Removing Unfinished Quilt from Long Arm
 

Ok, I have a whole cloth for myself on my LA right now.....and just havent had the desire to quilt it. I have tons of other projects that I want to work on right now....

I am about 1/3 of the way done with the quilt. So how hard is it to remove a half done quilt and then reload it at a later date? (hoping I will get it back on the frame later this year) I have the red snappers that I use to load the pieces.

Anything I need to be aware of? or watch out for? sigh, just cant get motivated to finish this now. especially with a couple "need to get done by mid feb" in line to be quilted.

i have removed a quilt and reloaded it. but i had leaders attached to the poles with velcro. to load another quilt in between, i had a second set of leaders.

I've done it, its not hard at all. I usually write the quilt measurements on a piece of paper and pin it to the quilt.

Since you are only one third done quilting it, you should first baste the rest of the quilt. I would baste down the sides with each advance, as always, then baste across about every 4-6". I found those long threads in between get caught on everything and break very easily once the quilt is off the frame, and sometimes even on the machine itself underneath while still on the frame. For this reason I no longer just make a single stitch for the basting---it'll pull right out. I would recommend you make several short stitches in a row or stitch a small circle instead, something which won't pull out when the long threads catch and break. After doing all the horizontal basting, and small stitch basting along the bottom edge, I usually go back and put in some vertical basting lines, but not as close together. When you reload later, you will only have to attach to two leaders, one at the top and one at the bottom. You should have no problems. :)

I did a wholecloth on my longarm. I would get tired of working on it and took it off several times. I just recommend that you mark the wholecloth centers before removing so that you can reattach to the leaders in the same place again. Good luck.

I have needed to do this a few times. And since I pin my backing on the canvas it is easy to remove and reload. I just make sure that I place a safety pin at the center of the backing at the top, a safety pin at the center of the backing at the bottom, and another safety pin at the center of the bottom of the quilt top. I also baste across the sandwich using long wavy lines of stitching about every 8 inches down the length of the sandwich. When I am ready to reload I center the backing and pin to the canvas leaders, pull out the basting stitches, center the quilt top to the canvas leader, roll and smooth everything into place and resume quilting. Has worked good for me.

This is what I have done. I like the Velcro leaders for this reason.

I have 2 sets of zippers. This allows me to remove a quilt as many times as I want and then put another quilt on the machine. I wouldn't use anything else, but that's me.

Thanks for the help/advice ladies, I removed the whole cloth.....was kinda sad but I honestly needed to get some other stuff done and it wasnt inspiring me anymore. :) I'll get back to it eventually! I hope!

How does the Velcro work on the leaders and how do you put on the quilt? Do you sew Velcro on the quilt? never really understood that and the zipper outfit.