Great meeting of the Longarm Quilter's group

Yesturday, Sunday was our monthly meeting of the South-Central Ontario Stitchers group.  It was another great meeting.  Comradery amongst the group is good with everyone eager to learn and meet others in the same field.  Quilting can be isolating, as it is generally done alone, but getting together with likeminded people is nice.

Tracey from Whirls n Swirls had a short demo to teach us how to add more backing fabric to the quilt that is already loaded, without removing the quilt from the longarm machine.  This would have been great for me, last week, when I got to the bottom of my quilt and noticed I had the border still to quilt, but had run out of backing fabric.

After the meeting, I decided that I was going to join the 3 Way Block Sampler Quilt, that Tracey is offering to expand on our longarm quilting skills. 

This is the information (see above).  This is all I can show you, so if you want more information on this or want to join, go to Whirls n Swirls' website for the details.  This is an online class, so anyone can join, and for those that do not have a longarm, with the right foot you can do the quilting on your domestic machine too.  That is where I first learned to quilt, and yes you can use rulers with your domestic machine too.

Basically, Tracey is going to provide us with a block pattern each month, and she is going to give us three different ways to quilt that block.  Her categories are traditional, modern, and free hand.

Well............guess what?  

The insane person that I am, has decided to do all three.  Surprise, surprise!!  Not really.

Above is my first selection of fabrics.  These will be for the traditional option.  The first picture below will be my fabrics for the modern option.

Lastly, this next group will be for the free hand option.  All three of my choices are completely different. I've decided that if I was going to do this, it had to be from my stash.  So far so good.

I am looking forward to working on these.  There is always more to learn.  For me it is learning the different motions used for the longarm versus how I have always done it in the past, which was on my domestic machine.  I have come a long way since I got my longarm last year and continue to practice and learn.

Stay tuned for the monthly updates.