Have you Tinkled Today?

 Click for larger viewThis morning I finally decided I was ready to brave a real quilt on the HQ16.  Not that I have any doubts in the machine, but I sure doubt myself!  I picked what felt to me to be the easiest of my panto’s, and loaded up the quilt I pieced for my Mom a few weeks ago.  Sure, I’d love to be doing these borders in fancy feathers, but I’m a long ways off from those and I think she’d prefer having the quilt in this lifetime.

I floated the quilt top and batting.  I watched the video that came with the machine and they showed to roll the quilt, but that wasn’t how I remembered doing it in the past.  I removed the leader from the top bar, and put the longarm measuring tape on that bar instead.

I’m so excited!  It’s a long ways from perfect, but it’s going much, much better that I expected.  TheClick for larger view stitch regulator is awesome, and I can’t say enough about the new “walking” feature.  There’s no way I can possibly follow the lines of a panto at any speed whatsoever, so if it weren’t for the stitch regulator I’d have months of practice ahead of me before I could do this.

I have some wobbles but overall I’m really excited how well this is turning out, plus after just a couple of hours, I’m halfway done with the quilt, woohoo!

 Click for larger viewI’m using Isacord embroidery thread to do the quilting, same color on top and in the bobbin (no point in stressing myself unnecessarily at this point) and I love the way it looks, and boy does it stitch out like a dream.  Mom wanted the Quilters Dream wool batting that I used in the same quilt I made for Jim, and I just love the loft on it.  It’s hard to capture, but I think this picture on the brown fabric shows it better.

I also wanted to rave a bit about the pantograph design I’m using.  It’s a Jodi Beamish design, from Willow Leaf Studio, called “whirlygig”.  I bought all my pantos from this designer, because I love the way she made it so easy to line them up, there’s simply no way you can mess these up!

You follow the solid line of course, but see how she added the previous and next areas in dotted lines?  Most of the panto’s I looked at head registration marks, but nothing like this.

Jim ended up working upstairs in his office until 3am, and slept all morning, so I think our weekend projects aren’t going to get done, LOL.