Long Arm Lesson

My head is still spinning from my Long Arm certification class on Tuesday. So much new information to comprehend and hopefully retain! Thank goodness the ladies at Just Sew Studio were patient with my endless questions (and mistakes), and very thorough in making sure I was comfortable and confident with what we covered.

Backing is basted unto the leaders and zipped unto the rollers, batting is floated on the top and
the whole thing is clamped together.

The Long Arm machine the studio owns is a Gammill Statler Sticher, with lots of bells and whistles and fancy doo-dads that I don't know anything about yet. The kind of quilting I learned how to do is called Edge-to-Edge, where you load the quilt on the frame, program in a design, and the machine takes over and quilts it for you. This is perfect for the kind of efficient, utilitarian quilting I like to do. For something you'd want to create yourself, or a customized design, you can operate the machine and do the quilting yourself, but that's a different skill set and something I'll have to work up to doing.

For now, I feel like I'll have my hands full, remembering how to get the backing, batting and quilt top loaded in the machine properly, how to wind the bobbins, how to baste everything, how to operate the computer, how to deal with thread breaks or bobbin changes....thank goodness the studio provides cheat sheets and plenty of on-site support!

I have a session scheduled later in the month to go back with one of my quilt tops, and hopefully I'll start to feel comfortable operating this machine! (who is called Mary, BTW).