I know how you feel Kryssa! My son (+40) just informed me he wants a quilt for his bed this Christmas. Wonderful! Lots of time before then to make one...but his bed is a CA King! I think this is when I will learn QAYG (Quilt as You Go)! I am trying to approach this realistically..not full of dread! We love challenges, don't we???

Anyone here have a source for CA King Quilt Patterns?

Anything larger than a lap quilt goes to the long arm quilter for me. But you can tie them too.

Hi Kryssa, I sympathize with that 'pulling your hair out' kind of feeling! And if this group is like most of the quilters I know in person, very very few of us can afford to send a top out to a long-arm quilter though heaven knows they do wonderful work and I'd love to be able to.
These are links that helped me alot.
This first one is to a woman named Marguerite McManus. I'd watched lots of her videos, and used many of her ideas. One is for setting up a machine quilting table at home for not much money with a sheet of insulation and piece of tablecloth plastic. Works great! http://www.crazyshortcutquilts.com/
This link is to Leah Day's website: http://www.daystyledesigns.com/
She's a great innovator and teacher of machine quilting and shares generously with links and videos. One of her simplest tips is how to get better control of your foot controller. I go to her often and hope to buy some of her products one day. I think she's already given the info for free, and those are the kind of people I like to support when I can!
This link is for an awesome 'quilt as you go method' in the tutorials on this board, generously shared by K3N. It's readily adaptable to any pattern and I love the 'no hand-sewing' part. http://www.quiltingboard.com/t-36303-1.htm
If it's the weight and how cumbersome working on the whole quilt is (personally that's the part I hate) you might really like quilt as you go.
Hope this turns into a fun quilting experience for you. It's no fun when part of something you enjoy turns into a misery. Good luck and I hope you'll post on your progress.
Cheers!

I have a half dozen quilts working at one time. So when something does get to me, I just put that one down for a few days, and work on other ones. I've spread my quilting "stuff" from one bedroom to two. No wonder I never want to clean.

I can so relate!!! I am working on "perfecting" the quilt as you go process. I am happy with how it is working so far. Big ones are too hard for me.

Hey, I have your solution. I make mine in strips and sew them together after they are quilted. Its bulky when sewing them together and finishing up that seam, but it sure beats trying to deal with the bulk the whole time. Here is a strip that is done and ready to add to another strip. This butterfly quilt will fit my queen sized bed and I am quilting it as I go. I would never tackle trying to hand quilt this in a whole piece. It would never get done and I would smother under the load. This way I will on smother for a short time attaching the strips. :) You may like this. I hand quilt, but you can machine quilt each strip and then sew them together and machine sew where the attachment is. Tah Dah!

Rhueluna, your hand quilting is marvellous.....

Love your pictures! Beautiful example of Quilt as You Go! Thanks for posting a partial project. It's hard to believe it was QAYG sometimes when you see the whole thing completed! Fantastic work.

:thumbup:

I did a Q size and it was very difficult to maneuver the quilt. I stitched in the ditch. Never again. Next time I will do FMQ as I think I could keep from turning the whole quilt so very many times.
Think about doing small circles or loops in each block to maek the pattern stand out. If each piece in the block is large,do some loops or vines, etc. onto the pieces. Look at some quilted pieces for ideas. Turning the quilt was the worse pain ever, so I will try it this way next time I quilt it. Plus, I will start with a small quilt to see if that will work. Good luck!
marla

My second quilt I did was a queen size Eleanor Burns Trip Around the World doing SITD. As long as I was able to keep the quilt on all the tables, ironing boards around me it went pretty smooth. I would rather quilt a large quilt on my little Kenmore than do a binding any day, but I do them cause the more I do maybe I will finally get one that I can be proud of.