Quilting in the Dark with Dusty Farrell

Dusty Farrell shows us something completely new to our Quilt Out Loud show. He shows us a unique tutorial on quilting in the dark by turning off the lights, and using glow in the dark threads with background music. In this video he shares his unique “Good Feathers Gone Bad” technique by twisting, turning, and overlapping feathers. He’s adding texture and flow to the quilt. He first stitches a spine for the feathers to follow and then adds traditional feathers with a flair. He uses the Handi Quilter HQ24 Fusion longarm quilting machine because this model has a built in black light. Dusty is a fast quilter and has been known to make a queen size bed quilt in 30-40 minutes.

Short Takes on Longarm Quilting with Vicki Hoth
Vicki shows Jodie ways to play with thick threads, like those made by YLI, which can add so much to a quilt but can’t be threaded through the machine needle. One method is couching the thread down with either a matching or blending thread in the machine. Another method is to wind the thread on the bobbin and stitch the quilt on the back side. To do this successfully the entire quilt is stitched from the front side. It is then removed from the sewing machine, turned over, and stitched from the back side with the bobbin thread appearing on the right side. This way you have an outline of where you want these thick threads to be stitched.

Vicki also shows a neat trick for easily burying the thick thread ends.