Pantographs Made Easy!

hey everyone it's tracy here at worlds and swirls quilting and today we're working from the back of the machine using a pantograph today i'm going to show you the easiest most foolproof way to set it up work through it and advance it to make sure that every row is perfectly spaced every time from top to bottom you ready let's go [Applause] today we're going to work from the back of the machine we're going to use a paper pantograph and we're going to use our laser light to get this quilt quilted pantos are a fabulous tool for long arm quilters of any skill level whether your machines just come out of the box or whether you're a skilled professional pantographs are a wonderful way to get evenly quilted quilts and when i say that i mean that the scale of the quilting stays the same you don't need any free motion skills you don't need to be an artist you just follow the little red light alright so the first thing we need to do is set our pantograph up now my quilt top is already loaded everything's ready to go and i have the top three sides basted in my quiltable space if you need help with loading or you want to see how i load a quilt i will put a link in the description below to my loading the frame the easy way video and you can go and watch and see how i do that all you're going to need is your pantograph some masking tape and a dry erase marker the first thing we're going to do is put the pantograph on the back of the table i start in the middle my frame has a plastic cover on the back here and it has a split in the middle so it's really easy because i can just plop this down in the center and slide it that way and then on this side i just lift up the plastic and pull it over like that and then you want to make sure this is really important you want to make sure that your panto is right against the edge of the frame all the way across on the back of the table that way we know for sure that the paper is straight which means our design is straight now we're going to set up the laser light once i've set my laser light up i don't change it it stays where it is for the entire rest of the quilt so how we do that is i bring my machine back to the top corner of the quilt top and i drop my needle down into the batting so you may have to peek over and that's okay my needle's down now in the top corner i'm going to position my laser and i like it out on an angle so it's away from the machine i angle it out so that it's sitting right against the bottom of the pantograph and make sure it's nice and tight so that light on the bottom of the panto represents the top edge of the quilt the next thing we do is a strip of masking tape is going to tell us where the outside edge of the quilt is on this side so we're just going to drop that down and i like to put the tape just a quarter inch no more than a half an inch a quarter inch or so outside where the laser light is sitting the reason i do that is so that when we're working and doing the little partial lines that may be on the outside edge of a pantograph when we're traveling up the tape we're off the quilt into the batting and it's going to get cut off you need to make sure you give yourself a little bit of travel space on the outside of your quilt for all that stuff that doesn't look so great then i'm going to lift my needle because we've got now our top corner and our side we know where we're sitting lift my needle go to the other side of the quilt top and i drop my needle down just on the edge of the quilt on that side [Music] [Applause] and i'm going to put my tape again just a quarter to a half an inch outside that laser light [Music] there so now we have our three-sided box and we don't have to guess where to stop we don't have to keep looking up and over we know exactly where we're at the next thing we need to do is mark our advancement lines this is the easiest easiest way most foolproof way ever okay so a pantograph basically is an undulating design and there's generally a ghost row at the top and i refer to it as a ghost row because it's sort of a grayed out line and it's not as dark and they're just partials the last thing we need to do before we can get to the fun part is mark our advancement registration lines if you do it this way you will always have perfect advancing and perfect spacing every single time i'm going to take a spot on the main row and mark it and the repeat on the ghost row and i'll mark the same spot on that and that's going to be our spacing for the advancing clear okay so as you can see we have a full row which is our main row and we also have what's called a ghost row so there's a grayed out row down here and there's also a grayed out row up there what we need to do is mark a spot on this row and the same spot on this row so that we know exactly how far to go with the advancing to make sure that our spacing is perfect i'm going to take the top of this curl and i'll draw a line and i'm going to call that number one then i take the same spot on that curve there it is on the ghost row and i'll draw a line across that and i'm going to call that number two now every time we advance the quilt we start at the number one and we advance the quilt and the machine and the laser light down to the number two and we know it's going to be perfect every time now the fun part we get to start stitching i start with the ghost row at the back of the machine i'm on the left hand side of the machine i'm going to do the partial row all the way across go up the tape and then come across this way with the main row landing on the number one when i finish no matter where your pantograph ends on that tape you want to make driving up to the number one and landing on that line part of the pantograph and if you have to put a dry erase marker up the side of that tape to remind you to do that then do that do not leave the back of the machine until your needle is down on the number one line and then it's just going to be advanced smooth out the quilt make sure she's all straight base both sides stitch the row all the way to the bottom lather rinse repeat couple more things but they're super super important and they will make a huge difference in your day as you're quilting through a quilt the first thing is how and where you hold the machine the natural way people grab it is by both handles at the back what i find is if i'm standing at the back then i'm kind of doing this and looking over the machine and it sort of puts that slight bend in your back so what i do is stand at the side of the machine i have one hand on the back of the machine and my left hand on the left handle this allows me to sort of catch and release with both hands i've still got great control of the machine but it's put me beside it so it also gets me closer and allows me to stand up straighter next thing is grip soft soft grip we are not on the behemoth at canada's wonderland we're not on a runaway train we do not need to hang on as if our lives depended on it you want a nice loose grip fingertips basically only the machines will move they move much nicer when you don't have a death grip what happens is as soon as you wrap your hand around that and you make a fist the muscles in your wrist get tight then your forearm muscles tighten and up into your shoulders everything's tight it's really hard to make soft flowy shapes if you're hanging on for dear life so loose loose grip i promise you you'll have a much smoother ride that way the very last thing i want to mention is following the lines with the laser light just like if you have a death grip on the machine if you are trying to cling to that line without ever wavering off of it what you're going to get on the front is going to be a shaky shaky mess i want you to treat the lines on a pantograph like a guide nobody is ever going to take this paper pantograph and lay it on top of that quilt and call you out because one curve or one little point was a quarter of an inch away from the actual line if you use the panograph as a guide and as long as you're close to the lines as you're stitching it's going to look great on the front so relax and try not to worry about being bang on that line the entire time just everything relax keep your shoulders down don't forget to blink and for heaven's sakes don't forget to breathe nice loose grip and we use the lines as a guide okay here we go okay ready loose grip on the back of the machine loose grip on the handle i'm going to hit the button again it's just a guide up the side of the tape [Music] [Applause] so when i get to the edge i'm going to drive up the tape [Applause] take care of this little curl here come back down the tape and away i go now that's going to be different for every pantograph that you do because they're all different shapes obviously so see how i'm not bang on the line all the time i promise you it's gonna look amazing on the top of the quilt shoulders back [Applause] don't forget to blink and don't forget to breathe [Applause] straight up land on the number one needle down we're gonna go and advance i'm at the front of the frame so i can do the advance i have my needle in the down position it's sitting on the number one line and i'm going to advance the quilt back until the laser light is sitting on the number two line so undo my lock and i'll send it back and i'm watching the laser light i'm not watching the quilt perfect once i'm on the number two line i know that i'm perfectly spaced for the next row at this point i'll smooth out the quilt i'm lining the quilt up with my c clamps i've got the clamps on the inner borders and going down the center of the quilt and again if you want to see more about the c-clamps you can look at the loading video i use these to register where my inner seams are so that i know that the quilt's not drifting because i float but you can watch that in the other video if you like smooth it all out now right from here i'm going to baste so i bring my machine back onto the quilt and i'll baste down this side and then i'll break my thread and i'll go base that side needle down needle up push my machine away and pull up my bobbin thread needle down and start i baste within an eighth of an inch of the edge always stay nice and close to the end and i just baste back until i hit the basting that's already there make sure that you cut your tails off it's really important now i have no idea where i'm positioned when it comes to the pantograph at the back at the moment and it doesn't matter i've basted back to my basting point and now i'll go to the back and i'll figure it out so i've basted both sides and now i'm ready to stitch the next row for the rest of the quilt i will always stitch going from the right to the left from the back the machine doesn't care which way i go the only reason i go that way is because i want to make sure that i end up on this side when i'm finished the row because this is the side that we advance from and i want to make sure that i end up on that number one line so the fastest way to do that is to stitch from that side coming this way if you're more comfortable going left to right from the back and then breaking your thread and coming back and putting your needle down on your number one you could do that too um i just i want it done and i've found all the shortcuts so that's my shortcut i always start over there and i come over here and then i just drive straight up the tape land on my number one whip around to the front and do my advancing all right so i'm just going to work through it keep doing the same thing lather rinse repeat straight up the tape and land on the number one line and then we advance again so we're going to go to the front and i'm going to undo my locks and engage my power fabric advance and from the front i'm going to watch as that goes back and i'm going to stop it as soon as the light hits the number two line [Applause] we're getting fairly close to the bottom on this advance the bottom of this quilt is going to come up now i like floating because i like the freedom it gives me to adjust the quilt as i have to to make sure that it's straight and square because let's face it not all quilts are straight and square and it's our job as long armors to make them as straight and square as we can so sometimes not having them attached to the cool top roller actually allows us better access to sort of shifting it to make sure that it stays straight what does happen though as we come to the bottom is i don't have any weight to hold this on now so i'm going to use some pins i'll go ahead and advance back to the number two beautiful and now you can see that my quilt top has actually disappeared underneath my my uh cool top roller so i'm still going to smooth it all out like i was before smooth out your quilt top make sure that you're all in line and then i'm just going to drop a couple of pins in the bottom of the quilt right in here to make sure that it doesn't shift a couple of important things to remember when you do this first of all they do not have to be head to toe this size quilt this is about 60 wide so you know maybe six or seven pins just across the bottom so that as we quilt this next row this layer doesn't or this quilt top doesn't start to shift up a little bit but a word of warning always count how many pins you put in the bottom of the quilt at this point i'm going to use six so i know that when i advance it the next time i have six pins to take out and we're just going to drop them in all three layers so i kind of poke it in and then push poke it in and push all right so on this advance what's going to happen is i'm going to end up being able to baste across the bottom of my quilt so i'm going to take my lock off and send that back from the number one to the number two just like that give my batting that little wee tug make sure it's sitting nicely and then i'm going to take my pins out now remember we counted how many pins we put in before so you know how many that you need to take out you do not want your long arm to find the pin we're going to get right back on there down to here and then i'm going to baste across the bottom of the quilt and as i go across i'm just pushing down just a little bit and walking my fingers behind me that's keeping that border nice and straight and it's helping the fabric feed into the foot staying an eighth of an inch away from the edge [Applause] you don't want to get any closer or further in because we don't want to run the risk that that fabric can get flipped over by the foot and we also don't want to see it outside the binding line if you fall off fabric just swing yourself back around get back on it and then straight up to the previous basting and then we can break our thread so the easiest way to take care of your bobbin thread is to lift your needle up push your machine away grab that thread come back to where you were drop the needle down drop the needle up push it away and there's your bobbin thread that you can cut i'm on my very last row now as you can see i've sort of run out of quilt top compared to the size of the pantograph so if i were to quilt this whole row again i'm going to be stitching way past the end of the quilt top and out into the batting and it's just going to waste backing fabric and batting so here's what we do next for the very last row you're going to just like when we set our laser light up at the top of the quilt and we marked our boundary lines we're going to mark a boundary line horizontally now to reference the bottom edge of the quilt so i'm going to take my needle i'm down in this corner now on the bottom of the quilt and i'm going to put my needle in the bottom corner just a little bit off it the bottom corner of that quilt now my laser light is right here so we really only have about this much of this pattern to quilt as opposed to this much and i don't want to stitch all that out so i'm going to take my tape and just like we did when we set the boundary lines on the sides of the quilt where i went out about a quarter to a half an inch on either side that allows us to stitch our tracking and everything off into the batting i'm going to do the same thing this time going this way to cut me off from going too far off the quilt top so my laser light is here and i'm going to go past it just about a half an inch and i can tell as i'm laying the tape down i can sort of i can sort of see that my tape is going to sit almost a quarter of an inch above this particular curve i'll just follow the tape all the way down and now i have my nice straight edge so in the very beginning when we started our quilt we did this ghost row here now what we're going to do is treat the main row as if it was a ghost row and we're going to quilt that and use that tape to travel across and then we'll be finished so as i'm quilting this last row i'm going to come along with my machine and when i get to the tape i'll go across the green tape swing down when i hit the green tape i just go across it till the next part i'm going to come across the tape do that curve when i hit the tape i go across the tape and i'm just filling it in all the way across just like that so [Applause] oh [Applause] that's it we're all done and it's just that simple i hope today's video helped and again if you need any help with loading make sure you check out my loading the quilt video i've put the link in the descriptions below and if you have any questions about working through with a pantograph post them in the comments below as well thanks for watching everyone take care and have a great day [Music] you

Channel: whirlsnswirlsquilting

Views: 28,611

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Id: 0VuCsdcjWWk

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021