Trying my hand at pantographs

I have read about pantographs the moment I bought my machine and even got the rear handles for my machine to do this at some stage.  However, when I put my rear handles on, my machine quilt working.  The handles were returned to be repaired which was almost a year ago.  At that stage, I had so many customer quilts that I didn’t want to risk putting the rear handles back on, in fear that my machine will quit again.  So without rear handles, I continued.

I, however, have this one quilter; I know she reads my blog, so she might just recognise herself.  Whenever she brings me a quilt, it comes along with a picture of a motif she’d like me to stitch.  Sadly most of these are digitised or pantographs and in the past, I’d try my best to do this free-motion by practising on a whiteboard or paper.  The last motif she showed me was just a bit too much of a challenge to get a good rhythm and get going free-motion style.  So I thought what the heck, it is the end of the year and my practice time; I might just give pantographs a try.

I saw a video by a lady who had even less space than I to get to the back of her machine (where pantographs are generally done from) so she improvised to do pantographs from the front.  I watched this several times and decided to give it a go.

Bought a self-print motif from Urbanelements.com, cut some old fabric and started with this.  It went much easier than expected and the best part is, I don’t have to think about the spacing or next move, I just follow the little laser light.  Self-print pantographs are rather expensive and the sad part is that a quilter might only use a motif once.  Now I have a new expense on my list ever since I got my long arm.  People complain about paying for quilting but I, as a novice, has already spent a small fortune just to be able to deliver a fairly decent end result and even if I quilt two quilts per week, it will still easily take me more than 10 years to pay off my initial, let alone continuous, expenses.

One must seriously check your spacing when advancing and I still need to figure out how to measure once I only have a tiny bit of top left at the bottom and need to repeat the motif one last time but I guess practice will make perfect.  This is the reason pantographs take a little longer to stitch, not so much in stitching time but time spent adjusting the motif for every advance.

Before this horrible 2020 runs out, I at least can say I have learnt more than just washing my hands and wearing a mask.  My first pantograph quilt is done.