting. 



Here's the quilt I chose.  It's a Daisy Kingdom panel.  Remember Daisy Kingdom?  Isn't the girl bear with the cape sweet?



Here's a close up of the quilting I did.  We used a panto (I think that's probably slang for pantograph, but I'm not sure.).  That means that I used a laser to trace a pattern that was printed on a big sheet of paper and laid out on a shelf on the machine. 



I think you can see the quilting a little better on the back.  See how nice my curves are?  That's good!  The batting is a little lofty, thus the kind of wrinkled look you see. 



I had a lot of fun learning how to use these machines.  Hopefully I'll hear back pretty soon on a few quilts I'm supposed to be doing for Fabri-Quilt.  If I get them done soon enough, I'll be able to take them up to use the longarm.  It's so much easier to use a long arm for quilting than to do it on my little babylock.  I think they come out so much smoother, too!  I can't wait to get to play on these machines again soon!

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