panthograph

[Anne Que]

Hello, I am Anne Que, I am new on this site. I live in the Netherlands and have recently bought a Millenium. I have to practise a lot to train the skills.

I wonder if anyone has a tip for me how to practise the panthograph skills. I don\'t seem to be able to follow the line without a lot of shaking and shivering. I cannot regcognise anything of the patern I followed in my sewing. Is it just a matter of a lot of practise or am I doing something wrong?

[cocodemer]

Hi Anne - I am a newbie too. I think the answer is practice, practice, practice. I am starting to have some success, so keep at it.

Carol Bailey

Coco de Mer Quilt Studio

[bstucker]

Hi Anne Que and welcome to this forum. As Carol said, practice is very important, so don\'t get discouraged! Some of the suggestions that helped me the most are: Relax, and then relax again, lighten your grip on those handles....don\'t obsess about staying exactly on the line, look ahead of the laser light rather than directly at it....kind of like driving a car. Look ahead for a point, this is where you will pause for an instant before you look ahead for your next point....doing this trains your eye to look ahead while your brain tells your hands/arms/body where to go next. Choose a pantograph like "double plume" that is easy to do, but does have some curves and points. This panto ususally comes with the new machines. It will make you do curves in several directions, some will be easier for you than others; once you identify which ones are harder for you to do, then you can focus on improving them. Try to *think* the shape you are making, soon you will *feel* the shape and off you will go. Take breaks, and be happy about small improvements. You can do this!

[Katydids]

Hi Anne,

Welcome to the "family"

Look ahead of the laser, just like you "look down the road" while driving. Your mind (hands) will follow your vision just like in driving. If you are moving real slow, it is harder to "get the feel" and flow. Try to pick up the pace just a bit and don\'t worry about staying right on the line. If you stray off the line, just ease back on and avoid sharp corrections. It does take practice, but it gets easier. If you feel the dot from the laser is too big, you can take a piece of masking or painters tape and poke a pin hole through it and place that over the laser. This gives you a finer dot and makes staying on the line a bit easier.

Hope this helps.

Patty

[SmileandNod]

One trick my wife uses, is to practice sketching out the panto with pen and paper...it gives you a feel for the "rhythm" of the design.

And as others have said, don\'t worry too much about hitting that design dead on as you start out. Pull the pattern away and look at the quilt, and it would take a VERY critical eye to notice that one pattern was a few millimetres off from the previous pattern. Its more important, in my opinion, that you develop a feel for the pattern and concentrate on the general shapes, rather than focusing all your attention on keeping the red lazer dot exactly on the black line at all times.

[PattyJo]

Welcome Anne Que - All good advice above so I won\'t add anything except the "RELAX & BREATH" part. Very important cause if you are holding your breath, then you tense up the muscles. Enjoy the process, put on some good music that you like and just go with it and you will find that things go much easier. Again, welcome to the chat. Hope to hear from you often.

[Loes]

Hi Anne,

Congratulations on your new Millie!!

I am working on a CD-rom project (together with Claudia Pfeil in Krefeld) and one of the lessons is the Fun Filler Pantos:

You draw an easy basic shape in Pre-Design as a panto (copy, paste, align, paste, align, etc and then print at actual size to get your panto roll - see page http://quilters.pre-design.eu/apqs_longarm1.htm'>http://quilters.pre-design.eu/apqs_longarm1.htm how to create your own panto rolls).

For the Fun Filler Panto lesson make an easy shape: it is a nice practice to follow the line with the laser stylus. And then the fun begins: you come to the front of your machine and start filling in the panto shapes freemotioning with anything you can imagine. As the shapes are already quilted, everything you put inside will look good, no matter how inexperienced you are!

There\'s a picture of it in this forum on page:

http://www.apqs.com/quiltboard/viewthread.php?tid=10407&page=1#pid95675

I created a sheep panto and Claudia filled it with a lot of fun styles: we got a bad hairday sheep, a curly sheep, there\'s a striped sheep and a Burberry sheep. We did the same with paisley shapes.

You will just love it! Again: the basic panto shapes are easy to follow and the freemotioning makes it real fun. Its a lovely way to practice freemotion work!

With Pre-Design you can easily draw your own pantos:

see http://quilters.pre-design.eu/

Especially the screenshots page has a lot of helpful demo slideshows.

Loes, Oss, Netherlands

[lyonden]

Another little tip to do smooth lines. Do relax like everyone else has told you to do and don\'t GRIP the handles. Relax with that also. But, try keeping your elbows close to your body and move with your legs. This keeps the movement smoother and gives you more control. Just moving your arms gives you much more chance of doing a wavy line. Give it a try.