Pantograph Patterns- Learn how to use them and finish a quilt!

[Music] one of the most common techniques used on the long our machines is the pantograph pattern I still think it's the bread and butter of the industry you get a long row with a pattern on it like this and what we're going to do is put that underneath the plastic on the back of the table pantograph pattern is also called an edge to edge or an overall pattern and that's exactly what it means it means we're putting this pattern all over the quill regardless of the piece work on the quilt so I've got it under the plastic now under the plastic on these tables you'll see that there are some grooves here and I'm going to place the paper along either the first of a second line is usually where I put it you need to put it where it's comfortable if you have a very long pattern or a very wide pattern then you can actually put it clear down to the bottom next to the teeth on the table make sure that it's lined up on the same line all the way across because you don't want your panagra to go on crooked it goes on crooked on the first row then it will compound that problem as it goes along you don't need to worry about what the pattern looks like at this point you just have it under the plastic on that line now we're going to bring the Machine over to the quilt and we'll make sure we're in the needle position which is going to keep our needle down in the down position and from the back of the machine the very bottom right hand corner I'm going to put the needle down and that's going to hold that in position so that if I fiddle with the laser-light a little bit it won't be moving around on me now I want to position my laser light and I'm going to turn it on in the back there's a switch right there on the back and that turned on my laser light and I need that to be at the very bottom of the pattern so I usually take a ruler and see what the very bottom of the pattern where that actually is because that doesn't mean that each line on the pattern that comes down is at the very bottom so I'll come along like this get the laser light in a good position where I can see it easily from behind I don't want it to be focused under the Machine so I'd have to be bending over to see it so I'll get that in a nice position and then I will focus that light so that it would be in line with the very bottom of the actual pattern and make sure that's the pattern not the paper okay once that's in position and then I will take my tape and you can use any kind of tape that you want painters tape comes in several different colors just be sure you can write on it I like this color because I can see my pattern through the tape and I make sure that I pull it off when I'm finished okay I'm going to put my tape there now that is indicating to me exactly the side of this quilt this is the right side of the quilt from the back of the machine and so if I follow this this side of my quilt up you see we'll make sure that that is right in line with my laser there we go so it's right on the edge so if I'm sewing on if I'm on the tape I'm actually off of the quilt I'm still on the batting and lining so that's going to be just fine and that's why we really like batting and lining on the side we'll go ahead and come over to the other corner now I'm going to put my needle down take my tape again and come straight up the side here now this will indicate to me when I get over to this side that that's the end of my pattern because we have a tendency to just keep sewing so we need to have a stopping point now we have established perimeters in between these two tape marks now we do what we call a pantograph shuffle so we we can underneath the plastic between the two tapes between the perimeter we can shuffle the pattern back and forth and see what's going to be the best beginning and ending for us so see and do do a lot of this you know go back and forth don't just do it once maybe move it around and see what's really going to be the best what you like the best as a beginning and an ending let's see that would be a really good ending here and I think that will be easy for me to start over here now what I do is I take out a pen out of my hand the apron see here or have it handy somewhere and I'll look over here and see where I'm actually going to be beginning I think I would be beginning right here so I'm going to put start and I would start here and I just sort of finger trace this pattern I don't have to swing out as far here although I I could swing out quite a ways I'm just going to jump right down into here and that'll take me into that and then I'll jump into here and that will be my beginning and then when I'm finished over here it looks like I can just stop right there okay we're ready to actually begin stitching so I'm going to go to the start point put my needle down now I'm not going to stay leaned over there at all I'm going to stand up nice and straight we don't want to keep you know leaning over the machine we have to have good posture because I'm right on the edge of the quilt it's okay for me to take several stitches back and forth I don't do this in the middle of the quilt but I do do it on the edge so I'll hold on to both of those threads and I will take just keep my button down on this side you can see I'm just holding it down and I'm taking about six little stitches but I'm making sure that I am right on the edge of the quilt so that would be covered up with the binding we are on ten stitches to the inch that's what I like to do when I'm doing pantographs and we're going to push our automatic which is our regulated stitch turn it on activate the Machine wait for the beep you have to wait for the beat before it's ready to go and then we'll be ready to do this pattern now you can see I have a very light touch very light touch as we're doing this pantograph we're not going to worry if we're at a line a little bit fact if you're following the laser light you'll see I'm not exactly on that line and I'm not worried at all because what I'm doing down here is going to look beautiful up on top okay round like this I know accuracy will come with practice and we're coming to our stop right there and I'm off the quilt so I'm just going to move the machine back and forth like that and that secures those stitches now that will be covered up with binding or even cut off and then bound over so that's no problem either now I could either move the Machine off and then cut the threads behind or I can move the Machine over like this and I grab this thread move the machine back to that point and then move it away again and there's my bobbin thread so if I cut that right there there's my tail and I have no tails on the back of the quilt when I turn the quilt over when I'm finished now there's a couple of ways that you can roll and what is so important is the distance between the patterns on the paragraphs we want to make sure that our spacing is exactly right on each row we don't want uneven spacing like big space here in the little space here we're not worried about how many patterns go on this quilt this is overall or pantograph quilting and I'll show you how easy that is to resolve at the end if you end up in the middle of the Cova pattern so don't worry about that what we're going to worry about now is how do we roll this quilt to do another pattern and make sure that the spacing is correct and there's two ways you can do it I'm going to show you the fastest and easiest way and then I'll show you another way I have these patterns are marked now if they're not marked if you get a pattern that doesn't have these markings on it for you to roll then you can go ahead and mark and I'll show you what that how do you do that we will find the very top of the pattern remember how we found the very bottom of the pattern you can put your ruler up there and see what is the very highest point of the pattern and you're going to put a dot there that is the top of your pattern and then you'll come down again and you'll find the very bottom see if I find the very bottom of that and I come over there's my dot and then come straight down from your top so that would form a right angle there and that is actually the top of your next row now some patterns actually interlock and so you wouldn't find the bottom you'd find out where they interlock most of the pattern designers for pantographs today will mark those for you so that they are perfect spacing we're going to bring our machine over so that our laser light is on the top of the pattern and we're going to put our needle down at that point right into the quilt now I'm going to remove the clamps and I can reach over there like that because hey I have a long arm now you know but you may have to go around to the front and remove that I'm just doing this so it's a little easier for the cameras now I'm going to go down at the end of the quilt and release the lining and the top the little levers on the lining on the top like this and very gently very gently I am going to roll the quilt see the needle is down in the quilt and it rolls with it just fine just don't jerk it just nice and easy now what I'm watching is the back of the pattern here where the laser light is and I want to get that dot right over to that the laser light shining right on that dot now I'm going to go two clicks one to pass that dot because when I put the tension back on the lining I just put the little levers back down on the teeth and I tighten that up again you see it brings me right back to the dot now if that didn't occur with a needle down I can still come over here and just adjust my laser light to make sure that it's right on that dot so see you can cheat a little bit if you need to by the way always make sure that your laser light is good and tight when you're doing your panto if you if that loosens up you're going to follow that pattern no matter what and you'll look up there and you'll be all over the quilt so make sure that that is good and tight as you're doing that the other thing that you want to do when you roll the quilt you always need to be able to clear your fingers between let me bring the needle up here between the quilt and the roller and you can see I can just barely get my fingers under there now to do that to raise this bar you simply come over to your lever right here and you just maybe turn it one turn maybe you'll need to turn it two turns if you have a really thick polyester batting or okay now you don't want to have that really high either when you have finished a quilt you have constantly been raising it so the next time you load you'll need to put that down before you start otherwise you'll be sewing on a hill and no machine likes to sew on a hill we just don't get as good of a stitch now let's say that we just rolled that quilt and we didn't have you know we forgot to put our needle down that could happen right it's happened to me I'm going oh no I've rolled the quilt and now I don't know where I'm supposed to be well all you have to do is look down at your pattern and what your job is to find out where that dot is on the quilt so if this is one curve here and one curve here and the dots at the top of this curve I can come up here and I can go well there's the first curve and there's the second and so then I could bring my machine over put my needle down and then refocus the laser-light to the bottom dot and that would get you in exactly perfect position so each time you rolled you would have it perfect okay and that's our goal that's our goal and I'm going to reposition my clamps on here and we're going to do another row like this now of course you're probably be coming around you know going around to the front to do all of that because I don't you really don't have to reach over like that I'm going to come back over here to the second row it's always a good idea to double check because check twice so once let's come to the bottom of our actual pattern and make sure look up there and see am I on top of some of my same stitching no oh look at that I'm right in position to do this next row without sewing on top of what I had already stitched so I'm going to stitch another row and I'm right on the edge of the quilt now what if you weren't right on the edge of the quilt when you came back you know these quilts are just sometimes they're little volatile it's not perfect it's not wood its fabric okay so if it wasn't right on the edge then I just move the laser-light you know just a little bit but you got to make sure you either move it this way this way you can't you can't move it too much or you'll you'll get it out of where you were on your pattern so be careful there but if you need to move it over a little bit to the side don't worry about it and don't think that your quilt all of a sudden is all out of square because it didn't just line up perfectly because it's just fabric and it just is a little bit volatile but we can deal with that it's not a problem so I'm going to sew this next row here we go [Music] [Applause] [Music] no I think I'll switch to manual for just a minute here some of you don't have the stitch regulator on your machine and some of you that have the stitch regulator have never sewn in manual so I want to talk about that for just a minute we just push the M on the back of the machine and probably on a pattern like this I want to be at about 50 between 50 and 60 and now this machine is going to go at a constant speed it's not going to give me even stitches unless I move the Machine evenly so when I go into those points I have to just say point and get out of it if I stay there I'm going to get too many stitches and I don't want to go too fast on these nice big curves or I'll get too long as stitches so here's how we sew evenly point point just move the Machine as evenly as possible I'm still got a very nice flow you can see I'm using a fingertip touch okay I don't want any white knuckles we don't grip the Machine really tight we don't worry about saying exactly on the line accuracy will come with practice point point there we go you see a nice even movement to this machine oh it just flows so smoothly if you haven't tried manual I do want you to try it I don't want you to be afraid of it I do think that the regulated stitch gives us such a learning really eases the learning curve because we don't have to worry about even stitches but they'll come a point where you'll want to also work with your manual on your machine you can see I am going out of lines and I am kind of doing that on purpose because I want you to see what occurs up there is just fine you could never tell that I was out of line nobody's going to compare the pattern with what you have done there we go nice and flowy and we have to be ready to turn our button off on that manual because it's not going to stop when we stop okay so make sure that you are ready and I'll just take some little stitches here there we go and I'll move that over again go down the same hole move it over again and there's my bobbin thread you reach down and cut that I don't even have a tail left underneath nothing and that just turned out wonderfully now we are ready to go to the front you can see that the canvas is coming around that roller I can see my pins so now's the time for me to adjust that top and if it was a square this is a really good opportunity for you to ease in some of that fullness and we can get rid of the top canvas right now so I'm going to go around to the front now that we're in the front of the Machine I want to talk about something else once these pins start coming around this bar one of the things you can do if you're doing a custom quilt or if you're going to be working here in the front for some reason maybe you're doing an overall and so you're in the front of the machine what I do is I just take a piece of tape like this and I cover up those pins so that I don't run the risk of getting poked with them or they don't poke holes in my clothes as they're coming around this bar and then when I'm finished with that tape and I'm ready to take them out I just put the tape on the canvas like that and I can reuse it until it won't stick anymore so there's just a handy little tip about not getting poked with the pins while we're on this side I'm going to base the bottom of this so I'm going to take out let's see I need to get my pin cushion just about stuck those in my wrist I'm so used to doing that let's put our pin cushion on here and I'm going to take out most of the pins I'm leaving a pin about every six inches just so I have a little bit of totnes steel on the quilt here we go you notice I take out several pins I don't take one pin at a time and put it in the cushion that's going to waste your time you can't do that I will take out that last little pin there and is going to come over here and stitch this side anyway because we're ready to do this next row so we'll come down here make sure we're in automatic and hang on to these threads as I start I don't need to secure them right next to the edge remember that you must stay very close to that edge because you wouldn't want anyone to have to undo that stitching as they were binding now when I get over to the corner here let's put our needle down hold the machine there I'll move a clamp to the edge right there where I am and that will kind of pull some of this extra fullness out I'm going to come across the quilt again right on the edge and just take out the pin as I get to it like that if that border perhaps they've added a border there and there's a little extra fullness in it we talked about that dog-eared quilt if they do have extra fullness as you are doing this if you just walk your fingers behind like this you will ease in any of that extra fullness there's one way that you can ease that in you can push in front to but it's a little easier just to walk your fingers behind these is it right in so you can see how close I am to the edge there I always have a respect for the machine keep your fingers away now that top canvas is finished we can actually roll that up and get that out of the way we are still connected onto our lining roller in our pickup roller so we know we're just fine anytime you come around the edge like this you can come over to the bottom of your quilt and do this stitching now I stitch there some people like to just base that and that's fine you just you do what is more comfortable for you and I'm going to baste up this side just like I did on the other part just kind of come across and finish basting this part so when I come over here I won't have any danger as I go on and off that pattern I'll be able to stitch right on and off the batting if I need to okay now this will be our last roll and I'm going to roll this one without putting my needle down and then we'll adjust the laser-light this is the second way that you can do this and so if I just come over here I don't have to worry about the top anymore just the lining let's say that I just rolled and then oh I forgot to put my needle down so I come over here and remember what we did we did found our place here that was on the second curve so that would be right there and then I'll look down here and I need to adjust this laser remember on that laser light adjustment you have a wingnut that needs to be tight and also the screw here both of them need to be tight if one of them is loose you're going to be in trouble there so that could possibly release for you and just swing alright and our clamps on over there so we're fine now let's check our pattern we'll double check make sure that we're not stitching on top of our previous stitching and then let's look up at the top Oh see what's happening here I'm actually off of the quilt and that happens all the time on this last row but we're not worried about that because we're quilting an overall pattern we they they don't have to be even so since I'm not that far off on this one there's two things I could do here I can just go ahead and quilt it because I'm only quilting off and on that edge a little bit and that's why we stitch so close to the edge too so that if I stitched in a ways and I came on and off a tad you see I could flip that fabric over and that would you know have a fold in the quilt we wouldn't want that the other thing I could do is I could go to the edge of my quilt see where my laser light is and I could take a piece of tape like this in fact we'll do that maybe on half of it just to show you half we'll do one way and half we'll do the other so you can see that both of them work out beautifully so all along there the edge of the tape is again where the edge of my quilt is so as I was quilted along here I just have to follow my line over and pick up my pattern I wouldn't have to quilt out into the end and sometimes you don't have a lot of extra batting and lining out there so you don't have the convenience of quilting a little bit onto that batting okay we're going to sew this row now part of it is going to be on and off the batting and part of it is going to be across the tape so we'll do the first part across the batting there we go [Music] you can see that went right up and onto the batting not a problem [Music] this is so fun [Music] I'm back in regulated mode so [Music] you see now I'm using that tape as my guide [Music] [Music] and stop and let's just look up here now you can see how I came right across the the edge of the quilt because I had my tape there and on this side you can see how I came right over into the batting so either way it's going to work for you and our pantograph is done how fast was that can you imagine if you're in business how much money you can make doing these pantograph patterns because they're so fast and easy [Music]

Channel: Linda's Electric Quilters

Views: 139,542

Rating: 4.8838711 out of 5

Keywords: panto, pantagram, pantogram, quilting, gammill, edge to edge, over all quilting

Id: bk-nSLvlQoA

Length: 27min 4sec (1624 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 15 2017