How to Advance a Quilt on a Longarm Quilting Frame (Grace Qnique)

I love my quilting friends my name is Lia day and welcome to this long arm quilting tutorial so a few weeks ago I showed you how I loaded this quilt into the long arm and got it set up basically to this point and then I have quilted this much of the quilt and now it's time to advance it so I'd like to show you in this video how I advance the quilt and this will explain why I leave my quilt loose like this you can see I don't attach the quilt top to this bottom leader down here I don't like to do that it just seems to save a lot of time when it comes to advancing the quilt through the frame so the very first step is to remove your quilt Clips these are so nice they just nicely grip that front of the frame and you know give you that little bit of attention but you know you know they they come off really really easily so now I'm gonna take the quilt and lift it out from between those two rails that top rail and the second rail that looks good and now I want to make sure to release the ratchet that's right here on this corner open that up so that way as you can see I can start unrolling this backing fabric so this is the backing fabric on this rail I don't have the leader but I don't have the quilt or anything attached to the second rail here and then I've got the backing attached to the top rail here as well ok so now I'm going to just kind of lightly kind of fluff this up just a bit so that way I can advance the quote through the machine I'm going to loosen up that rail and then go for the top rails start rolling that up and as I'm rolling it I'm going to smooth it out so just running my hands along that leader cloth then as I roll up the Pens I just want to make sure that they're all tucked in there and they're not going to catch my hands I talked about that a lot in the last video I'm kind of obsessive about not getting stuck because it really hurts all right there we go you can see that's rolling up nicely and this is the part where you really want to roll your machine around and make sure that you know how much space that you have and how you can get you know where are you basically where you should put the quilt how much you should roll up to continue to your design on the machine so that's about as far as I'm going to roll this up I'm leaving about an inch and a half of the RIT quilted section exposed simply because I might connect with that design and do something else with it now that ratchet is so closed so now I can start tightening up the opposite side so I'm going to close that other ratchet I'm gonna take the whole quilt top and just kind of flip it back over the back of the frame and I'm gonna do the same thing with the batting just pick it up and fluff it out that way and get your machine out of the way just kind of slide it over this is a pretty big quilt on this 8-foot frame which is why the machines you know kind of a little bit still on top of it but that's okay I'm pushing that limit just to see how how big of a quote I can do on this frame okay so there we go now I'm just smoothing that out and putting a little bit more tension back on that backing fabric and I just like to have it exposed so that way I can see it so I'm sure that it's nice and flat there's nothing weird going on and there's also no stray threads or something like that if this was a white backing fabric I'd really want to make sure that it was completely clean and the batting the same way so now I'll take the batting and fold this down so just laying it over real gentle and smoothing it out that looks good you can see just how quick this is you know you advance it smooth it out do a little bit of fiddling with it but really it's very quick and then you're back to quilting again in no time okay so now you can see I'm just tucking it in between those two rails I just find that that adds just a little bit of attention to the batting you know it just makes everything kind of lay down flat now I'm gonna do the same thing with the quilt top you can take it all the way out you just kind of give it a little fluff just like that smooth it out and then I always go back in and smooth it down with my hands too so that is pretty much it now I'm gonna take that and also push it back gently between those rails and you can kind of you know check yourself just to make sure that everything's going well and then everything's still lining up I have a seam line here that seems to be running right down the front of the frame now if this was wonky and light smooth maybe say that seam line was kind of right up on top down here then I know something was off and you know need to smooth things out and do a little bit more smoothing and spreading and maybe that would be even a sign that that quote wasn't put on square but you can see that line runs down pretty much straight and true all the way down the frame okay so there we go that looks great now I'm gonna grab my quick clips and again this is something you just press and then just give it just ever so slight rotate looks like I can probably go one more click on my ratchet I've got just a little bit of you know just a little bit of wobble in there but not too much not too tight you don't want it to be super super tight if you get the quilt too tight on the frame it can just get really bouncy and I found that can sometimes cause you to break thread okay so now at this stage I can wield a machine back in place now there's one more thing that I like to check in on as I'm rolling the quilt up onto the frame this back rail as you can see some long arms have what's called an idler rail and you can actually add one to the continuum frame and that's basically just a plain bar and then your quilt will roll up onto a second bar that's higher up well on this frame I don't have the idler rail everything rolls up right here but as this gets thicker and thicker it can start to push against the bed of the machine so if you roll up and you advance the quilt and all of us on your machine won't move that's the sign you need to increase the height just lift up this rail so they're bolts on both sides of the rail you just unscrew it and lift that part up I usually go up I you know one mark on that side plate for every time that I advance the quilt generally you kind of won a fingers distance between the quilt and the bed of the machine and I find that that works out pretty good so that's it for this video I hope that you're enjoying seeing how I'm working on my long arm machine this is the grace Q Niq 14 + or it's recently been renamed the 15r and I am working on the continuum frame I love this frame because it is built to grow with you you can set it up smaller like this you can get extensions later on if you end up having more space and you can also put bigger machines on it later if you decide to upgrade your machine too so if you'd like to learn more about this machine or the frame come and check it out at Leo DICOM slash 15 are now the quilt that I am working on I'm actually sharing lots of different videos long arm quilting and playing with different designs so you can make the quilt and quilt along with me and you can find the free quilt pattern for this at Lea DICOM slash stripe until next time let's go quilt

Channel: Leah Day Quilting

Views: 11,955

Keywords: longarm quilting, longarm quilting videos, loading a longarm, longarm quilting machines, Grace Qnique Longarm, loading a quilt on a longarm frame, loading a longarm quilting machine, loading a quilt on a longarm, grace qnique, longer quilting machines, grace company, longarm machine, longarm quilting for beginners, longarm quilting tutorial, grace qnique 14+ longarm, grace qnique 14+ tutorial videos, grace qnique 15, grace qnique quilting machine, leah day long arm quilting

Id: sPwoJDywcg4

Length: 7min 58sec (478 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 14 2018