Long-Arming

 

My Mom's boyfriend is a retired Electrical Engineer. He is interested in the quilts that I make and was very curious about the long arm quilting machine that quilts them So I brought he and my Mom with me when I brought a quilt to Janet-Lee for quilting. Here they are watching one of the machines at work.

Janet-Lee asked me if we'd like to watch her set up one of my quilts on her machine to see the whole process. Of course I said yes. In the photo above, the backing of my Carnelian quilt has been set up.

Janet-Lee patiently explained every step of the process as she set up the quilt on her machine, wound the bobbins and threaded the machine.

Janet-Lee said once again how my quilts are a pleasure to work with because they are flat and square, the seams on the back are pressed flat and there are no threads popping through the seams on the front. Apparently that is rather rare. "Sometimes I'll put one of Lynne's quilts on the machines when I can't take it anymore," she said to my Mom. 

She explained how she set up the design and told the machine where to start and stop. Naturally there is a lot more than that, which I can't remember, but it was fascinating. Mike was very interested in the mechanics of it, the tension of the thread and what was happening underneath. JL explained it all.

I could have stood there and watched the machine work all day long.

Here's the newest green bird (or bird on a green background). I use a leftover piece from the backing of the Harlequin quilt for the wing. I am also having great fun making white birds. I think I might make a stork or an egret with long legs.  

Hmmm...

All Together Now @ Home

 

This is my long arm quilter, Janet-Lee Santeusanio. While I was making All Together Now she wrote to me and said how much she loved it. She likes all my quilts, but was really taken with this one. I decided I would give the quilt to her. 

When I brought it to her to be quilted, I made the mistake of telling her the quilt would be hers. "Now I don't know what to do. You shouldn't have told me." Eventually we figured it out.

The morning I was to pick up the quilt I got an email from Janet-Lee. "I'm not charging you for quilting this quilt. Bring me the binding and I'll sew it on myself."

FAT CHANCE! I thought. I wrote back "I'm giving you a Lynne Tyler quilt, and you are going to get a Lynne Tyler quilt. And I sew the binding on my quilts. Besides, I don't even know what I am going to do for the binding."

I couldn't even remember what the edges of the quilt looked like. I had to go back to my pictures to find out the quilt had a white border around it. A white binding would have been OK, but I thought since the quilt had a variety of fabrics in the border, a binding of mixed black fabric would be better, so ran into the studio to search my stash for black binding fabrics. 

This was three hours before I was to be at Janet-Lee's! It's an hour's drive to her house! I was still in my nightgown, and I hadn't even showered! 

I picked fabrics, cut strips, marked and joined them at an angle (above) cut them apart, trimmed and pressed the seams, then pressed the binding lengthwise. I folded it up, then ran to take a shower and get going. JL liked the binding I had made, but I took the quilt and the binding home to finish.

As you can see, JL LOVES the quilt. She says she loves every inch of it and that it represents everything she loves about quilts. (Gosh I hope I got that right.) 

She has since told me the quilt has already taken its place of honor on her recliner. "Don't you worry," she'd said as I was getting ready to leave, "this quilt will be USED!"

Yellow Ribbons, Quilted

 The Yellow Ribbons quilt really tested me when I made the flimsy last summer.

In the end, I figured it out, and what I liked about it was that it seemed to wiggle. Janet-Lee knew exactly how to quilt it. This quilt design is loaded sideways, and really emphasizes the back-and-forth of the design.

Yup, I like this a lot.

Black is Back!

 

It's always fun to pick up quilts from Janet-Lee Santeusanio. I picked up the black and white Scrap Slaps quilt, All Together Now.

You can see the quilting design best when you look at the back. 

I was picking up the quilt after lunch, so I had to prepare the binding. But I had to go back to look at a picture of the quilt, to remember what the edges looked like. Once I knew the edges were white, I knew the binding had to be black. But black with colors, just like the blocks in the quilt. So I rummaged through my stash and found eight fabrics. For the binding I needed eight WOF strips. I cut strips of each, then cut the strips more or less in half, and then sewed the strips together for the binding. I feel the binding tells the quilt what color it is, and while a white binding would have worked, this quilt is black with colors and white, and a black (with colors) binding would emphasize that fact.

As you all know, I sew my binding to the BACK of my quilts, so my finish stitching is on the front. (Because you know, I like to show off my invisible stitches.)

Yeah, this is going to rock big time.

You know what's THE BEST thing about this quilt? Every single bit of fabric, from the top, backing and binding, came from my stash. 

(Of course that could also be a little bit scary too! How many quilts are hiding in my stash?)

Larkspur - The Pink Barn

 

I finally picked up the Pink Barn from Janet-Lee Santeusanio, my fabulous long-arm quilter. For this I told Janet-Lee I wanted it special, and to go all out. I am a firm believer that when you are working with an artist who knows what the hell she is doing, that you let her use her skills. JL and I have a standard set of instructions: She has my permission to quilt anything I give her differently than what she and I originally chose if she thinks there is a better solution. 

JL quilted the stripes in the barn.

She outlined the trim in the windows, and she carried the vertical quilting lines in the body of the barn itself. She also quilted the diagonal lines of the barn doors. This is the way real barn doors are often made here in NH.

Such glorious details!

What I just love about it is how barn-y it is. It is quilted like a barn, not a house or a decorative building. Now JL lives down the street from the inspiration barn (shown below) so she knows what it looks like. I am like, beyond thrilled with it, and now have to figure out what to use as a binding for my barn wall hanging, which I have decided to call "Larkspur."

This is the inspiration barn.

Johnny Barn

A couple of weeks ago I showed you this picture of the barn that inspired my pink barn.

When I brought the pink barn top to Janet-Lee for quilting, I told her it was inspired by the barn at the bottom of her street. "Oh, that's John and Deb's barn. Let me take a picture and send it to them." I asked Janet-Lee what the barn was for. "I think it's just for storage." It turns out John & Deb built it themselves.

So when I drove by that day and the doors were open, I pulled over and ran up to the barn to take pictures.

The barn is post-and-beam construction (the same as my brother's barn in Colorado) and is, in fact, used for storage. I saw bicycles, tools and several surfboards. I was impressed to see a wasp's nest hanging from the second story railing, and not at all surprised to see a UNH hockey jersey hanging in the barn as well (UNH hockey is BIG in the Seacoast area).

After I took my pictures I saw a man working out in the yard, and I went over to talk. It was John. 

"Janet-Lee showed me the picture of your pink barn quilt and asked if it looked familiar. I said, 'That looks a lot like MY barn.' JL said it WAS my barn."

I told him I thought his barn was beautiful. We talked a bit about barns, and how I have had "barns on the brain" for some time, and now looked for and at barns wherever I go. He said he had looked at a lot of barns before he built his. We talked about several features of his barn were typical of New Hampshire barns but are not found in barns in neighboring states. Later I sent him pictures of my brother's Colorado barn and my interpretation of it.

He invited me to stop by on my next visit to JL and see the timber frame screened in porch he built at the back of his house. He also said he's planning to build a 10' x 14' timber frame structure for his wife, a muralist, next spring.

"It will have basically the same feel and proportions as the big barn, but just a bit smaller," John wrote to me in an email later, "The fun never stops!!! Haha!"

Too Cool!

This is my darling granddaughter, looking here like she's way too cool for something or other.

And this is her decidedly un-cool grandmother holding up the pink barn I made while at the studio of Janet-Lee Santeusiano, my longarm quilter. 

 The inspiration for the pink barn is just down the street from Janet-Lee's house and she knows the folks who own and built it. "I should take a picture and send it to them, they are going to love it!" So we did.

For my part I'm going to take it easy the next few days. After a marathon sewing session you'll find me on the couch reading one of the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels. I got a little behind in the series and am now catching up.    

That Was Quick!

I brought the little Scrap Slab Quilt (henceforth to be called "Arrowheads") I made to Janet-Lee to be quilted. "This is darling," she said, holding it up. "Oh heck, I can do this right now."

"Really? Are you sure" I asked?

It was interesting to watch her get it all set up. She picked the thread color (which I always let her do), and then we picked a quilting design.

This is the back of the quilt, showing the quilting pattern.

 Usually when I have a quilt that's all straight lines, I like the quilting design to have a lot of curves. 

I found it interesting that the computer knew exactly where it was at all times, and the areas that had been stitched were a different color on the display than what was left to do.

Once it was all set up, the computer driven machine did its thing.

All told, it took less than an hour.

It's funny, because when I designed this little quilt, I set it up so the colored triangles pointed to the right, with the orange row across the top, but when Janet-Lee set it up, she turned the quilt on its side, like this.

Either way is fine, of course, but it's always interesting to see my work through somebody else's eyes.


If you would like to make a scrap slabs quilt of your own, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download, so you can get started right away.

So... How Did You Two Meet?

Janet-Lee and I have a rather unique "how we met" story. In the middle of 2016 I was "kinda sorta" looking for a local long arm quilter because shipping quilts halfway across the country was getting expensive, and since I was starting to make lots of quilts because I wanted to use up some fabric, the shipping costs were increasing.

I'd seen the work of other long arm quilters at various quilt shops and at some of the guilds I spoke to, but I was looking for somebody who wouldn't be intimidated by the unusual quilts that I make. So I was "kinda sorta" looking, but the reality was that I wasn't looking very hard.

In late August of 2016, while on an airplane at 35,000 feet, on my way to visit my new granddaughter for the first time, I was waiting in line for the rest room when I got to talking to one of the stewardesses. Somehow we got to the "I make quilts," and "Yeah, my mother does too," stage of the conversation. The stewardess (Ariana?) told me her mother did long arm quilting, and believe it or not, lived in New Hampshire. I gave her a couple of postcards of my work and didn't think much about it.

Close up of quilting on the Fruit Loops quilt

Two months later, Ariana finally gave her mother the cards, and Janet-Lee wrote to me, and we went back and forth about what I like and what I didn't like in quilting. She wrote that she quilts about 300 quilts a year, and knew what she was doing. We exchanged contact information and there it sat for about five months. During this time I started making the Scrap Slab triangle quilts, and finished up the Digital Pinwheels. I had six quilts that needed quilting, and the stack was growing. I needed a local quilter.

Digital Pinwheels

At some point it dawned on me that Janet-Lee was one of the owners of the MQX shows, and there was an MQX show in Manchester in April 2017, which was like two days away. I bundled up the Fruit Loops and Digital Pinwheels quilts and went to see the show and meet Janet-Lee. We hit it off and I left the quilts with her. I told her to do whatever she felt was best.

The quilting on Treasure Trove.

 Now Janet Lee is no dummy. She knew perfectly well the quilts I had left with her were only "couch quilts" and that I wanted to see how good she was.

Well, she didn't disappoint. Janet-Lee certainly knows what she is doing, and when I went to pick up my quilts, I left her Treasure Trove, Snow Day and the Tumblers quilts.

We searched through her quilt designs and chose patterns for those three quilts, but as I left I told her that if she got to one quilt and she didn't think the design we picked out was right for the quilt, to go ahead and do what she felt was best.
.

detail of the Jewel Box quilt

On at least one quilt, she did just that, and I was thrilled with her choice. I left the Jewel Box quilt and Terrazzo, the black and white Slashed Squares quilt.

Terrazzo Quilt

 So by the time it came to quilt the Colorado Quilt, I had no qualms. Janet-Lee knew just what to do and I let her do it.

detail of the Colorado Quilt

So the next time you meet somebody in an airplane, 35,000 feet above sea level, somewhere over the US, don't underestimate the connection.

You never know.

Not only do I have a great long arm quilter, I have a good friend, and next year I'm going to teach at the MQX show in Manchester.

Who'da thought?