Tuesday Tip

Yesterday my longarm group of Handi Quilter owners met at Country Cousins Quilting in Lamoille.
They carry Signature, Glide, Perma Core, Robinson Anton, Bottom Line, Soft Fine and other longarm threads.  They are also a dealer for Nolting Machines and Legacy Batting.  Lou and Doug Tuntland are the owners and you may have met them at a Quilt Show as a vendor.

Lou quilts for customers, teaches longarm quilting and I believe the computer aided quilting with Intelliquilter.

Her tip for us yesterday was to use a heavy piece of vinyl to practice your quilting design on.

She sent each of home with a roll of it.  It was kind of hard to take a picture of it since it is basically see thru. 

After opening the roll up, you cover the edges with blue painters tape so you don't cut yourself or the quilt top.  You may now lay this down on top of your quilt and draw with a dry erase marker to audition quilt designs.  The blue tape also reminds you to stop, so you don't get marker on your quilt top.  Keep a scrap piece of batting handy to wipe away the marker and try different designs.

Here I traced a design out of a book and could lay it on the quilt top to see if I liked it.  The yellow marker doesn't show up well but its what I had at home.  (I had to use the rotary cutters to hold the vinyl sheet flat, as it still wants to roll up.)

I laid the sheet of vinyl on some fabric just so you could see the idea.  This sheet of vinyl is much heavier  than the roll of flimsy vinyl you can buy at Joann's or the fabric store.  This technique would work whether you are using a domestic machine or longarm machine to quilt with.

Today I have linked up with Connie at Freemotion by the River and Quilt Story.

Hope you had a good day!

Yours in quilting,
Terry