Last year I bought fabric to make a Christmas mat. The intention is that we will lay this mat on the floor and put our Christmas tree on it.
I was supposed to work on it and finish it last year, but stuff happened and I didn’t do it. I was able to use a friend’s longarm last week and I got the thing quilted. It isn’t finished.
My friend has a new HQ Amara on a large frame. I was excited, but also apprehensive as it has been a long time since I longarmed anything.
My intention was to free motion, but I ended up decided on a computerized pattern. Since the fabric is just one length of yardage – no piecing it didn’t seem necessary to spend a bunch of time on it. I thought choosing a computerized pattern would make the process go faster. Overall it took us about 2.5 hours to quilt a 41 x 44 inch sandwich. My friend is still learning and the software isn’t as intuitive as I expected it to be*.
We both worked on it and I was finally getting the hang of moving the quilt from a finished line of quilting back to the right to start the next line (no, it doesn’t do it itself) when we finished. I was glad to finish, because it was exhausting. I am VERY grateful to my friend for helping me quilt the thing and also for just getting another project quilted.
*SIL n.2 and I have discussed how longarm computer software manufacturers don’t have the market to make really great software. If longarm software sold as much as something like Microsoft Word, then there would be more development, but the market just isn’t that large. It is a shame, but business is business.