quiltmonkey

Hi, I have an ideas/suggestion about your interest in IQ. Please send me an email at Shana@showstopperquilts.com

You can quilt through this but go slow. Or, you could just quilt around the numbers. Whatever you feel most comfortable with. Remember that these machines are industrial strength.

I use 4.0 for most threads, but I move up to a 4.5 when I'm using the 30 weight So Fine. I also have 3.5 size needles that I use with Bottom Line on top.

Hi Shawna, I did a lot of searches on the Internet sites through various methods on the word "Homeland" and "P3 Designs" and I could not find anything. Just double checking::: Are you sure it's called Homeland? Perhaps it's a different name? It's easy for our memories to mix things up sometimes.

Thanks for sharing your process, Vicki!

Oh wow, Vicki!!!!!! That is lovely. OK I have to ask... I don't cross hatch very often (rare rare) So, can you share how you cross hatch over the applique? Do you stop, start or do you tack and hop over and tack and start quilting again and then snip the hops later? Do you mark the hatches? How do you get it so even and straight? Do you load it on point so you can do vertical and horizontal stitches rather than diagonal? Share your secrets, BABY!!!

Hi Robin, The tucks are likely caused by rolling the quilt back and forth which slightly stretches the backing fabric each time you roll. The way to resolve this is to stabilize the quilt really well after you SID that section by pinning everywhere religiously every 5 inches. Then roll to the next section, do your SID and then pin to death everywhere. The more pins the better. Pin it to death. I've also found that clamping on the sides can also pull the backing fabric, which can also cause tucks when you do the borders, so if you need to clamp while doing your SID, very lightly clamp the sides, or don't clamp until you are ready to quilt the borders. Pin the borders to death, too. Just sayin'! Good luck and I hope this helps you. Shana

This is likely an exception, rather than the norm. I've used wool many times without problems. It appears it's caused mostly from the fabric weave, not the batting. Thanks for sharing the tip about spraying static guard.

Sure! You can do whatever you want! So, I am assuming that you are doing the edge to edge feathers, and then going back afterwards and adding details to the leaves and wings. That would look nice! Please share a photo we would love to see it.

Honestly? It looks pretty terrific to me.

Go Pro mounted to your machine? Maybe you need two Go Pros -- one pointed at the needle and one pointed at the screen. I hope someone else chimes in.

My best advice is to take classes from Myrna. She's the BEST teacher. In the mean time, I suggest scrolling through all of the posts here in this chat forum, and then go to the photos forum, and then go see the other chat forums here on the APQS site. There's a wealth of information and probably a century's worth of institutional knowledge combined on this site. Another thing to do is go on You Tube and just search around for beginner longarm quilting videos. Lots of great stuff out there.

My power cord is heavy and sometimes it hangs up on something (another cord, the carriage, etc) I try to pull the power cord out into the center of the table.

Yes, there is a "delicate but firm pressure" to apply while using a ruler/template. If you push too hard down it will cause more drag. Experiment with a firm amount of pressure to keep the ruler in place, but not pushing down too much.

Yes, this is what I did and it fixed that problem.