HOW TO BUILD A LONGARM AND A SPACESHIP 🚀

I haven't quilted in forever and in the past I have always quilted by hand which takes foreeeeeeever!  Last year I started to quilt again and I decided to do it on my 45 year old Elna sewing machine. I bought my machine when I was 16 years old and, yes, if you do the math that makes me 61. I finished three small quilts this way, but quite honestly, it was very frustrating to quilt them on my old machine.

Forty-five years old and still stitching perfectly.
I'm lusting after a new BERNINA though!

I started by making a quilt to match the whimsical bird dresser that my husband had given me when I turned 60. Then I did a Christmas quilt for my sister and a napping quilt for the youngest of the boys that I take care of and then finally a table runner for my dining room.

I love the dresser my husband gave me.  It has
cutouts of birds with paper panels behind them.

The Napping Quilt

My Table runner

My sister's quilt

Then I pieced together a queen sized quilt for my nephew's wedding only to have one of those moments of perfect clarity where I realized there was no way in heck that I could quilt a quilt that big on my old machine.  So, off I went to my local quilt shop and took a certification course on their longarm.  Doing this would allow me to rent time on it and finish my quilt for my nephew and his fianceé.  Yes, I know I could have taken it to a longarmer to finish for me but I didn't want to give the happy couple a gift from me and "some other lady they didn't know".  I wanted this quilt to be entirely from me, mistakes and all.  What I didn't know at the time is that this one small trip to my quilt shop would lead me to many new adventures in my life.

Quilting my nephew's wedding quilt 
on the longarm at the quilt shop.

Woo! Hoo! I bought a Longarm! Oh No! I bought a Longarm! Those two thoughts took turns banging back and forth endlessly through my head for a whole entire month while I waited for my longarm to arrive. I would literally wake up in the middle of the night in either complete joy or complete panic or a mix of joyful panic. Finally they delivered my longarm! Now a longarm is huge and even disassembled it arrives in huge boxes and no amount of tipping, bribing or cajoling would get the truck drivers to carry those boxes upstairs for us. That left the heavy lifting to me and my husband and I'm not even going to tell you how many times he dropped that heavy sewhead box on my toes going up the stairs.  I was just happy to finally get it up there. We had the two little boys that I watch staying with us for part of the summer and, apparently, when you put LITTLE BOYS together with BIG BOXES you get a SPACESHIP 🚀 🚀 🚀

❤️❤️❤️

With the boys staying with us I didn't get a chance to use my new longarm but we did get to name it ... Lola ❤️  It was sort of like getting a big, shiny new Christmas present but not being able to open it up and play with it.  I didn't mind though because I was happy to have my little boys with me. During this time I got an email from the BERNINA Creative Center telling me that there had been a cancellation in their Get To Know Your Q Series class and asking me if I wanted to go. I immediately emailed back, "Yes, Yes and Yes!"  I arrived there with only three hours of experience under my belt, well more if you count that first day I tried to get the fabric pinned onto the zippered leaders and then proceeded to sew right across the leaders and then spent an hour picking that out. I was so nervous to attend the class.  First, I had never sewn on a Bernina computerized sewing machine and I knew we would be constructing a quilt top to later quilt on the longarm. And, second, I kinda figured I'd be the newbie in the class, which I was.

Denise Jones, myself and Nina McVeigh at the
BERNINA Get to Know Your Q Series Class.

Free Motion Quilting - My Leaves

It turns out that The BERNINA Creative Center, which is located in Aurora, Illinois, is an hour away from the town I grew up in.  We drove there from North Carolina and while I went to class my husband hung out with my family so a good time was had by all.  Actually,  I had more than a good time, I had a wonderful time!  Our instructors were Denise Jones and Nina McVeigh and they were patient and knowledgable and had a wicked keen sense of humor which made the class a delight to take.  We also got to meet Hans Herzog and he spent time talking to us about the technical side of the machine. Hans has the nicest Swiss accent, ja? I could have listened to him all afternoon. Oh, and we ate and ate and then we ate some more! Brownies and cheesecake and cookies, oh my! When we got home to North Carolina I would get a little grumpy in the afternoons because I hadn't met my "BERNINA cheesecake quota" for the day.  Ten pounds later I had to give that little quota up! Cheesecake aside, the class was amazing!  I learned SO much from Denise and Nina about the longarm. I also picked up all sorts of tips and tricks from my fellow classmates during our breaks, some of whom have been longarming for years.  Besides the basics of the longarm itself, Denise and Nina taught us all about needles and thread and thread tension and then showed us how to stitch with a twin needle, how to bind, how to couch and how to stipple using the BERNINA Precision Palm Handles. And, thanks to Nina, I learned how to thread the needle threader on the longarm each and every time!  The very best part was that I came home feeling empowered!  Lola doesn't intimidate me at all anymore.  I can do anything and everything that I put my mind to doing.  And, now, each time I make a mistake I just mark it down as a learning experience and just keep on quilting joyfully along!

LOLA is in the house ❣️

I invite you to follow me on my new longarm journey by following my new blog.  I would enjoy reading your comments.  I hope you use your longarm to quilt some joy into your world today!