First Long Arm Quilt

Last week I took a long arm class at The Heart of Quilting in Des Moines.  It was a four hour class and I learned how to thread, load, free motion quilt, use a panogram, start and stop, unload and clean the machine.  It was soooo fun.  I was awful at the panogram (where you trace a pattern with a laser light and it sews it on the quilt) but pretty good at the free motion quilting.  The lady who was teaching me said that the more you have practiced FMQ on your home machine the easier it comes on a long arm. 

Yesterday I took my friend Rachel's quilt into the shop to quilt.  It took 1 hour and 20 minutes to set up!  Augh.  There weren't any real problems, it just took awhile.  And then I got to quilting.

Rachel had taken a look at my practice "quilt" from the class and said she wanted loopies all over the dark area but not on the white areas.  The great thing about quilting in a like color thread is that it is hard to see any mistakes, but it is also hard to see your thread so I ended up having some areas where I ran back into my own quilting and one small area that got forgotten.

Here is the whole quilt.  Isn't it pretty?  She used the 10 minute block from this You Tube video.  

Have you ever been so proud of something, yet so uggh! about the mistakes?  It is a weird feeling.  I am totally proud of quilting this King sized beauty, but disappointed in the number of mistakes I made.  Crazy perfectionist.  :)  I have a whole list of large quilts that I want to long arm quilt next year.  I can't wait!