So far I've quilted two muslin practice quilts on Freddie the longarm. The first one was all done with free motion quilting. Steve took a couple turns on it too. Then I loaded up a second one to practice with the IntelliQuilter (IQ). What fun! Of course quite a bit of the time I was experimenting with learning how to adjust the machine's tension, bobbin tension as well as the top thread tension. Both of them are pretty funky looking but I'll bind them with all of my scrap binding pieces so that we can have extra quilts for the dogs in the RV.
Yesterday I decided it was time to take Freddie for a real test run. Have you ever heard of the quick and easy supersized nine patch baby quilt that Anita Grossman Solomon wrote for Quiltmaker magazine? It's where you take three different yard cuts of fabrics, cut them and switch the pieces, then sew up three baby quilts. Last week I went on a mini shop hop with my friend Valerie to five shops. It was the perfect time to get some fabrics for these quick baby quilts.
I just fell in love with these adorable little ships and airplanes. Aren't they the cutest?!
By the time I got the quilt ready to go it was late last night. But I was too excited to wait until today to quilt it up. IntelliQuilter did a great job and I was much happier with all of the quilt tensions this time around. It's all a learning curve.
The pantograph pattern is called Double Bubble by Patricia Ritter. It's a very fun pattern but perhaps next time I'll make it a bit smaller. There's two more quilt tops to piece and quilt. After that I have enough fabric to sew up a total of nine baby quilts. One or two I'll keep to have on hand as gifts but the rest will be donated to the Linus project. The next time you need to make a quick baby gift I highly recommend that you give the supersized nine patch a go.
