Holding on to a quilt

It's almost 3 a.m. here and I can't sleep... just a warning if this doesn't make much sense. ;-) Try doing your rolling/folding/bunching but leave some loose quilt bunched up close to and all around the sewing bed area. If you have it neatly smoothed and hanging off the little table area, you will get drag. If you have some loose bunches, it should have all the tension/weight off the quilt and it should feed nicely. One other thought- is the walking foot installed correctly? And is the pressure on the walking foot too tight? If you don't normally do mq'ing, you may need to loosen that pressure to help the much greater thickness of the quilt sandwich feed properly.

Good luck- mq'ing is a BLAST! (When it goes well....) And free motion quilting with the feed dogs down is easier than stitch in the ditch using a walking foot. IMO

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

Hello Nel,

I used to have that problem but I worked out that I need to be higher in my chair (two cushions) so that my shoulders are not continuously 'up' (hope you understand that bit) plus I have put two rubber door stops under the back of my machine to raise the machine bed and make it easier to see. I also roll the quilt and clamp with a bicycle trousers clip (the ones men used to put around their pants to stop them from catching in the chain). This was a great aid.

The other thing I do NOT use is the walking foot - if you have a darning foot, use that as I have been told that is the best and I also lengthen the stitch.

I drop my feed-dogs just one notch to help let the material sort of glide through and I also wear those little rubber finger 'thingies' (for turning over lots of pages) on my thumbs, index and middle fingers to help guide the material. My machine pedal has a slow and high speed button which I change to slow.

I have quilted one whole quilt and did not get sore shoulders or back.

Hope this helps you.

Cheers,

I use quilting fabric spray glue and pin every 4" or so and never have any problems. The only time I have had those sort of problems is when I don't follow those rules. John

Free motion is actually easier, because you just work on a bit at a time, rather than trying to control the whole shebang. But I used to use the acrylic extension thingie before I got myself a fancy airlift table, so it can be done.

IMO rolling just makes the monster more temperamental. (But it works for some people.) I just moosh. The problem, as you say, is to control the weight. You need some support on your left. I use the ironing board, which can be lowered so it's just a smidgen higher than your extension table. Keep the bulk of the quilt on this. You also need enough table surface behind the machine so it all fits on after it goes through, without falling off, and without having to force it into a corner.

On Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:21:45 -0500, Sartorresartus wrote (in article ):

Sometimes it just takes practice! I tend to smoosh it all up and shove it underneath the needle, then smooth out right wear I am working.

Maureen

Send it to Louise. She'll make it magnificent. (Too late for this one.) I'm with Roberta. Rolling only makes the job harder. I just moosh. Don't hope to stitch more than a place about the size of your hand at one time. Polly

I second all of that! I, too, "moosh" the quilt through. I start in the center, to get the hardest part done first. At times, I have also put my ironing board behind my sewing table, and a card table next to me. I do not use the walking foot for stitch-in-the-ditch, as I find using my zipper foot works best for me. I can move the needle all the way to the edge, to get right down in the seam. Good luck!

For a bigger quilt I also smoosh it up rather than rolling. And I move my machine to the dining room table so I have a LARGE surface to spread out my quilt. I'll also set up a chair to my left to catch the bits that don't fit on the table. You want to have as much of the quilt as possible supported, nothing hanging off an edge.

As for walking foot vs darning foot....well I recently tried stitch in the ditch with a darning foot and never again. In my experience it was very hard to keep the line of stitching straight enough. On the other hand, you can do a lovely simple curvy stitch with a darning foot. For this if the curves vary a little bit it still looks fine. Of course it depends on your blocks and the 'look' you're going for.

I tried to find a picture of what I mean for the curved stitch but couldn't...so let me try explaining. Imagine a checkerboard. Start in one of the blocks in the middle of the top row. Start stitching at the top right corner of the block towards the bottom right corner, making a gentle "C" shape inside your block. Keep going, using the seam line as a guide, curving right then left, crossing at each of the block intersections. This will give you an gentle "s" shape along your seam line.

Good luck! Allison

Maureen Wozniak wrote:

I tried the "roll and clip" method once or twice. It was a great big pain in many parts of the body. I use the "stuff and fluff" method for quilting. Be sure that you are not sitting too low..... with your machine on a table it is very easy to be set up so that you have to raise your elbows and shoulders to guide the fabric. Try to be set up so that the bed of the machine is just below elbow height when you are sitting. Your hands should drop just a bit to the bed of the machine with your elbows at your sides, shoulders relaxed. Do have as much support around the machine to hold the bulk of the quilt as possible. All of this will help keep the drag to a minimum. Good luck. BTW, I can't use a walking foot.... balance issues, and the motion makes me a lot dizzier than usual. I use my open toe applique foot for most of my quilting. For stitch in the ditch using an edge joining foot (sometimes sold as a stitch in the ditch foot) works well too. You do need to loosen the pressure foot pressure to compensate for the bulk of the batting and fabric. (I was used to using the edge joining foot for clothing construction stitch in the ditch before I started quilting. So it was a logical step to using it for quilting. ) Have fun, relax, and don't be overly concerned about it all. It will look fine and be very useful/ beautiful. (And if you have problems staying in the ditch..... try using a narrow zig-zag stitch over the seams. Keep the length fairly standard for stitching, just add a tiny bit of swing. This can really help emphasize seam lines if that is what you want to do. )

Pati, in Phx

On Aug 31, 12:21=A0am, Sartorresartus wrote:

Thanks, everyone.

After I posted, I went back to the book, and it said about height issues. So, I cranked up my chair (draughtman's, so it IS high) and kinda dangled over the machine. You would have howled to see me. I couldn't reach the foot pedal!

So then the pedal went on books. Now my knees were in the way.

Lowered chair to a _sensible_ height, and got out a practice sandwich, the clear quilting foot, #29, and spent half an hour with the feed dogs down. Really pleased with my little self, even managed some wiggles and wriggles (not exactly stipple, but sort-of-ish). Back to the main quilt.

Machingers on: check. Quilt fed under: check. One stitch and pull up the thread: check. Hold onto the thread and gently squeeze... oo-er, chaps! All over the shop! Darn it! Froggit and forget it for a while!

I'll go again tomorrow. I'll put the machine on the table (now raised on books) with the machine's table to one side. That should give me room to manoevre. I _would_ pick the quilt that needs straight lines. It's a view through a window, so I need to outline the window panes, to accentuate them.

Here we go! Thanks again, Nel (GQ)

I hope you read this before you start again tomorrow, Nel!

Stitch in the ditch was (and perhaps still is) one of my favourite ways of quilting.- and with a walking foot!

However, some time ago I heard a tip that has changed my SITD life completely - and it is so easy. You are trying to quilt on the flat piece, beside the bump. Now, look to where your light source is coming from. If it is a window, be sure to insert the quilt under the foot so that the High side (the bump) is to the right of the foot *if* the light is coming from the left, and vice versa. One of the troubles about SITD is that you are very often stitching in a shadow - so you can' t actually see what you are doing (you = I). Turning the quilt so that the shadow is removed makes a world of difference! . In message , Sartorresartus writes

To minimze having to support the quilt and to also prevent drag caused by the quilt falling over the side of your sewing table, try setting your machine table up in a corner so the quilt is supported by the wall. I have a 2nd table behind my sewing machine, and can butt that table is up against the wall so there's this big expanse of space behing the machine and the wall to support the quilt and also prevents the quilt from going over the edge. Sometimes I also put a table to the left side of my machine, against the other wall, and it also serves the same purpose for the big projects so I'm not the one who is supporting anything :)

I never roll the quilt but 'squash it,' because a quilt roll is like a log and logs are hard to bend :)

I have my machine in a cabinet with a lift, so the machine bed is flush with the table surface - it does make a big difference, because I always had problems with the quilt catching on the acrylic table edges before. MY cabinet is on wheels, and I have a couple of other tables in my sewing room, so I can easily move things around (which is fun!).

-Irene

-Irene

Just a thought, before I go to bed. Perchance to dream the wretched thing quilted. (Some hope!)

Is there anyone who markets these nifty lifters (does that sound dirty to you, too? No? Just me, then) other than the maker-of-sewing- cabinets-which-are-exorbitantly-expensive (think, in UK, of bulls, goats and devils)? If I could get hold of the makings, I might be able to fashion something for next time. I have a birthday coming up and it might come under that category.

But those sewing cabinets are =A3mega! I saw a table with a lift at the NEC, and they were talking in the region of =A31000! You gotta be kidding (or a professional)! I am neither.

Nel (GQ)

Hiya Nel,

I am no machine-quilting expert, but what I do is roll up the quilt sandwich under the machine arm with bicycle clips. I too have a plexiglass table which is about 24" x 18" and fits my machine. I bunch the quilt up around this table area as much as possible, but if the quilt is large or I think the drag is still significant, I stack books around the plexiglass table and thereby extend my "heightened space" if that makes sense. We have plenty of books here! Hardbacks stay put better than paperback novels.

-- Jo in Scotland

Nel, you really don't need a lifter and fancy (expensive) table. You can use any large table (folding or banquet type table or kitchen table, etc.) cut a hole in it to fit the base of your sewing machine and then use a piece of lumber and some L-brackets to make a lowered platform for the machine. I used some bathroom type cabinets (shorter than standard kitchen cabinets) with the toe-kick area cut off and a section of Formica counter top. I made it by myself, too, except for the counter top part. Here's a rough sketch I made long ago-

Is there anyone who markets these nifty lifters (does that sound dirty to you, too? No? Just me, then) other than the maker-of-sewing- cabinets-which-are-exorbitantly-expensive (think, in UK, of bulls, goats and devils)? If I could get hold of the makings, I might be able to fashion something for next time. I have a birthday coming up and it might come under that category.

But those sewing cabinets are £mega! I saw a table with a lift at the NEC, and they were talking in the region of £1000! You gotta be kidding (or a professional)! I am neither.

Nel (GQ)

Oh Nel - I could ALWAYS use a nifty lifter in more ways than one...

I reworked a $10 thrift store sewing machine cabinet I like a lot.

Not sure about shipping but these guys have a lift: