Quilty Crimes Friday - Open Seams!!
Just a quick reminder that all photos are used without harm (hopefully) to the quilts involved. I may (or may not) have asked the quilt owner for permission to post photo's of these quilts.
Intent - Learning. I am attempting to explain and demonstrate what a longarm quilter sees when quilting a quilt and why you should strive to make your quilts the best they can be. Having said that, I hope to re-post these same post in the future with helpful hints and web sites detailing important information.
On with the show......
OPEN SEAMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As a longarm quilter I can't think of anything else worse than an open
seam in a quilt. Probably because when it happens the
first tool I grab is one of these.....
Yup, I'm doing quilt surgery. Didn't know I had that kind of a
degree did you? If you are a longarm quilter chances are
you do too. Here's where we begin...
Fortunately on the quilt above I was driving the machine so I could stop quickly. There weren't too many stitched made in the same place before the machine stopped. But when the computer is running the machine I'm looking at this.......go ahead, click on the photo for a BETTER look!
I'll need to tell my customer that there is a "problem area" so I mark it and move on. Here's another.....
I'm hearing....
CLUNK....CLUNK......CLUNK......
My heart is racing and sinking all at the same time. "Clunk" is
ever a good sound to hear. I know I'm going to be doing some
quilt surgery and it's never a good thing.
This happens way more than it should.....
It's a better thing when I catch the holes/open seams BEFORE the machine does, but I don't always see then.
People - THIS is the reason longarm quilters ask that you "check your top before sending it to be quilted". We do this for a reason....
NOW, do you UNDERSTAND the reason????
That's it for today...hope you don't think I'm being too harsh with these
Quilty Crime Friday post.
My tag line on emails is
"just trying to do the best with what I have to work with"
Some days it's a little more difficult than others, but I'll
keep on quilting, hope you will too.
Thanks for checking on me,
hugs,
joanne
love to hear what you've got to say.................
(side note, I've already got the next post lined up and it's a follow up to this post, some stay tuned and come back!)
4 comments:
Holy cow!! I can't even imagine how terrible it must be to have that happen! What a mess!
I would come to one open seam and pull the quilt off the frame. I think the biggest reason people end up with open seams is they don't use a small enough stitch length when piecing. 2.5 is just too long. I use 1.8 and sometimes 2.0. I rarely have seams open since I switched to the smaller stitch length. I had noticed a couple of times my sister's quilts had open seams and suggested she shorten stitch length. Much better results!
Good grief, that would be maddening for sure. I love your Quilty Crimes because it makes me more observance when I'm sewing tops.
Now that was a very interesting post, kept me entertained....makes so much sense...
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