Lisa Kay Knits... and Quilts!

How do you start learning to use a long arm? There are so many teaching resources available, it has been a bit of a fire hose, and often hard to choose. I found a resource I really like, specifically aimed at the Gammill Statler, the long arm that I have on order. The Methodist Hill Quilt Studio has a monthly "Skill Builders Club" from Joyce Lundrigan and Joan Knight that includes piecing and quilting instructions, a video link, and digital designs for the quilting. I joined a couple days before the April period ended (the 15th), and so now I have both April and May instructions. Even better, club members can download previous months, and there are six "Jumpstarter" sets from early subscriptions that teach some basics. I have pieced the first three Jumpstarter tops, January 2019 , February 2019 , and March 2019 , which will give me some great learning pieces to do as part of getting acclimated. Here are my pieced tops, and their plain white backings, queued up for ...

 Things, they are a' changin'... I have been working hard on getting the end of the master bedroom cleaned out to make space for the long arm quilting machine. I had to disassemble and take out the desk, and I took down the hand-quilting frame... which I have to admit I will unlikely use again.   With the bed still in the same place, I expected to have a 6' x 14' space for the 12' frame. That is cutting it pretty close, given the space needed to pass around all sides, loading the quilt, and allowing the machine about 1.5' of travel behind the table. Chris got involved and suggested swapping the bed and the dresser (which was right behind me when taking the photo, above). That made things a little closer together on the "bedroom side" of the room, but added 2.5' to the "quilting side" of the room. Yay! Chris has been a really good sport about the whole thing. He also mounted a shelf for bins... which means I will still have a lot of open ...