The Moxie Report Part 1

About 10 days ago a pallet arrived at Shangri la Farm with all of this!! Yes my Moxie has arrived! This is the new long arm quilting machine by Handi Quilter and I am lucky enough to have one of the first in the UK.  You can read all about the start of my Moxie journey in this post.

I am working with the UK distributers Pinhole Quilting to help with education and promotion in my role as a Moxie Mentor so this will be the first in a long series of posts where I hope to take you along with me on my long arm quilting journey.

The Moxie is self assembly and so I had ‘booked out’ my husband to help me set this up the day after it’s arrival. And as many of you will know, Jonathan is incredibly handy, so this did give me an advantage. However I’m sure I would have managed on my own but it would have taken a lot longer and there were a few stages where you definitely needed 2 people.

Overall I think it took us 4 hours to get it up and running.  A lot of that time is spent unwrapping and organising components, with the levelling of the frame taking the most time. This was the bit I was most grateful to have Jonathan (and his extra long spirit level!) for. Handi Quilter are using the app Bilt to help with self assembly, this is an excellent 3D programme that guides you through every step, and along with the manual booklet we had absolutely no problem understanding what was required.

You can go for either an 8 foot or a 10 foot Loft frame with the Moxie. I had measured the space in my old sewing room and I knew I had enough for the 10 foot frame so had ordered that one. However it’s hard to know until it’s set up exactly how much room you will actually need, as you also need to get around to the back of the frame, at least on one side.

My first impressions were ‘wow it’s really big!’, but after a bit of shuffling around I only had to move one small shelving unit out of the room.  I have now lost my basting space which was the floor of my old sewing room (my Schoolhouse is now my sewing room – see that first Moxie post) but I won’t need that anymore because all the basting is done on the frame!

I had booked my first Zoom training session with Liz at Pinhole Quilting for the day after set up so I wanted to get on and master the loading of the quilt straight away so I could make the most of the Zoom session.

This is probably the most daunting bit as I wasn’t really sure how it worked or what it was meant to look like and despite following along with the excellent Handi Quilter YouTube video I didn’t get it quite right.  Though I did manage threading up and bobbin insertion no problem and had actually started a little quilting on the practice sandwich provided ahead of the meeting with Liz.

Liz soon straightened me out with my pole error and also pointed out that I had been provided with cute stickers to go on the end of the poles to help me remember correctly in the future.

I spent about an hour and a half with Liz and we covered so much ground. You get so much stuff along with the machine that one of the best bits about the session was just holding stuff up and asking Liz what it was for! A lot of the accessories came as part of the Introductory offer which ends today, 31st January, so you just have a slight chance of taking advantage of this depending when you read this post!

I felt confident enough to start properly playing with the machine after the session and got Jonathan to record a video of me quilting which I shared on Instagram here.

I have had a lot of practice with FMQ on my domestic machine so the actual ‘drawing’ part of quilting is pretty easy for me now, however there are some adjustments to make with a long arm. Obviously the main bit is that now you are moving the ‘pen over the paper’ rather than moving the paper under the pen.  This does make it easier, especially for beginners, but there are different pressures required to get smooth curves (as the long arm needs more encouragement to curve than your hands) so it took a little while to adjust my muscle memory and for it to feel natural.

The other main difference is getting used to the space on the frame for quilting. When using a domestic machine you can go in any direction but here you have a set space you need to cover before rolling your quilt further on to the frame.  This will take a bit of getting used to and thinking about but the main advantage is that of speed. With domestic FMQ you spend SO MUCH time rearranging your quilt rather than actual quilting, time that you can now spend speeding along the ‘canvas’ of your frame.

Another advantage that I hadn’t anticipated is how much better qulting with a long arm is on my hands.  FMQ takes a big toll on my hands due to all that moving around of the heavy quilt.  That has all gone now and instead I am just holding handles in a relaxed manner. And I am standing up!  So much better than hours spent in a chair.

After a good practice session I thought I better just go for it with an actual quilt. I learnt a lot while loading up this Improv House quilt top, mainly that I need to try much harder next time!  It was definitely a good idea to start with a quilt destined for charity rather than going for the magazine commission I have lined up next!  I hadn’t realised how crucial it is to prepare your backing so that it is square and has nice straight edges, something I will get right next time.

Despite this I am delighted with the outcome! I chose one of my favourite quilting designs ‘interlocking rainbows’ as I wanted to make life easy for myself.  I also used the same thread that I had started with in my first pratice session. This was a gorgoeus variegated green thread that came with the machine (along with so many different spools to try!).

Liz actually advised not to start with a variegated but to use a very neutral shade instead, but as I was already using this one and the tension was fine I decided to stick with it.  The machine came loaded with a bobbin and with another bobbin full of a different thread. I used both of these in practice sessions and the tension was spot on with both from the outset (I’ve not needed to touch it at all).  I then used my fancy bobbin winder (which again came with the machine) to wind another of the thread spools that came the machine.  Again despite this being a different weight to those I’d used before and to the top thread it was absolutely perfect and stayed that way throughout the whole quilt!  I am emphasising this because tension was the one big worry I had with switching to a long arm as I have heard so many troubled tales about it .

The other big difference I noted with the finished the quilt is how perfectly flat it is, not a lump, bump or wrinkle anywhere! Rolling the quilt on these poles instead of basting on the floor gives such a professional finish, and that’s despite my rather cack handed first approach (it wasn’t even properly square!). And I only needed to change the large bobbins twice for the whoile quilt! So only 2 ends to thread in!

I think it took me about 3 hours to quilt this one, that includes time spent rolling the quilt on but not the initial set up which was about half an hour (though I am sure I will get quicker at this part).  The quilt is 57″ x 67″ so not huge, but I think that is pretty speedy for my first go.

A little info on the quilt top: this is made from class samples from my long running Improv House Quilt class along with some house orphan blocks. You can read a little more about it in this post. It’s destined for Siblings Together, there a lot of fun details in the fussy cut windows and doors that I hope a child will love.

So to sum up, I am really delighted with my initial experience of the Moxie. I have much still to learn and master, I haven’t even touched on the use of rulers or pantographs and quilting from the back.  These can all come later and be explored in future posts. I am happy to take baby steps and make steady progress.  I also can’t recommend enough the very helpful folks, Liz and Pete, who run Pinhole Quilting and offer so much care and attention to their customers.

And finally here is a photo of the fabulous stash of Glide thread that comes along with the machine IF you sign up using my Moxie Mentor code!  This is a very special offer only available with my code.  Simply head to the website and sign up here for more info and insert code JA101 when requested. If you go on to order a machine you will be sent all this beautiful thread worth £100!

I’ll be back with another Moxie report soon…