LongArm Quilting at

LongArm Competency
Practice Quilt

This Quilt Top will be needed for you to work on.  Bear in mind that this is for practice purposes, so don’t use a top you’ve slaved over, or that is intended as a gift.  While this top will be turned into a nice, usable quilt, you don’t want to be freaking out about making mistakes when you’re learning new techniques.  However, I can’t teach you just using practice fabric, so you will need to provide this top.  I don’t think it will prove too onerous ;-)

For the quilt top, make a backing 6” larger than the top in each dimension.

I hope this description gives you ideas for a quilt top to pull from your store or to whip together for your long arm practice.  Just remember that it is for practice and don’t spend too long making a really elaborate top that you’ll be afraid to experiment and learn on.  You don’t need to follow my exact patterns, just read and understand the purpose and needs of each lesson and go from there.

First Quilt

The first quilt should be made up of squares an/or rectangles, fairly large in size, of plain solids or marbles.  You will be quilting each set of blocks with a different freehand pattern, and stitching in the ditch around the blocks.  Have at least 3 sets of blocks, each set with at least a square foot of area.  The design below, made of 15 1/2” squares with a 6" border, would make a suitable project, and result in a lap quilt you can show off as your first long arm project.  Of course you can pick your favorite colors!  Other suitable designs would be Trip Around the World, or Kimono Medley by Marge Burkell.   Or you can pick any 9-Patch square and make it big.  The quilt top should be no smaller than 36” x 12”, and no larger than 60 ” x 60 ”, unless you want to lease extra practice time to complete it (which actually isn’t a bad idea).

Pick and practice on paper one freehand design for each set of blocks except the center.  One design should be easy; it would fill the purple blocks on the sample.  Easy designs from the Freehanding books include:

• Meanderings
  •   1   Basic Meandering
  •   2   Single Loop
  • 14   Basic Leaf
  • 38 Pond Water Meander
• Textures & Fillers
•   1   Landscape
• 15   Fish Scales
• 26   Basic Stipple

Additional designs may be selected from the more complicated patterns to challenge your developing skills, or kept simple but different to bolster your emerging confidence.