HOW DOES QUILTING MACHINE WORK???

hi i'm donna jordan from jordan fabrics today i'm going to show you all about how my long arm quilting machine works now you may have seen our tutorial where we show you how to finish your quilt top and in that i briefly showed how the long arm machine works and i mentioned that if anybody wanted to see real detail on all the steps on how to get your quilted on the long arm to leave us a comment and the overwhelming response was yes please show us more so that's what we're going to do today now when most people refer to making a quilt they mean making the patchwork top but when the top is done the quilt is not finished we need to put a backing on here we need some batting in the middle so it'll have some body and be nice and cozy and all those layers need to be stitched together and that is what the quilting machine will do it will stitch all those layers so they will stay nicely together so the term long arm that refers to this part of the sewing machine the arm of the machine this is a standard machine and i've only got so much space here to work with when i'm sewing now the long arm machine it's got this really long part here so i can sew a whole lot of my quilt all at one time my particular long arm is really big it's about 14 feet long it's about four and a half almost five feet deep and mine's a gamel now there's lots of other reliable brands and they come in all different sizes with lots of different options so if you're looking for one to use in your home you don't have to get one this big i got this used and i got it large because i wanted to be able to do any quilt but if you're looking to have one at home you can always find one that will fit in your house so how this works is once the quilt is loaded onto these bars we can turn the machine on and we can move it around it's got free movement or free motion in any direction so we can make flowers we can make leaves we can follow the patchwork pattern but what's really cool about this machine is that it's hooked up to a computer and so it's got pre-loaded quilting patterns in it and so just like a player piano will play a song all by itself this will quilt all by itself kind of like a ghost quilter so what i have here is a quilt top a backing and a batting all ready to go when you cut your backing and your batting just remember they need to be about three inches wider all the way around than your quilt top and that's just to make sure that everything fits on there easily now what i like to do is take each of these pieces and fold it in quarters so i'm just going to fold it one way and then fold it the other way so it's in quarters now i've got folds here and folds here i'm going to do that with each of these pieces now the reason i do this is actually two reasons number one i want to make sure that i calculated my backing size and my batting size correctly the second reason i do this is because many of my quilts are rectangular they're not square so i need to make sure that i have the back and the top going the same way so this particular quilt here it's longer here than there my back is longer here so if i line up all these folded areas you can see there's extra back and batting there and there's extra batting and backing here quite a bit this way but this way you won't get your quilt if it's long this way and you load your back that way you can end up when you quilt it with not having enough back i did that one time it was not a lot of fun i had to take it off the machine and add some more back so you can fix it but it's better to check right now now i'm going to mark the middle of the top of the quilt the middle of the top of the batting and the middle of the top and the bottom of the backing now because these are already folded i know that this is the middle so i'm just going to take a pin and stick it right here you can put a chalk mark if you like and i'm going to do the same thing in the batting i'm just going to stick a pin in here through just the one layer and then on the backing i need to put a pin here and then i need to put a second pin right where it's folded here now i can be sure that i get everything on the machine with the top at the top so i'm going to go ahead and get the backing pinned onto the machine so i've got the selvedge edge here and i've got the backing wrong side up so if you've got a seam in it like i've got a seam here you've got to have that seam facing up and you always pin the selvage edge onto the machine so this is a canvas leader this is called a leader and we're going to find our pin that marks the middle of the back and i've got a purple mark here where the middle of my leader is and i'm going to line up my pin with that and i'm going to put one pin right here about a half inch from the edge and then i'm gonna take this all the way down pin it all the way along about every three or four inches so i'm just going to pin all the way down to the right and then i'm going to pin all the way in the other direction till we've got the whole edge pinned here so the reason i pin the selvage edge onto here is because it's nice and straight it doesn't actually have to be a selvage but it needs to be cut nice and straight and not just sliced off the bolt kind of crooked okay so this is pinned all the way on here and now we want to pin the far end on so i'm going to go to my wheel here and turn it up a little bit so i'm reeling up that back it doesn't matter if it's not perfectly straight right now now we're going to find that pin that's in the bottom edge and we're going to line it up with the mark that we have in the middle of our canvas here there it is and this way we know we've got the back on nice and straight there's the pin and it doesn't really matter if you put your pins on this side or you put your pins on this side they just need to go in nice and straight so the whole bottom of the quilt the whole top of the quilt they're completely pinned on now i want to get it nice and flat so let's see let's pull that up a little bit so i've got two wheels here that i'm going to reel up so i'm just going to reel these back and forth till my back is nice and flat so i might have to go back and forth a couple of times in case i had a little wrinkles in there now i've got it nice so i'm going to reel up this bottom one until i've got just a couple inches showing on the top there and then there's little flippers here i'm going to put this one here there's another one on this roller here and that holds it tight and i can tighten it up and that keeps it from coming unrolled now the back is nice and flat this way but i want it to be held tight sideways also so i've got some little clamps and this is a it's a long piece of velcro so i'm going to clamp it on here and then velcro that onto there and i'll just do the exact same thing on the other side now we're ready to put the batting on so i'm going to take this pinned edge because that's going to go on the top of the quilt and the pin is in the middle so i can line it up with the mark i've got here on my canvas and this is going to float this is just going to be laying on top of here i'm not going to stretch it i'm not going to make it tight i'm just going to smooth it out take that pin out we're done with that make sure it's covering the back and that's about all we have to do for that now i'm ready to get the quilt top on but before i put it on i want to make sure that i get it on nice and straight and there's a really cool function on the machine called channel lock and that will lock it so i can't go forward and back i can only go sideways so that's a button right here now i can only move sideways and i can do a basting stitch and this is effectively drawing a line that i can use to line up the quilt with now we can get the quilt top we've got that pin in it that's going to go again in the middle of the top here and we're going to put the top of the quilt right along that line even though it's not a real dark thread you can still see where it's kind of indented there and that's going to make sure that we get it lined up nice and straight it's really really easy get that pin out of here so once you have the quilt nice and flat and smooth i'm going to baste around the edges just on the top here that's in the flat part here i'm just going to put a basting stitch near the edge through all the layers now the cool top isn't going to move even if i don't baste it but this basing is going to help when we come to put our binding on later i don't need to worry too much if this is not perfectly straight mine's quite crooked here this is just to get everything held together until we get the binding on and since they're great big stitches here you can always snip out any that are showing after you bind it the quilt is all loaded up and ready to be quilted the next step is to pick out a quilting pattern and then size and scale it so it will fit this quilt now i've done a lot of quilts on my quilting machine and i have a pretty good idea of what the patterns are going to look like on my quilt but when i first started i really had no idea so i would put a practice piece on so i could see what the pattern would look like before i actually try it out on the real quilt now the quilting program i'm using the software is called the staedtler stitcher and that came with the machine when i bought it there are other software programs available now there's lots of different kinds of patterns you can get so some of them are very fancy and curly some are geometric and i haven't even used a quarter of the ones that came with the machine but i've tried all of these and they're all a lot of fun so let's say we want to try you can leave notes but let's say we want to try luna this would be a good one now i'm not really sure how big that's going to be even though it says with the numbers here it's going to be 8 by 12. so i'm going to just make a little sample quilting on my practice piece here and see what it looks like in real life [Applause] all right now that is a very nice scale it's a little more quilting than i think i want on my quilt especially since you'll notice it goes over these areas twice and that makes the thread fairly prominent in those areas so i like it but i think i'm going to like it a little bit bigger a little less dense on the actual quilt so i was thinking i wanted a larger scale quilting pattern but i happen to see this one and even though i'm going to make it bigger it's a 12 inch high pattern it might end up with a little more quilting but it looks really interesting and i'm still working on my practice piece so i'm going to try a little bit of that one out [Applause] i really like how that turned out i was hoping to do something less dense than this more open this actually has more quilting on it but i think this pattern is very interesting and will look good on the quilt now the amount of quilting you have how dense it is what pattern it is it's totally a matter of personal preference there really is not a right and wrong choice that's one of the nice things about quilting you get to choose do i want something flowery and swirly do i want something with a lot of quilting and then you just get to pick you get to look at your quilt and think yeah that will look really good on there now there's not just abstract designs that you can quilt with if you're looking for something specific like christmas tree ornaments here's a really nice pattern so that is really neat this is a jockey on a horse so this would be perfect if i ever make a dick francis horse racing mystery quilt this would just be awesome now this pattern's got candy i see some candy corn jawbreakers bubble gum that looks like a lot of fun all right you've got the gun you've got the jawbreakers the unicorn so we've got all the different candies here and all the patterns i've shown you those are just a small sampling of all the different kinds of patterns that either might be on your machine or you can download new patterns there's all kinds of patterns being written all the time that you can add to your repertoire now let's get back to getting our quilt quilted we picked out a pattern and this is one repeat of the pattern so this part that's quilted here is going to be done several times for each row then we're going to have a number of rows so we need to figure out how many rows and how many repeats we're going to do the first step is to measure the length of the quilt so i'm going to use a tape measure because it's flexible and it's a lot easier so this is about 60 and a half inches long so 16.5 inches long that's how long we want the total height of the quilt to be each repeat right now is 12 inches so i'm going to keep adding rows till i get near 60 inches two rows three rows four rows this is pretty easy because i'm at exactly 60 inches right now because i had the pattern set to 12 inches high that's going to fill up the quilt this way now we need to figure out how to fill up the quilt the width so i'm going to unfreeze the aspect of the repeat and the machine is actually going to measure the quilt for me now so here's how this works we're going to use the machine to measure the width because it's going to help us calculate our repeats then also so it doesn't matter where i measure it how far up or down i am i just need to start on the side here and then i'm going to click a button to say start measuring here and then i'm going to slide it all the way to the other side of the quilt and it's going to tell me if i moved up or down too far so i can look on the computer and when i've got it just about lined up i will press ok again and it will tell me exactly how wide it is so the machine has measured and it's 54.11 inches wide now it's going to calculate when i press this button how many repeats we need to get across the width of the quilt we know that they're going to be about 16 inches wide but they're never going to be exact we were pretty lucky when we did the length because they were exactly a multiple 60 is exactly a multiple of 12. the width it's not going to be exact so this is going to change a little bit let's press calculate repeats and it's actually going to make it 18 and a half inches wide so it stretched it out a little bit this way so when we do three of those they're going to be exactly as wide as the quilt is so what that means is when we made our practice piece here the height of the pattern ended up being just about perfect so there's going to be multiple rows that are this height all the way down the quilt for the width the computer did calculations for us and it's going to stretch out the quilting so each of these are going to be a little bit wider apart so that when this is stretched it's going to fit three times across the quilt it's going to fit perfectly and i didn't have to do any calculating to get that it's all done automatically for me so all the information is now on the screen here this is the whole quilt but i can't quilt the whole quilt all at once i can only do one row at a time so instead of doing five rows i'm gonna have just one row and that is what we've got showing on the flat part here it's going to quilt one whole row and then we'll move it up get it to do the second row now before we start there's one more thing i want to talk about and that's thread color now the thread should either stand out and show a lot or blend in on something like this quilt where i've got a lot of colors already i'm going to want the thread to just blend in and i think i'm going to go with this nice purple because it's not going to show very much and it's going to blend in really well on the borders and i've got that fabric on the back also now i use thread from superior threads this is a style called omni and it's a polyester wrapped polyester core thread and it's the text 30 that refers to the weight of it it's just a general mid-weight all-purpose long arm quilting thread now this works great on my machine my machine is not picky it will work with almost any thread some machines are pickier so you should always check with your machine's manufacturer to see if they recommend a certain style of thread and then go ahead and use that brand now this is a question i get from people a lot they will send in an email asking how do you know where the row starts how does the machine know where to start so if i press start here it's going to give me options do i want the machine to start in the upper right corner the upper left where should it start so i always put the machine in the upper right corner and then i'm going to press ok and the machine is going to move to where it's going to start stitching so if we have everything programmed incorrectly when i press ok we will see that machine move over to the starting spot here we go now it's going to stop and take one stitch and that's so that i can get the bobbin thread pulled up i'm going to take the top thread floss underneath there so that i've got the bobbin thread now i've got both threads here then i'm going to press go and it's going to do the whole row without stopping so people often ask me how long does it take for the machine to quilt a quilt and it varies quite a bit so for the quilt behind me it's probably going to take about 20 minutes to do each row it might take a little bit longer because it has a lot of quilting but the direction changes are smooth so the machine can go pretty fast if there's a lot of pointy things in changing of directions like the ornaments pattern that's going to take quite a bit longer that might take 45 minutes to do each row okay it's completed the whole first row so i'm going to trim the threads i'm going to take off the clamps on both sides and then i'm going to roll the rollers and move the quilt now i'm going to release the bottom roller and i'm going to move the quilt by rolling the top everything is moving so i've got a brand new section that i can quilt on i'm going to tighten up the bottom roller then i'm going to smooth everything out again make sure my batting is nice and flat make sure my top is nice and flat i like to fold it even with the edge of the quilt here and now i'm going to put the clamps back on both sides now i'm going to baste down the sides here just so everything is held together and again this doesn't have to be perfectly straight it's just to get everything held along the edges until we get the binding on there now to start the second row i'm going to take the machine all the way over to where it stopped the first row and i don't know if you can see that little red light there there's a little red light i'm going to put that right over where it stopped stitching right there that way i can tell the computer to start at the end of the previous set so i'm going to change it i want it to start where the last stitching ended then i'm going to press ok and then the machine is going to move from the end of the last stitching to where it want to start where it wants to start the second row pull up the bobbin onto the second row okay the crossing is almost done we're coming to the very last part of the last row so all i did was do a row at a time and keep moving it and this is the fifth and final row and we just got to fill in this space here [Applause] all right now to take the quilt off of the machine we're just going to do everything in the reverse order here we're going to get rid of these side straps and then i'm going to loosen both of these rollers now they're both loose and i'm going to just flip this batting out of the way and unroll this a little bit to where i get to where the pins are and we can just take the pins out here we'll do the same thing at the top and that is all there is to it now the quilt is all the way done and now it's just ready to be trimmed up and bound so you can see the quilting on the back side here and this is my basting stitches here and i'm going to leave those in until after i do the binding and any basting stitches that are not covered up i can just pull those out real easily here's the quilting on the front quite a bit of quilting and i like it like that again i'm totally a matter of personal preference thanks for watching our tutorial today on how the long arm machine works now i hope that answered all of your questions but if you have more just leave them in the comments and i'll get back to you now i don't think i mentioned what quilt pattern this is this is called tea time and bali it's a free pattern we have it on our website it uses one entire jelly roll and we did make a video to show you how to make this pattern but the video is really old and i always hesitate to recommend that people watch those old ones because when we were first learning how it's just my son and i we're just filming this we don't know what we're doing the camera's a little shaky we've gotten way better at it so if enough people are interested in us making a new video we'll be happy to do that now there's just one more thing at the end of every video we always do a giveaway today we're going to give away the ribbons quilt this has been one of our most popular patterns it's a free pattern we did a video on it and i get so many pictures from customers with their own version of this but today you can win this so all you have to do is click the link below that says giveaway and put in your email address and your name and remember we can send this to a winner anywhere in the world so good luck now if you like our videos and you want to support us the best thing you can do is subscribe to our youtube channel that would really help us out happy quilting [Music] you

Channel: Jordan Fabrics

Views: 274,957

Rating: 4.9545627 out of 5

Keywords: Quilt, quilting, quilts, 12 block, log cabin, fabric, fabrics, pre cuts, table runner, table runners, sew, sewing, log cabin 12 blocks, Jordan Fabrics, Jordan's, jordan, floating point, Floating Point, Donna Jordan, Matt Jordan, Patterns, 4k, Batik Bali Batik, bali batik' sister's choice, tutorial, let's make, vlog, quilt shop, quilt store, MACHINE, big, how, stuff works, WORK, STITCH, SIMPLE, FAST, DESIGN, DECO, WOW

Id: rk8mPrK5UwE

Length: 28min 48sec (1728 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020