I've just finished a quilt top I love for my new grandchild who is due around the middle to end of October. I am planning to quilt it with bamboo batting, and minkee backing (top is cotton). There's a long arm quilter nearby who is quite new to the craft, and I had contemplated having her quilt it with her long arm. But the minkee is the kind with the dimples on it, and the top is quite geometric (pinwheels), and I'm thinking I might be better off to do the quilting myself with my Janome 6600, and do a very simple stitch in the ditch so as not to distract from the design of the front. And I don't know how the dimples of the minkee will look when long arm quilted. And then, of course, I don't know the abilities of the long arm quilter, and so I'm a little leary. She said she hasn't quilted with Minkee before, but will do a sample before she tackles mine. Any comments? C9P

however you quilt the dimpled Minkee..some of the dimples will be smushed. (how is that for a strictly techincal term??) Regular Minkee just shows the quilting design kind of embossed. The stitches nestle down into the fabric. If she has never used it before, she needs to know not to tighten it. I can have a big of a sag...you dont' want to bounce a coin for sure! I have used it with success...I was just very careful as I rolled the quilt not to stretch it.

I made a baby quilt and sent it to a longarm for quilting. It started out square and came back somewhat rectangular, because the Minkee was stretchy and the longarmer had pulled it too tight when she quilted it. I had made the quilt on commission, and was kind of upset about it, but the woman who had commissioned me loved it and didn't care that it had stretched. *whew*

if your LAQer has not done any work on minkee..NOW is not the time to try her out...she will need practice and even then, her machine might not like it..

many of the LAQer's around me have stopped working on it..it is too time consuming and stretches way too much!

i am a long armer who loves minkie backs- but it does take practice- and i used the one with dimples once--it was ok but some people might not like the way the stitches look on it- you should prehaps make a small pinwheel block- with batting (if you are using batting) and some of your dimple minkie and do a practice block so you can see exactly how the stitching looks on the minkie before you attack the whole quilt-
some people love the look- others hate it...decide before taking a chance-

Thanks so much, everyone!!! I really appreciated all your input and I decided to do the quilting myself on my machine, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I'm going to put the binding on tonight, and once it's ALL done, I'll post a picture in the "picture" section. I'll title it "Baby Quilt with Minkee Backing" if you want to check it out. C9P

i'm now putting the photo in the "Pictures" section.....C9P