Did you know?

When loading a quilt on a long arm quilting machine, like the Janome Quilt Maker Pro 18, Janome Quilt Maker Pro 16 or Janome Quilt Maker Pro 20, did you know that you can load it the traditional way with the quilt top to bottom OR you can turn it side to side?

Most of the time, we’d load the quilt from top to bottom, as it would be on a bed, or hang on a wall. The quilts are often longer than they are wide. Unless the actual stitching; the quilting, is directional, however, you can often save time by loading the quilt side to side; turning the quilt sideways so the longer measurement runs the width of the frame and the shorter measurement is the length.

The directional print of the fabric doesn’t matter, it’s only the quilting design which matters. If it’s a directional design, like a row of trees you’d want growing upwards, or the cement truck pictured below, for example, you’d have to load the quilt the traditional way from top to bottom.

The adorable Cement Truck is one of the hundreds of quilting designs built-in to the Janome Pro Stitcher Premium computer software program

If the quilting design were a non-directional design like circles, or the Clover Edge to Edge Design pictured below, for example, then you could save time loading the quilt side to side as you wouldn’t have to advance the quilt as often.

Clover Edge to Edge Design is a good, all-over, non-directional quilting design

I like to float my quilt tops, so it’s faster and easier to quilt without pinning the quilt top to the quilt top roller. It’s just laid over the roller. The photo below shows the quilt top loaded in the traditional manner with the length of the quilt oriented top to bottom; the width of the quilt running the width of the frame.

The photo below shows the quilt loaded sideways with the width of the quilt loaded top to bottom, which means you don’t need to roll or advance the quilt as often, which saves you time! Again, the directional print of the fabric doesn’t matter as much as the directional print of the actual quilting design.

Whatever my quilting project, I love using Madeira AeroQuilt thread, which is conveniently available from our Janome Canada dealers. Not only does it come in many colours, it produces very little lint with little to no breakage. Adjust your tension and motor speed accordingly. Check out this Janome HQ You Tube presentation on Madeira and Iris threads for general sewing, quilting, and embroidery!