Loading Your Quilt (HQ Sixteen, Simply Sixteen & HQ24 Fusion)

now we're ready to load our quilt the first thing you need to do is attach your leaders to the poles to do that we want to place an arrow in the center of your rail system on all three poles and also place a mark on your leader now these leaders have marks and this is not for measuring this is for placing it you see the marks across the leader notice that I've placed the leaders so that they waterfall between the two poles we're ready to load the back fabric the first thing you want to do is fold it in half and find that center point and place a pin in it and also place a pin in the other end of the fabric as well you'll notice is the placement of my seam that I've used to seam my fabric is going parallel with the poles the next thing we're ready to do is pin bring up our back leader fondly called the belly bar leader and start pinning we put find that center spot on our leader that we marked and take our pin and pin within the first quarter inch of our fabric and then we will continue on pinning from the center out to the left and then from the center out to the right now that we've pinned the backing onto our leader with our fabric wrong side facing up we need to move over to the end drop our latch down and then start rolling our quilt back rolling it and smoothing it with our hands going out as we go one caution is that roll it yourself and not invite a friend to come and help you each have have different hand tension and things roll differently now as we roll this up you'll see this seen across the top that's a good reference to know that everything is still squared up so continue rolling until this is completely rolled on to your poles smoothing it out so that we don't hourglass or the fabric doesn't want to pull in we want that fabric to lay edges right on top of each other keep rolling and smoothing it out again a reference to see if my seam is rolling correctly if it isn't then I can massage my fabric tighten that up there and make that seam so that it rolls straight across continue to roll again smooth out smoothing out again as it goes until it's completely rolled our last reference will be our edge here as it rolls across the top making sure again that it's rolled with the right tension and that rolled perfect okay now we're ready to load the top okay at position my quilt top with the right side up remember I positioned my quilt back with the right side down now quilt top with the right side up find my Center I found my pin or Center and pinned it and now I'm going to pin now I like to pin against the fabric this is only my preference you can choose to pin and place your pin against the leader so that's just a matter of preference I'm going to start pinning again and I'm pinning so that my pins go from a point tip head and point to head you don't need to overlap your pins and I'm taking a big bite at it with that pin as I get to the end and pin my last pin I will do a weave so that it holds it more stable onto my leader again I'll pin starting in the center and pin out to the left and then out to the right okay I finish pinning the leader and the fabric together there is another option for you if you don't want to pin you can actually take your leader off with your fabric and take it to the sewing machine and baste it on starting from the center and baste out center and baste out to that direction now we're ready to roll this onto our pole again we need to lower the latch that way the pole will only roll in one direction and that is the correct direction as I roll smoothing out my leader so that everything rolls correctly rolling this you can hear that latch clicking you know you've engaged it pulling out my fabrics now your quilt is good giving your reference line so as you roll you can see these reference lines knowing that it's rolling correctly if it doesn't then massage the quilt to help that roll out one thing I want to point out too is you've got a lot of seams in here it adds bulk you'll notice that this might be a little flappy there is no seams so go ahead and let it roll naturally it'll be a little looser but it'll be okay watching my reference lines for my seams to make sure it's rolling correctly smoothing it out there's a reference line making sure if I have to massage that that it will roll correctly see the flap that's okay because that's rolling correctly again look at this we need to do some massaging smoothing that out making that smooth and now as we come to the top we have that cut ads across the top and it's ready now we're ready to roll our backing out and attach it to our take-up roller okay now i've loaded the top rolled it up now I'm ready to unroll the back a little bit so that I can have some fabric out here and pin this to my back or my take-up leader you'll see that there's quite a stretch here so that if this is a problem for you and you can't pin it from this direction you can move to the back of your frame and pin from the back I'm going to go ahead and pin this on another thing that you can do is you can take the leader right off of the frame and pin it or as we talked about before you can baste it on remembering pinning or basting from the center out to each direction so go ahead and load this back on to the leader I finished pinning the backing to my take-up leader and I want to be careful that I make sure that the leader is behind the idler pole if it isn't then I'll we have a great velcro leader system that we can actually take off the velcro leader and place it underneath and back on to the take-up roller another thing is we can take the pole out and lift it up over the top and bring it back in don't ever think that you have to pull that pole out of your room out the window and then bring it back in because we have great fixes for that and you shouldn't have to unpin either that the velcro system takes care of that okay we're ready to put the batting in I place my batting here the batting will go between the belly bar and the top pole and lay that down and I like to lay it right down there so that's right against those pins now I want to do a visual I want to check to make sure everything is lined up correctly if by chance my top fabric is over too far and it's outside of the area that I need to be quilting with my back then I can undo the velcro slide everything over and replace that or we align that don't ever unpin you know that's just a waste of our time and we want to be quilting all right we've got our batting set I want to do a channel lock across here using my machine so I think it's time to thread my machine and start quilting okay I'm ready to base down a plumb line across my quilt the first thing you want to do before you start quilting is actually stabilize your quilt by adding your clamps to the side of your quilt I'm ready to start and I placed my machine in manual with a low needle speed you can use it regulated if you like it's just a preference I'm going to start and let the Machine I have my channel locks on let the machine stitch a plumb line across the quilt and just with my left hand making sure that the batting is laying straight I've taken off my channel locks off of my machine and I pulled my top fabric up to that plumb line and as I pull that back you can see that plumb line I've placed that fabric up against the plumb line and I've pinned about every five inches across the quilt to stabilize it I'm now ready to bring up my bobbin thread and stitch one of the things I want to point out is I'm really stingy up here with the fabric that I have on my backing I've given it about an inch and a half so that I know that I have extra fabric on the bottom that I want to just kind of put that up close to the top we're ready to bring up our bobbin thread first thing you want to do this is like driving a car when you drive a car you use your right foot for your power I'm using my right hand for my start and for my needle up and down my left hand will be used to work my thread and manipulate my fabric so I'm going to move my right hand over going to do a needle down a nap move my machine aside and there's my bobbin thread it brought that up hold those two together and then if I want to I can do a stabilizing stitch and drop my needle now I can move my right hand back over to the right handle and from here I'm going to do just a little bit of a wiggle stitch and the reason I took that channel lock out is so that I can do that little wiggle stitch and it won't have give me any resistance so I'm just going to stitch this across and use your left hand and add pressure on the left side of the quilt and as you do that it helps straighten that out and helps give you that straight line as you're stitching stay within your binding area so within a quarter inch of the edge you notice as I place my pins my pins are back far enough that they will not interfere with the needle as it goes by I'm still in the basting mode you don't have to be in manual you can put it back and regulate it if you choose I finished basting the top of the quilt now I'm ready to bring up the bobbin thread with my hand on the left handle I will bring the needle up move the Machine aside make a loop with my left hand move it back over to where the thread came out of the fabric needle down and up and move it aside again and as you can see there's my bobbin thread and now I'm ready to clip the threads now I want to base the left side of the quilt as far as the throat space will allow so I'm going back to the top needle down and up move my machine aside and bring up my bobbin thread and do a tacking stitch to tack your thread and now again I want to add pressure as I go down the quilt and that will help give that a straight line down there I again pin my fabric so it didn't shift on me and added pressure you can only baste the throat space and then you'll quilt the body of the quilt advance the quilt and base the next section we finished loading our quilt we're ready to start quilting one tip that I'd like to give you when you tension your poles make sure that your poles aren't tension so tight that it creates a trampoline effect on your quilt makes it harder to see the stitching as you're quilting the other thing is that you want to make sure that your side clamps aren't pull so tight that they stretch your quilt they're only a stabilizer now enjoy this handi quilter product and happy quilting

Channel: Handi Quilter

Views: 113,530

Rating: 4.8009048 out of 5

Keywords: quilting machines, long arm, longarm long-arm, machine quilting frames, hq24 fusion, hq sixteen, hq sweet sixteen, hq pro-stitcher, hq prostitcher, hq bobbin winder, my hq story, hq avante, hq18 avante, follow the hq truck, hq truck, quilters academy, see hear learn quilt, open-toe hopping foot, installation, load a quilt

Id: gJzlpqCR0x8

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 13 2011