The East Cobb Quilt Guild show was last weekend and I attended with my friend Karen. Lots of beautiful quilts, both traditional and contemporary. I was astonished at the number of quilts that had been quilted by a paid longarm quilter, and was even more taken aback to find the Best of Show winner had also been quilted on a longarm machine, by someone other than the maker.
So who gets the ribbon? And doesn’t the fact that a paid professional worked on that quilt put it into an entirely different category? This is definitely a trend, as at least half of the quilts in this show were done on longarm machines.
What do I think? Longarm quilting is great for a large bed quilt that is too cumbersome to do on your home machine. But I consider longarm quilting to be utility quilting: it gets the job done by someone who has been paid to do it. I personally find longarm designs to be rather predictable: feathers, stippling, and the occasional interesting pattern, but that is rare. The photo accompanying this post is the most interesting longarm pattern I saw.
Many of the students attending my classes are fascinated by new sewing machines with a stitch regulator; but what’s the point if you’re going to pay someone else to quilt your stuff? In my machine quilting classes, I teach my students how to machine quilt so they enjoy the process and make beautiful designs they’ll be proud of. So, this week I’ll be focusing on machine quilting and how you can do it better, and more comfortably. And, I’ll be doing interviews with the makers of some of my favorite quilts from the show. Keep posted!
It is hard to judge if this was best of show without seeing all the other quilts. Longarm quilting has really come a long way and you should get out to more quilt shows and you would know that. I assume that you pay for fabric to make a quilt and what would a quilt be without fabric? You pay for batting I assume unless you make your own so why should you put quilting down if it is paid for? I am an award winning longarm quilter. I have won awards in national and international shows so I do have the credentials to speak about longarm quilting.
It’s obvious you feel strongly about longarm quilting, and I congratulate you on winning awards and becoming so accomplished at it. I don’t see the value in debating the issue, however. We simply have a difference of opinion and we should respect our differences. I would love to see your quilting by the way! Send me a link!