sassysews2

Need your advice. Have been quilting for about 3 years, have pieced several large quilt tops & finished many baby quilts, probably 20 or more for charity. Am now venturing into longarm quilting. Have all the machines, notions, books, patterns, etc learning by trial and error but wondering if some in depth education would help. Maybe buying the Quilters Academy courses. Can get themt cheaper on Kindle but don't know if patterns would be of any use, don't see how you could get correct template sizes or print patterns or instructions. Can I get a Kindle ap on my laptop and print from there? Has anyone used the Academy courses and are they any good. Have spent soo much money on things that don't work hate to invest more if not of any use. Am senior citizen on limited budget. You all have so much experience and good advice, I know someone has been in the same position. Thanks.

DonnaC

I'm not sure about the Quilters' Academy courses you're referring to (I know of a book series by that name by Harriett Hargrave), but you should look into Craftsy. www.craftsy.com Their courses are wonderful. Any course you buy never expires, so you can watch as many times as you need to, and they have both longarm and regular quilting classes. You can watch them on your computer or on your Kindle (which is how I watch most of mine). Good luck!

PaperPrincess

OK, this is my opinion. I get all my quilting books hard copy. I've gotten a couple ebooks and even though you can look at them on your PC with the free kindle app, I still find them difficult to use. I have a kindle & Ipad too, which are way too small for me to see any detail. I also had the unfortunate experience of getting a Kindle version of one title that was B&W and couldn't see any of the detail in the color diagrams, so had to rebuy the hardcopy version.
I love Harriet Hargrave's Quilter's Academy, but they are on piecing, not long arm quilting.
For long arm I like Quilting inside the lines by Pam Clarke and Pathways to better quilting by Sally Terry. And, even though I don't like ebooks, I do like youtube long arm quilting videos!

AnnieSue

I'd say try Craftsy first, but definitly explore all those great YouTube vidieos and tutorials on blogs.

Prism99

I'd say start with Youtube -- lots of free videos on longarming and tools used in longarming.

I think the Quilter's Academy series of books is for beginning quilters -- sort of taking them from cutting fabric through piecing and layering, then to quilting. I think it covers quilting on a domestic machine (which is how Harriet Hargrave quilts); didn't know it even covered quilting with a longarm on a frame.

In my experience, unless you have bought a longarm system from a dealer comlete with lessons, a lot of longarming is sort of teach-yourself by means of trial and error. Youtube videos gave me a starting point for loading a quilt.

What setup do you have?

spstout

The Harriet Hargrave books just cover machine piecing. There appears to be a long-arm series by Handi-Quilter also with the name Quilter's Academy. I think the two are getting mixed up here.

The books are great! I have no experience with the long-arm series of videos.

sassysews2

Had a Juki 98Q set up on a 10' frame but didn't like it as the 9" throat limited the quilting area. Broke it down and now use the Juki for piecing & FMQ. Now have a Queen Quilter 18" (which is just like a Tin Lizzie) on a 10' Grace Pinnacle frame. It does pretty good, it's not the machine, it's the quilter. Just hesitant to start on a pieced top as I've ripped enough practice pieces that I don't want to do that again. I have some Craftsy classes & seen Youtube tutes but converting it to practice is a whole nother ball game.