This past weekend I rented time on a Longarm Quilting Machine. Here in Western New York, at the time of writing this post, there is only one Longarm Rental location in the entire region. Creekside Fabrics in Arcade, NY offers hourly rentals on their Babylock Regalia. To use the machine, you must first take a certification course. This is a one-on-one lesson with Creekside’s longarm expert, Cheryl. She goes through the basics of how to use the machine, how to load a quilt, how to roll it, etc. This lesson was done on some scrap fabric so I could play around without feeling like I was going to ruin my quilt top.
The Regalia they have in the shop has the Prostitcher software to use computer-programmed pantographs, but I decided to take the additional class with Cheryl to learn about ruler work. She worked with me again, teaching me to dos and don’ts of ruler work. She had a number of different rulers for me to work with. Straight lines, circles, 2 sides of a triangle, arches, and different curves. After we played around for a little while on a scrap yard of fabric, Cheryl helped me get started and we loaded my first project.
I came to Creekside with three different quilt tops and backings ready to go. As I was exiting the house on the way to my rental appointment, I grabbed a panel I had purchased to practice my quilting on. I had intended to use this for practicing my free-motion quilting on my domestic machine, but really, any quilting practice was helpful. I was feeling really intimidated to get on the longarm machine and start quilting. I really didn’t want to “ruin” the quilt tops that I had spent so much time on. So, I decided to load up the panel and play around on it first before quilting my quilts. It was like another practice, but this time, for real, haha! This panel is from the Eat Your Veggies collection by Sandy Gervais for Riley Blake Fabrics. I did a little ruler work around the outside, using some arches and then some straight lines through the square border on the fabric. In the center of the panel, I did some really free free-motion quilting. Ha! I am really inspired by Karen McTavish and her quilting, so some of the very free free-motion echos her technique. Because I didn’t have much of a plan for this panel, it turned out a little crazy. When working on a piece like this, I need to have a better plan ahead of time and really decide how I am going to get to where I am going. For instance, I started putting an echo quilting line on the inside of the natural border, and when I rolled the quilt to a new section, I sometimes forgot to keep doing that. I am very new to Longarm quilting, and machine quilting in general, so I wonder if it would be possible to add something like that all at once while rolling the quilt down the whole time, and then rolling the quilt back to the beginning to add in the background filler, etc. You will see in the photo below, I have some painter’s tape on the quilt top. Cheryl had me use this so I would know how much quilting area I really had. With the ruler foot and ruler base, I had much less space to bring the machine closer to the bottom of the frame. The ruler base gives you support to hold the ruler on the quilt without things sagging but the “front lip” on it is a few inches wide, shortening that quilting space.
I finished up this maze panel and moved on to my quilt tops. The next quilt I loaded was actually the quilt I made for my youngest daughter and is my most recent finish. To me, it felt like the fabric and the pattern were not calling for any specific quilting and I could do something more organic and loose. When preparing for this rental appointment, I was talking with my friend, Nancy, from my quilt guild, and she suggested just getting used to the machine and doing wavy lines. She said there is a real learning curve with free-motion quilting and it will give me more confidence to get started this way. So, I listened and we have a wavy-lined quilt! This quilt top was a free pattern from Fat Quarter Shop called Jelly Roll Twist. I didn’t actually do a great job at following this pattern. I was supposed to use a white charm pack and a jelly roll, but I had matching precuts, so I used them. Well, my precuts only had five prints, and each block has five different units, so every single block kind of ended up looking the same. I did end up mixing in two fat quarters from another collection, and it looks great, but I still wish I had listened. But, becasue the quilt kind of looks the same across the entire thing, it really didn’t call for a specific type of quilting in my mind. Just a note – the fabric I used for this one was something I picked up at Tuesday Morning. I do not know the designer or the name of the company even.
To get back to the quilting, I used a curved ruler to help me get a nice curved line across the with of the quilt. I found this ruler to be the most difficult to work with as it was kind of long and would tip if I did not readjust my hand placement as I went. For some reason, this was hard for me to get a real grasp on, mentally. Over and over I would follow the ruler too far without readjusting my hand and the ruler would tip a bit and hit one of the screws on the ruler’s foot making a terrible banging noise which would alert me to my mistake. After putting a few curves in with the ruler, I would then free-motion a line or two. After a few wonky lines, I would go back to using the curvy ruler. I really liked using this method because I felt like I really could not screw it up. Within the quilting world, everyone suggests wavy lines for beginners, and this was just the large-scale version of that. I am really happy with how it turned out. It’s a soft-feeling quilt. I can’t wait to get the binding on and then wash it to see how it will feel all shrunken and crunchy.
The last quilt I got on the longarm was for my eldest daughter. I started it while I was pregnant with her in late 2019 or early 2020. The fabric is Once-Upon-a-Rhyme by Jill Howarth for Riley Blake. This was a Villa Rosa pattern. Unfortunately, I have no idea where the pattern is and I can’t find it on their website either. It was something about a corner… Anyways I felt because of those corner pieces, this called for something a little more organized. I was going to place two wavy lines next to one another to create a channel and then leave a six-inch space and place another set of wavy lines and go in between them and do some free motion. This was already my second day on the longarm, and I was tired. So I ended up doing more ruler work and less free motion. I also had only rented the machine for 2 days and I needed to finish my project before the end of business, and I really was not feeling very petient to try and get my free motion looking really good. So I did sets of alternating zig zag and wavy lines. The blocks in this quilt were really simple. It was two large regtangles sewn together and then I actually appliqued on the sections that would normally be pieced. I wanted to do it this way so as the quilt was washed it would become a soft frayed edge.
So along the top, bottom, and middle of each row, I would place two wavy lines, following this wavy ruler that was provided to me by Creekside. Then inbetween those wavy lines, I would place two zig zag lines. At first, I was really having trouble figuring out the placement, I am sure if someone looks at this quilt really closly they will see the lines I placed too close together, too far apart and too high or low on the block itself. It was defintly a learning experience. In the end, this was my favorite project. If feels so orderly and wonderful while still being really fun and simple.
If you are considering renting a Longarm quilting machine, I would highly recommend it. I liked renting it for two days in a row. It allowed me to leave my project over night and come back to complete it. I just wish there were more quilt shops overing longarm rental services in this area. Arcade, NY is a solid 45 minute drive for me. They are also booking out 4 months in advance. So, before I left Creekside, I booked another session. I will be going back in March of 2023. By then, I should have another top or two comepleted. And if I don’t, I’ll cancel a month or so in advance of my appointment so they can get it booked by someone else.
Have you ever rented a longarm quilting machine before? Do you just send yours out? Or do you quilt at home with a domestic or mid/longarm of your own? Let me know in the comments, I would love to hear from you.
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