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Pardon The Delay, Please!
It has been almost half a year since the previous email in the longarming series regarding getting the best and lowest cost results from your longarming.
Sorry for the delay, but health problems, far beyond my control, intervened.
 I Love Wordplay!
"Selvage" or "salvage" - Most people pronounce them the same.
Some people cut off the selvage from the fabric. Some people keep it on. So, what do we prefer?
Here we are talking generally about pieced backs, usually backs pieced from 45" fabric or from stash. With pieced backs the selvage tends to be to the sides. With un-pieced backs [wide or extra-wide] the selvage tends to be on the top.
When it
comes to backs, we prefer to have the selvage edge to the outside,
uncut. If there is a selvage on the inside, in a seam, that can be trimmed, as you wish.
Why? When longarming a quilt, it is very helpful to have the edges as straight as possible. That makes mounting, and the results of longarming, more exact. The selvage is the straightest part of the fabric.
"Horizontal" can be "Vertical" - This isn't wordplay, but it is an interesting concept. We usually think of the quilt being top-to-bottom. However, in longarming it is easier to line up with the selvage. As stated earlier, pieced backs tend to have the selvages to the sides, whereas wide backing tends to have it to the top.
Since the selvage is the straightest, the alignment is best to the selvage.
The back is the fabric initially loaded on the longarm. Also, loading is to the top bar. Alignment is easiest when mounted to the selvage. So, your quilt may be loaded horizontally, or in landscape view, as long as the pattern being sewn is not directional.
Why else is this important? Because with quilt backs with one gigantic seam, having the seam move parallel to the top bar usually creates less distortion in the quilting than a vertical seam.
Vertical seams create a hump in the rolled quilt. This "hump" creates a thick area and the sides sag, causing an artificial fullness, if you will.
"Money is time and time is money" is a phrase you may have heard often. Anything that saves time, lowers the costs that a longarmer can use as a basis for their rates. Quilting can usually be done faster if you limit the number of design "repeats" [or rows] by having them sew along the length of the quilt.
We Will Be Closed For Christmas!
We'll be closed for the holidays from Tuesday through Wednesday, December 24, 2019 through January 1, 2020. We will be celebrating with our family. That means that our last day open this year will be Friday, December 20, 2019.
We hope that wherever you are, whether you are with someone or alone, whether at home or abroad, whatever your situation -- we wish you the recognition of your blessings and hope.
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