Loading a Longarm the EASY way!

hey everyone it's tracy at whirls and swirls quilting and today i'm going to show you what i think is the fastest easiest way to load your layers on your quilting frame so that you can spend less time doing that and more time quilting [Applause] all right today we're going to get this little quilt loaded onto the quilting frame there are several methods or ways that this can be accomplished i've tried them all over the years and for me personally i much prefer the dowel clamping system over any of the other methods the one thing you are going to need if you're going to use this method is casings in your leaders because the dowel has to go in now most machines don't come with casings already in their leaders so you will have to do that don't worry about it i'm going to give you a link to go and watch my how to sew the casings in the leaders video and you can accomplish that right on the frame using your long arm no need to take them off put them on your domestic machine and struggle with all that canvas leave them on the frame and use your machine to stitch them on it's super easy and if you watch that video that'll teach you how to do that all right before we get started just a quick word about the requirements for your batting and for your backing when it comes to quilting on a long arm frame for those of you who are new to long arm quilting you are going to need more backing fabric than what you're used to the general rule of thumb is four inches longer and wider however i find because i use the clamping system it takes up a little bit more backing fabric than pins or leaders do so you are going to need just a little bit extra my rule of thumb is 10 inches longer and wider so if your quilt is 80 by 100 you're going to need 90 by 110 if it's 60 by 70 you're going to need 70 by 80. it does not matter if it's pieced it does not matter if it's wide back you just need that extra space okay so as long as you've got that you're going to be good to go the first thing you need to do is make sure that your leaders are in the correct position before you get your backing fabric on there so i've got my belly bar or my backing bar leader underneath it comes under over top of the quilt top roller and sits on the top like that so that the dowel is actually sitting on the top i also have the locking gauge so that this isn't going to shift on me when i put my clamps on the pickup roller has the leader coming underneath the leveler bar and then up and back over the top this is really important if you put your backing fabric attach your backing fabric to that back leader and this leader's not underneath a leveler bar you're going to end up with a ski hill so be sure that that leader is let out enough that it can come under the leveler bar up and over the top and it'll hang on the other side for now okay so we're ready to go i'm going to get my backing fabric i'm using a wide backing today so i'm going to actually load selvage to selvage this is longer than the required 10 inches but i'm not worried about it i'll just throw it on there so i stand myself in the middle of my frame ish and you're going to flop it over here we go and we're going to position the selvage edge of the backing right on top the goal when we load the backing is to use as little of it as possible when we're actually clamping it down so what i don't want to see is you've got inches and inches hanging over this roller get as little as possible on there so i just use the selvage and i lay that on top of my dowel and with my clamps i'm going to clamp down the fabric the easiest way rather than trying to position it like this and push with your fingers it's going to make it wobbly i position that on a i don't know whatever angle that is about 60 degrees or something and i put my heel of my hand onto the clamp and i squeeze the roller and push down with the heel of my hand the next one's going to go on there and you want them just to touch or be no more than about your baby finger apart we need it to be solid and then here i've only got about this much backing and my my clamp is quite a bit longer but it doesn't matter you can clamp just plain canvas and you're good that's it you can actually load a queen king-size quilt and be ready to quilt in 15-20 minutes and that's including setting up the pantograph now i'm going to drop this leader down into the middle undo my lock and i'm going to wind it onto my belly bar so as you can see this is why i throw it over the back as i'm winding the backing on because it's sort of getting that resistance from the canvas that's up here it's winding it on really nice if you've got your backing fabric just drop down there and it's all puddled when you try to wind it onto here it's going to be really saggy and sloppy and soggy [Music] so as i wind it on every now and then i'm just making sure that i keep it smooth and i just cut my hands and i go from the center out from the center out and i'm going to keep winding every now and then center out center out and i'm watching under here and as soon as i see that my backing disappears center out center out this is also a really good opportunity to see if you've got any fluff or fuzz cat hair dog care anything that you might find on your backing extra threads there's a thread there you go it gives you the opportunity to look at it as well and to pick anything off that you may need to so now that my backing fabric has disappeared and i can't see it under there i know that i'm almost at the top of the other side of the fabric so i'm going to stop and i'm going to go around to the other side and we'll load it onto the pickup roller now we're going to attach it to the leader on the pickup roller before we do that we need to do a couple of things i'm going to let this out again we only want to use as little as possible but we also need to make sure that this is nice and straight and it's laying correctly so i'm going to shift it a little bit to make sure that both sides are sitting evenly and that there's no bend or waffle in the middle of the fabric so i'm going to show you what that may look like what we don't want is for one side to be higher than the other or can you see that waffle in the hopefully you can see that waffle in the camera we don't want any of that either all right so we're gonna even it all out lay it down make sure it's nice and even and that may mean that this selvage edge is not perfectly straight on the leader this doesn't matter that's what matters okay again with the clamps i'm going to position it just on a bit of an angle i'm going to use the heel of my hand again and i'm going to squeeze the pickup roller underneath it and it pops it right on next one making sure that they're side by side and then the last one there let's flatten it out all right so i've got my lock off and i'm going to advance the leader down as it falls off then i start to wind it back this way and i'm going to position that so that the clamps are sitting just in front of the leveler bar see how nice and flat that is it's perfect that's what you're looking for we're not going to leave it this tight when we quilt but i just wanted to show you that it's nice and flat okay next we need the batting and the quilt top now my batting is about the same width as my backing fabric maybe an inch narrower that's fine just make sure that your batting is not wider than the backing because then it's going to hang over and then you run the risk of it getting caught in the carriage as the machine is going underneath around there so when i lay my back my backing down or my batting sorry i want to make sure that i leave a little bit of space at the top i've got this laid right over top of the quilt top roller it's going to stay there just for a minute so you want a few inches at the top don't worry about a measurement just make sure you leave some space and then we're going to plop our quilt top right on top of that now the method that i'm showing you when it comes to the quilt top this is called floating i don't actually use my quilt top roller for my quilt top i do use it and i'll show you that in a minute but i i use the floating method that's what i prefer i'm going to lay that little quilt top make sure you get it sort of centered on your back on your backing so you've got about the same amount on either side again don't get too worried about it being perfect perfectly centered unless of course your backing is pieced and that's a whole other tutorial right now i've got a solid backing it doesn't matter um it i don't have to line anything up so just so you can see me do that i'm going to take my batting and my quilt top and i'm going to roll them up together over top of the quilt top roller and then i'm going to tuck them under and send them back and then when you roll it back you're going to end up closer you're going to end up closer to those clamps now you want to make sure you've got at least an inch and a half maybe two inches from this clamp because we don't want to run the risk of having the machine hit into that so this is one of the reasons why i say that we need the five inches longer at the top and at the bottom rather than the four you do need that little extra space so if i look at my backing fabric here i've already used about that much of it and just to get to the quilt top okay so smooth it all out and by eye i'm trying to get it as straight as i can get it but i am going to use the machine to make sure that that's straight before i do anything else before i baste start quilting anything okay so that's it and then the quilt top and the batting just hang down like that onto the floor so the next thing we need to do is make sure that our quilt top is straight and get our basting done just a couple more things to do before we get to the quilting the first thing we need to do and this is extremely important i cannot stress this enough you need to make sure that your quilt is loaded straight onto the frame right now this little quilt looks by eye that it's straight but i'm going to use my channel locks to make sure the way i do it and i prefer this method is i use my channel lock and my hopping foot and i use an pieced seam inside the quilt whether it be the border seam for the outer border or an inner border seam if there are no borders then you can always use a seam that goes across the inside of the quilt or the length depending on how you have it loaded this is a much more reliable measurement than the outside edge of the quilt generally the most wonky part of a quilt will be the very outside edge of on the border so i don't want to take the chance that i line up my entire quilt to what that outside line says okay so i'm going to put my channel lock on i've got my foot right on the front edge of my seam line and i'm just going to push it across and i'm making sure that the front of that foot is sitting right on that seam line the entire way if i need to adjust it a little bit i can either sort of tickle it down or push it up a little bit to make sure that it's not on any kind of angle now right there it's just a little bit low so i'm just going to sort of do that because it's not that far off there and that looks really good that looks nice and straight to me the other thing you want to make sure when you're doing this don't lean on your belly bar sometimes people will will they'll want to lean and what that does is it pushes everything forward a little bit so while it looks straight there if i lean on it it goes in a little bit and then i'm going to be adjusting so make sure you stay off that belly bar when you're doing this process there we go beautiful perfect and straight now we're ready to baste now that we know the quilt is perfectly straight horizontally we need to have a method to make sure that it stays straight vertically all right that's where the quilt top roller comes in handy because i float my quilt tops so it's just hanging here it's not attached to anything i need to have something to tell me that as i'm advancing the quilt up throughout the quilting process that the quilt isn't drifting to the left or to the right so i'm going to use my quilt top roller and my c clamps these are just little white clamps they fit the rollers perfectly and they do fit any machine not just apqs machines and i'm going to position them on this little quilt i'm going to position them in line with the border seams so i'm going to place this over top of my roller and i have it lined up the center of this is sitting right on that seam line and then i'll do one on this side as well again i'm not using the outside edges of the quilt i'm using pieced seams that run the length of the quilt that's going to be your most reliable if this was a large quilt i would probably have at least three maybe four if there's a center seam that comes all the way down the quilt i would absolutely put one there this quilt is pretty small so just two is fine but this is going to allow me every time i advance my quilt up and i smooth everything out before i baste each side to go ahead and do the quilting i'm going to make sure that these c clamps are in line or i should rather the quilt is in line with those c clamps all the way to the bottom and that ensures that nothing's drifting let's baste i want to take a quick second to talk about basting basting is extremely important it's a step that you must not skip and you want to always have the outside edges of your quiltable space basted before you get into quilting whether you're free motioning from the front or you're using a pantograph and a laser light on the back of the machine or if you've got a computer doing it for you those outside edges absolutely have to be tacked down before you quilt in them okay a couple of things about basting the first thing is i get asked this a lot i don't change my stitch length to baste the outside edges of my quilt the last thing you want to do is change the stitch lengths on your machine and baste your quilt and perhaps get distracted and then quilt a row or two of your pantograph at your basting stitch length ask me i know it was many many years ago but i never did it again so i always based with the same stitch length that i'm quilting with and i also want you to stay within an eighth of an inch of the edge that's what you're shooting for if you baste too far in on the quilt a couple things can happen first thing is you may see it outside the binding and nobody wants to see basting stitches outside the binding it's ugly and the other reason is as you're coming off the quilt and coming back on especially with a pantograph or a computer i mean when you're free motion quilting you're at the front you can see it but if the computer is doing it or you're standing back there as you come off the quilt and come back on if you've basted it too far in the foot can actually flip the fabric over and then you're going to have your fabric flipped over on the edge of your border and that can cause problems too and you may see it outside your binding as well so i want you to stay as close as you can to the edge and it'll be fine it doesn't matter if it's a little bit wobbly or if it's not pretty it will get tucked inside the binding later and you'll never see it all right here we go so i'm going to drop my needle down bring my needle up you know push my machine away and pull up my bobbin thread and i like to start in the down position and i'm going to baste up the back up to the back i'm staying super close to the edge if you happen to fall off the edge just swing back around get back on it [Applause] and up okay we're gonna come across the top now as i go across the top i actually push my fingers down a little bit right here and what that's doing it's not stretching or anything it's just helping the fabric stay straight and it helps it feed in underneath the foot so i just walk my fingers along get to the top and then we're going to come down this way again stay as close as you can to the edge if you fall off like that just swing yourself back around get back on it there so now i'm as close as i can get now i know that as i come off and back on that quilt i'm right on the very edge and nothing's going to flip over and i'm never going to be able to see that basting outside my binding line thanks for watching everyone i hope what i had to teach you here today was helpful and if anyone's having any trouble at all with pantographs setting them up working through them or how to advance make sure you check out my video pantographs the easy way i will post the link to that in the description below and you can go and check that out and i'll show you how i work through a quilt using a pantograph all right take care and we'll see you soon you

Channel: whirlsnswirlsquilting

Views: 12,574

Rating: 4.9588337 out of 5

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Id: RkkCegB5Yc0

Length: 21min 36sec (1296 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021