Quilted and Bound

Carol here ~

The Hunter Star quilt is quilted, bound and ready to gift! Lena was happy to get to work and purred like a kitten!

I had a question from my cousin Copper so thought other inquiring minds would be interested in my answer. Here is her question….

How long does it take Lena to do her thing? I'm sure it depends on size and pattern?

The simple answer is yes, it depends on both the size of the quilt and the size of the pattern. For this quilt I chose the pattern “Becker’s Shooting Stars”.

This pattern is a 15” repeat. I prefer smaller and can re-size the pattern to the size I want to work with. I thought I had re-sized this one to 12” but must have forgot to hit SAVE (oopsie) so Lena stitched the pattern at 15”. Which is fine, still looks good, I just like my quilting a bit more dense.

Lena keeps track of her actual stitching time but there is a lot more time involved that I physically must do that includes:

Getting the backing and batting ready and loaded onto the longarm frame.

Placing the top of the quilt on the top of the backing and batting, making sure it is square and straight, both horizontally and vertically.

Basting the edges of the quilt in the work area to keep it square and straight.

Set up a sew zone which is the area Lena gets to stitch in.

Loaded, squared, basted, ready to set up sew zone

Decide on a pattern and program Lena to stitch within the sew zone. (there is more technical stuff that happens before it’s time to hit the GO button)

Once the GO button is hit, Lena stitches out the row(s) of the pattern that fits in the sew zone.

Stitching the pattern

I then advance the quilt to the next work area, again making sure to straighten the batting and the quilt top and baste the sides.

The quilting pattern must now be repositioned to stitch out in the new work area.

This is repeated for the length of the quilt.

This is the abridged version but I think it’s enough that you get the idea?

So, the actual stitching time on this quilt was just about 3 hours, add in my time for a total of 5.66 hours.

Now, just to give you a different example..

Here is a pattern called “Pearls and Paisley”. LOTS of dense stitching happening here.

This quilt is roughly the same size as the Hunter Star. One row of stitching took Lena 2 hours to stitch out, roughly 12-1/2 hours for the whole quilt. Add in my time for a total of 15-1/3 hours to complete the quilt.

Ooo-la-la isn’t it gorgeous?!?

Having a computerized quilting system is fairly new for me.  For 22 years I only did free motion quilting ~ this is where I would doodle or quilt what my imagination said to quilt.  When I traded in my original Gammill longarm for my Innova (Lena) I knew at some point I would be adding the computer if I wanted to keep quilting.  Y'know how it goes as you age ~ things don't work the way they used to!  There were many times when I was custom quilting that weekly massages and visits to the chiropractor were needed to keep me going.

Here is the first quilt I custom quilted after I got my Lena.  CERTIFIABLE was designed and pieced by Dan, free motion quilted by me.  Total hours for quilting ~ 95-1/2!  Yikes!

So much for the simple answer ~ guess I'm trying to outdo Dan's Rambling's!

By the way, Lena was my grandmother's name.  We are now living here at Green Pond on the property she purchased in 1934.