The third machine I quilt on

You have seen several views of my Pfaff 7570 that I quilt on and I have shown my Babylock Professional Quilter with a larger opening for the quilt to go through here. A little over a year ago I bought the new Babylock Jewel which they call a long arm but the long arm people call it a midarm. It has an 18" length which means 14" passes across the quilt.

I quilted 5 quilts each of the first 3 months I owned it. They were my least favorite or smallest quilt tops, easy to practice on to learn the tension settings, how to load quilts etc. the first month. I didn't work my way up to a queen size quilt until July this year.

Here you see the last one I did on it, that I showed just a few days ago. It is the third queen size one I did on it. I am no longer physically able to push a queen size quilt through a regular sewing machine and I still have 3 more queen sized ones to quilt. My 2 choices were have them quilted by someone else or buy a machine that I could quilt them on. I have had a few quilted by someone else and even though they were done beautifully, I knew I had to finish my own quilts or they just weren't mine.


Below is the first twin size one I did on the machine in Dec. 2008

Then I decided to try basting on the frame to prepare for quilting on my Pfaff. I found that it was a little puffier, not as flat as when I hand baste on tables. I'm sure I will learn more about basting as I work on other quilts.

I like simple quilting and you have seen all of the pictures below before if you have been reading my blog for awhile. All of the pictures will enlarge if you click on them. On this first one I did meandering with a heart every once in awhile. These are all free motion, no pantographs. Below is loop de loop. Next is wavy grid with a little loop now and then. Plain wavy grid, which I also used on the last flannel quilt that I completed in early Dec. 2009. Wavy parallel lines with a few sunflowers. I also do just meandering on a lot of them.

I do not do quilting for any one else and after showing you all of the quilt tops waiting for finishing last week, I think you can see why. I just want to finish my quilts in my life time.

I only do the all over pattern quilting on the bed quilts, lap quilts and baby quilts. I like ditch quilting to show off the piecing and the fabrics in some of my wallhangings so they will still be done on the Pfaff or Babylock Prof. Quilter. That Babylock has a walking foot with the narrow channel between the toes for ditch quilting so it is similar to the Pfaff quarter inch foot.

I quilted 10 quilts on the Jewel in 2008 and 16 in 2009. I also quilted 8 quilts on my other 2 machines in 2009. So that's my recap for 2009.