find someone new
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Heartwarming quilts
Quilting and custom quilts

Since she has not offered to repair the problems etc, find someone else and let her know that you will not be bringing anything else to her and will advise your friends not to.

Insist on her doing it right or give you your money back. She is more than likely counting on you to say nothing and that is not right. You will be doing yourself and many others a huge favor.

I know lots of LAers have HUGE backlogs....

BUT that does seem excessive. Since they are friends, if *I* were your friend, I would ask for a date for when the LAer was going to be able to get them done. If it's still too far out, I would ask for my tops back so that I could get them done. Obviously, the LAer friend doesn't need the business, but your friend needs her quilts finished.

Done nicely, your friend will have her quilts done one way or another and they can still be friends.

Scheduling of quilts and how to handle our backlogs has been subject of discussion on the LA sites. It's not always as easy as you'd think. 10 baby quilts with all-over designs is not the same as 10 king size quilts with different designs in each block, plus the sashings and the borders (also known as 'Custom Quilting').

Here's how I handle my backlog: When a customer wants to schedule a quilt, I let them know when my first opening is. They can choose that month or beyond. I don't want the quilt into the studio until about two weeks before the beginning of that month. If I happened to have 10 baby quilts in February and get done early, I will start in on the March quilts early, so that if one or two of the March quilts are Custom I will still have plenty of time to get everyone finished. The order of the monthly quilting is determined on when the quilts arrive in my studio.

Those runners are done very nicely and I can understand your reasons for doing it that way. A bed quilt, on the other hand, I feel if done with those kind of real close stitching, would not seem to be a cuddly and pleasant to touch bed quilt which I think most folks would prefer in a bed quilt. That is only my opinion as I have seen some beautiful la quilting but I do prefer a minimum of work done on it regardless. Your work is precise and you obviously have the skill necessary to pull this off and your customers are fortunate to have you do this work for them. Thank you.

Can you go back to her and ask her to redo them? If she can't, ask for your money back so you can have them redone by someone else.

Your quilter has absolutely no excuse, don't use her again.

Tension problems can be a real problem for quilters, the fabric color your quilting, the type of thread your using, and of course the top and bottom tension settings themselves.

I have a handout on tension that we use to give to our longarm customers, we siold Kenquilt LA machines, that I would be willing to post if it would help.

I don't have the means to convert it to a PDF, its in Word 2008, and I have been told that that is the perferable doc type to post on this forum. So if acceptable to the forum, just email me privately, and I'll send it to you.

Lanny

As a longarm quilter, I check within the first 6-12" of stiching to make sure things are right on both front and back of a quilt. Also, as you roll you will see if you have problems. I would never return a quilt in that condition. I also know what thread I will use on my machine and tell my customer to either purchase that brand or I will furnish it for a charge.

I have a longarm but do not quilt for the public. I would ask her what type of thread she uses, what type of batting-did she supply it or did you? And what did she use for the backing. All of the above can affect tension. See if she responds to any of these questions. LOL

I'm a longarm quilter, and I would never return a quilt to a customer that had poor tension. I always check it carefully, and if there were any problems, I would rip out and re-do those areas.

There are plenty of LA quilters who DO care about quality and making your quilt look the best it can - find one of them instead of someone who doesn't care!