Community Service Projects and Long Arm Quilting

I’ve done some community service blocks and projects for the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild before and posted on here. We’re in a new year so we have some new initiatives.

The national modern quilt guild is sponsoring a community service project for QuiltCon. Guilds have to stay within certain guidelines and create a quilt to submit. Then the quilt will be returned and donated to a local children’s shelter. We have to create “strata” using certain colors. Obviously, I chose “light teal” because I have a great abundance of it. The strata block was really easy and took no time at all. I’m really excited to see how the quilt turns out!

The other project our guild has going right now is we are going to be providing the KCK Police Department with homemade stuffed animals to give to children who are taken out of violent situations. I whipped up these two adorable elephants using the tutorial from Birch Fabrics. Cute, right?

I love being able to give back this way.

The other exciting thing that’s been going on lately in my sewing/quilting world is that I’m starting to long arm. No, I don’t own one, but I’m renting time on one. Quilted Memories in Overland Park makes a couple of their long arms available for use. You have to be certified, so I took the certification class and have been renting time.

This is the first quilt I long armed. I just followed their stipple pantograph and I’m ready to move on from that. I’m looking at other pantographs. I think I’ll do pantographs for a while and then try out some custom quilting. I’ve done custom free motion quilting on my domestic machine, so I’m not scared of it, but I’d like to get extremely familiar with the long arm machine before I move on to that. I plan on renting a lot of time to knock out a bunch of quilt tops. I’ll keep you updated with my progress.

I will say – after long arming this, I put the binding on with my serger and I will never go back again. It was soooooooo easy and I love not having to trim with a rotary cutter and ruler. You should try it. I recommend it.