Old Dog, New Trick

Yesterday I tackled a new skill. I learned to use this long arm quilting machine. It is a Gammill machine with a Statler Stitcher and costs about $30,000. I'm not going to buy one anytime in the near (or distant) future. However, I can rent it for $20 an hour and it took me two hours to quilt the top below. If I had paid someone else to quilt it, I would have paid about 2 cents a square inch (the quilt below measures 74 by 68 and would have cost $100). Other alternatives include quilting by hand or on my home machine for no cash outlay, but lots of time and effort.
BTW, I'm in the process of making a quilt just like the one on the right in the background of this picture.

This is the finished product and if you click on the photo, you can see an enlarged image and see the quilting stitches.

Or maybe you can make them out on the back.

I intended this quilt to be a birthday gift for Ben (d0n't tell) because I want each of us to have a quilt we can wrap up in when we sit around the living room reading or watching TV. Only trouble is, Logan loves the quilt and keeps asking me if he can't have it to cuddle in, while Ben has shown very little interest in it (or any of the others I make).