Long Arm Quilting

The last few days I’ve found time to do some quilting! Amazing. The first was a top completed by a friend, Geri, and I was allowed to quilt it:

The quilting pattern is a semi-puzzle piece.

And then a ‘whole cloth’ done for a series of Cat Cuddles (for cats awaiting adoption):

The quilting pattern is an abstract inspired by Laura Lee Fritz.

Just finished this item, titled “Floral Study #1″  (Does rather imply a series is beginning…)

Floral Study #1 - textile art by Donna Hinshaw

Floral Study #1 - back showing the quilting ==> click for larger image

Rosalind is my Long Arm APQS machine.  She’s getting a new carriage encoder cable: the original one lost a wire.  Somehow I couldn’t conceive of doing Stitch Regulated work just in the vertical mode

Just spent the day with my quilt mini-group,  sewing and chatting about quilting plans, all day long.  What a nice end to a three day weekend!

I make ‘cat cuddles’ for a cat adoption place, and lead my quilt guild’s project for this activity.  And now that people are seeing them, they want to purchase some.  I’ll have to make a separate pile for sale:  the ones you see here under Gracie are all from donated materials, or were finished and donated for the project.

Gracie sitting like the Princess feeling the pea...

Here is Rosalind, covered up from the kitties, with a baby quilt ready to attach to the rails.  Lots of light on the pantograph side, from a window overlooking my front garden.

Ready for a baby quilt working session.

I have my frame and LA in my loft, with plenty of room. But that means it is accessible to my kitties.  So I put a box over one rail so they can jump from that up to the top of a bookcase.  Here is Ely INSIDE the box (he does use it as a jumping point as well):

After going to 4 days of classes on my LA (named Rosalind), I came back with a new appreciation for the frame.  So I ordered three replacement bolts for the frame and rollers that were missing when I set up the machine last June.  And I’m taking my 2′ long carpenter’s level to it’s location (why are tools rarely in the place you want to use them?) so that I can check the table’s levelness.

‘They’ say you should check the levelness of the table every year.  Have you folks done that check recently?

Here is a photo of an art quilt I did in 2004. It was a challenge from my mini-group to do a specific pattern. But I got bored with doing all the same blocks and ended up with just this number of blocks, and put them into the purple background.  Hence the name “Process Interrupted”.

I’ve got a Grace Pinnacle frame. Some people have said to sand the plastic “rails” and some not.  Any experience with this, one way or the other?