Multi Item Long Arm Quilting

Have you ever tried to quilt multiple things at once? The idea intrigued me. Usually the idea pops into my head after I have already loaded one item onto my Long-arm machine.  One of those, 'I should have" moments.   This year when I decided to make 6 stockings it became the perfect situation to try it out.

I pieced together all 6 stocking fronts and used fat quarters for the backing.  I used a large sheet of muslin for the lining.

I loaded the muslin as I would the backing.  Then pinned each of the 6 stocking fronts to to the Long-arm machine leaders.  The biggest difference from quilting a larger quilt was the pinning.  I had to be very careful to pin down all the edges of each stocking carefully.  Each stocking front and back had to be basted down around all edges.  It was very easy to catch the foot of the machine on the raw edge of the pieced tops.

Once the stocking tops were loaded I moved on to the back.  I quilted a different pattern on each stocking front but on the backs I just quilted a simple meander pattern.

Once each pieced was quilted.  I simply cut the stockings out using my own pattern. I think this was a wonderful way to quickly machine quilt all the stockings at once.