While I really love my Juki 2010Q for piecing quilts (it really does the best quarter inch seam), I don’t love it for quilting. It does totally fine straight line quilting, but when I start to free motion quilt things go haywire. I’m pretty sure somewhere along the way (I’ve had the machine about a dozen years) I messed up something and it seems I always have strange loops and skipped stitches. I want to admit it also could be the random fabric I use – not always plain quilting cotton. I often reuse clothing and I love vintage (and even modern 100% cotton) sheets as well. It’s not a total excuse but it is a big part of the reason I ended up with 18 quilt tops… OOPS.

I have taken a few quilts to be long armed before (notably this quilt for Ceara that I almost murdered trying to quilt on my old domestic machine), but it can be expensive. And it can be extra expensive when you’re picky (who me?). Last year I decided on a good middle of the road approach… what if I rented a long arm machine and did that myself? All the places I know of that let you rent, also require a class before you’re let free on the machines (these things are after all tens of thousands of dollars). I have a shop not far from me that allows this kind of thing but after months (and months) of calling and asking they never got a teacher for the machine so I was stuck. Finally when they suggest I pay for the class and then they would find a teacher I decided to look a little further away (I mean honestly, how sketchy is that?).

To my lovely quilt guild and our active community I went asking for advice. In order to see my friend Sarah once a week Corvallis Modern Quilt Guild is my main guild home now. Hence how I ended up about 40 minutes south of here last week learning a new skill. From about 9:30-1 we went over the basics of the machine, loading a quilt, basting, stitching, etc. Then from 1-5 I worked on this beauty.

Was long arm quilting everything I dreamed of? Oh yes. I loved it so so so much. I had spent the last few weeks sketching like crazy (per Christina‘s excellent advice.). I met Christina at the Portland Modern Quilt Guild and have all her excellent books: First Steps to Free Motion Quilting, Step by Step Free Motion Quilting, Step by Step Texture Quilting, and Free Motion Combinations. I mention these books (and you should know I’ve also taken a few of her classes) because my teacher said I was a natural and it was really easy to do for me. BUT I have done a lot of free motion quilting over the years on my domestic. And I do sketch a lot so I think that helped a ton.

I mean look at this amazing texture.

This pattern is straight from Christina. I’ve done it before and I love how it feels.

It took me four solid hours to hand guide quilt this 78 x 96 quilt (I’ll do a full post about this ender and leader quilt later). Or about $100 of long arm rental time. Really the only money I saved was the cost of my time. Usually a quilt this size is about $225 to quilt (with a computerized pattern). That sounds about right knowing the time (and tools, this is not a cheap set up!). I’m so thrilled I got to try this. I’m certified on her machine now and I’m going back this week to hopefully knock out some more quilts… only 17 left to go!