When I was a small-ish child, I remember having little self-confidence. I was (am) wary of new situations. Making friends and engaging in conversations was tricky. I worried about this and that. My mother often said if I could make this all go away for you, I would. It’s probably a good thing that I was raised prior to the influx of anxiety meds. In hind sight I imagine that this all stemmed from a couple mean girls and my general lack of athletic prowess. Regardless, my mother’s treatment of choice was chant “Anne Byrne is great”. This was a regular at school, slumber party, club meeting drops offs. She would make me say it too. On the good days it made me laugh, other times it was pretty annoying.

It must have stuck, because I now think pretty highly of myself. Especially when it comes to craft.
Way back in college I wanted to make a quilt. Did I take a class? no- I could figure this out. I can sew, you know. I checked out some art books on amish quilts and looked at the pictures, then drew up some templates and cut it all out. Had that top put together in no time. This first attempt is the quilt currently on my bed. I had no idea why the points on all the outside diamonds got lost in the seam allowance, huh?

I thought that I would hand quilt this. Mind you, I had never ever actually seen a hand quilted quilt. Or read about it. Or taken a class. But how hard can it be? Do you see how tiny my stitches are? It didn’t occur to me that you’re supposed to rock the needle and get more than 1 stitch on the needle at a time. This center section took me forever. Once I hit the borders, I said no way. I machine quilted the inside border and I was so sick of this by the time I got to the outside border, that I just tied it. I’ve have quilted other quilts since, the kind of right way.

I’ve made a few other attempts over the years, always making sure to avoid the side triangle point problem.

Last year I took a block of the month quilt class at an actual quilt shop and I learned the correct way to piece. I’ve put together 3 quilt tops over the past year. Now, what to do with them?

1) Pay the quilt shop to quilt them on their long arm. This looks SO very nice, but also costs SO very much

2)Buy a long arm set up. If you’re unaware- this is crazy expensive and takes up a ton of space. I would need to set it up in the attic. There was a used long arm and table for sale at the JOANN closing sale. It had been used in JOANN’s innovation studio (or something). It was $2,000 (which was a steal). I had no idea if it was missing anything or if it currently worked. It was non-refundable. I didn’t buy it.

3)Rent time on the long arm machine at the quilt shop. I have an appointment to do this in 2 weeks. I can probably get 1 smaller quilt done over the course of a day. I look forward to having someone there to trouble shoot for me.

4)Free Motion Quilt them on my regular domestic machine. (FMQ for the initiated). When you sew anything, you have to think about how large the thing is. Will it fit under the arm of your machine? Different sewing machines have various harp space (or throat size). This is the measurement between your needle heading right towards the upright arm of the machine.. There also is the space from the deck of the machine up. If you want to quilt on domestic machines, you want these measurements to be as big as possible. There also seems to be a price ratio between harp size and cost. Bigger the harp space the higher the cost. Generally.

I have a Juki DX2000 QVP. There is 8 inches between the needle and the machine and I have 5 inches in height under the arm. This is pretty good- not great, pretty good.

So, I think,-How hard can it be to free motion quilt?? Nothing fancy mind you, just a “simple meander”. It’s just doodling with a sewing machine. I can do that.

Sidebar - a couple of years ago at a JOANN sample sale, I saw a Grace Cutie table top quilt frame for $25. The MSRP on these is $599 I think. I bought it and put it together, then stuck it in my closet.

This will be the time to try free motion quilting for the first time on the quilt frame that I have never used. I watched a couple youtube videos, I’m ready to go. I put the feed dogs down and drove.

1)it’s hard to see under there without hunching.

2)it’s trickier to be smooth than I think it should be

3)it looks ok

4)my top thread keeps breaking- annoyingly- I have to keep rethreading- I try about 4 different thread needle combinations to figure this out, even ordering a new kind of thread from Amazon. Breakage continues.

Up until this point I’m quilting on scrap. I finally think I have solved the tension problem and I crazily think that I should just go ahead and try it on the actual quilt. So I do. The top thread is still breaking, but I don’t care. It looks great!

Using my machine on the tabletop frame means that I only have a 5”swatch that I can quilt on at a time, but whatever. I do this over 3-4 days a few hours at a time. Then I take it completely off the frame and look at it. The back looks like crap. Tension is all wonky, big eyelashes everywhere.

I’m infinitely frustrated. Why can’t I figure this out??

I go and talk to the long-armer at a quilt shop. The only reoccurring suggestion is to get the machine tuned up. The recommended timing is once a year. Mine has never been serviced, and I’ve been using is practically daily for a year, and sporadically for probably a year or 2 prior. I take it in, and pay close to $300 (!!) They give it a tune up, adjust the timing and replace the needle plate.

While it was in the shop, I did more research- how to free motion quilt, I sign up for the long arm rental at the shop, and I sign up for a free motion online class. I also am looking at other sewing machines with larger harp spaces. more money more money more money. I am humbly admitting my lack of true knowledge in the thing I’ve never done.

The machine comes back, and I load up another scrap project. I works beautifully. Maybe it was the machine all along (?) Maybe I am brilliant.

Then came the horrendous time spent picking out all the work I did on the real quilt that was crap. It took forever. I finally finished it yesterday. I’m going to practice on the scrap a bit more, then I’m going to rebaste the real quilt and make sure that the batting and baclking look ok, and load it back up. This will be next week’s project. I’m actually terrified, as I should be.

Humble Pie

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