Quilt Top to Learn LA-ing On?
 

I am going to take a lesson and rent time on a LA (for sure this time!) and the instructor told me to bring a quilt with me that I'd like to work on. I have one quilt that I do want to work on, but not for my first lesson.

What is the best thing to put together to take with me to work on for my lesson and first couple of hours getting used to it?

I was thinking maybe of sewing some 12" blocks together to make a single sized bed quilt that I could donate if it turns out OK. That way I could do a different FMQ in each block.

Or, should I just take the Queen size that I want to work on and trust that I'm going to be able to do it?

Anything else I need to know?

Thanks! I don't go until August 8, but I'm excited already.

Watson

Some people have used sheets - usually old ones - for practicing.

Get some cheater cloth fabric. You can always cut it up for charity or pet quilts or pads.

If you are just learning, don't take anything you want to keep. It is practice and learning. You don't want to be worried about doing finished work. I tried practicing on fabric designed by a la quilter for one of the machine companies. I spent more time trying to decide where to quilt than how to quilt. You are there to learn how to use the machine and not design quilting motifs.

Cool! I took a solid coloured piece of fabric, mine was light grey on top, light green on the bottom and I took a slightly contrasting thread, so I could see stitch quality, tension issues etc. My piece was about 36" by WOF. On the grey side I took a blue wash away marker and drew out areas like borders of varied sizes and squares and triangles, so I could test out the ease or difficulty of stitching patterns familiar to me in all directions, as with a long arm you can't rotate the quilt in the process unless you un mount it and remount it on the frame and I took my favourite longarm ruler, a 2" X 10" I'd been using with my sweet 16 and domestic machine to see how that would go. I was evaluating the longarm experience, before taking the plunge to buy one, and I wanted to answer as many questions I had about how it was going to work for me, which may be a bit more involved than what you're looking for, but it work very well for me. Since I prefer to custom quilt, I approached the piece as a custom job, so it took me all day to complete that small piece. An allover design or panto, would be a lot quicker. Have fun!!

Kwilter, what did you decide after your experiment?

I'm hoping to set up my Mega Quilter (a mid-arm) on a frame in the near future. I plan to just practice with some "whole cloth" quilts that I can donate if they turn out ok. I do like Kwiltr's idea of drawing something on top to work with! I have some teddy bear stencils and things, so I might use those as my practicing gets a little better.

Watson--I like your idea of simple 12" block put together. or even smaller blocks. That will give you some built in registration "marks". But plan on just trying everything you can to stretch and learn. My practice "quilt" was just 2 plain pieces of fabric with bat and I quilted until I couldn't get any more thread on it!

I took some muslin and drew lines on it to make large squares and then drew various blocks in the squares. This gave me space to try different things. I also used a contrasting thread so I could see it (I think I used black).

I went ahead and bought the APQS Lenni. I still have my Sweet 16 Sitdown machine as I personally feel that there are projects that are easier to do on a Sitdown than a longarm. There are pros and cons to both types of machines. I actually really like quilting on both of them and am grateful I can have both.