As part of the Longarm League membership, I recently recorded an interview/pantograph design brainstorming session with Tawny Oland of Simply Fabulous Quilting. Tawny's first pantograph release called Chunky Knit and can be purchased here.

Another League member named Tera Nicolo-Smith stitched out Tawny's Chunky Knit panto on a client's quilt. All the other details can be found here:

 

 

 

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A post shared by Tera Nicolo-Smith | Longarmer (@thequiltingsmith)

Tawny has been working on a new really awesome digital design and while we were discussing stitch path options and trying to "optimize" the design, we noticed that Art and Stitch swapped the start and stop points... without permission! How rude! I'm being dramatic, I'm sure it was something I did to cause the change, but I couldn't figure out how to switch it back.

Enter, Leisha Farnsworth of Quilting It. She's another incredible talent as a quilter and pantograph designer. I remember di...

Have you considered digitizing quilting patterns?

Since the Longarm League began, many of our members have been curious about digitizing. How difficult is it? What is the process involved? How does one sell designs? 

In an effort to show my approach, I started recording my computer screen as I was working on my design that eventually became known as Peak Blooms. 

When I started this design, I didn't know where it was going to take me, and I'm pretty sure I would have scrapped it immediately if I could see into the future and know just how L-O-N-G it would take to tweak all of my blessed petals! 

But, I'm stubborn. "In for a penny, in for a pound", as they say! All told, I recorded about 10 hours of on-screen digitizing over several days. You certainly don't have that kind of time to watch it unfold, so that's why I put this video in hyperdrive to give you a look behind the scenes.

Luckily, most designs only take a fraction of the time from beginning vision to finalization. But, I also d...