Snug as a Bug Quilt

Last week me and my favorite sewing partner, Sue decided to join the local senior center and sign up for their open sew/quilting session. They meet on Wednesdays or Thursdays and we chose to attend the Wednesday sessions. The thing is, they have two longarm sewing machines available for use. So we stayed a while last week and watched someone from the group use the longarm. The ladies were a happy, friendly group and we looked forward to sewing with them.

This week I prepped a quilt for the longarm machine. As soon as I got to the open sew session, the group leader, Alice asked me if I was ready to test out one of the machines. I said sure and off we went into this new quilting adventure. I learned about loading the backing, quilt top and batting onto the frame and how to use the machine. There were quite a few instructions and my biggest fear was forgetting one of them; I was not afraid of doing the actual quilting. I chose a pantograph from their collection and Alice asked me to choose a simpler one. When using a longarm machine for the first time, it's best to make it as simple as possible.

I chose a simple leaf pattern and 2 hours later, I was done. It wasn't as fast as I thought it would be due to constantly having to roll the quilt, batting and backing down after completing a row of quilting. I certainly enjoyed the process and look forward to trying it again very soon.

This quilt was made using a pattern called Snug as a Bug from the Summer 2016 issue of Easy Quilts Magazine. I used more of my friend Mary's fabrics to make this and even after completing it, I can still make more quilts from her fabrics. I will keep going until I use it all up and Quilts for Kids will get more quilting made from these happy fabrics.