June 2, 2025    (don’t read this if you hate inane details 😉

    I was just working on a quilt using quilt motion (QCT6 Pro) and a pantograph pattern design that I’ve used several times before.  Lynn came in and was asking me about the design and I told him all the changes I did to the design before using on this particular quilt. He asked me why I did all the tweaks, and I told him I looked at my past notes for the design so that I could avoid mistakes that I’d had earlier when using it.  (Like shrinking the design down to 3″ instead of 6″, having a vertical spacing of .5, changing the stitch length to 12 SPI (Stitches Per Inch) instead of my usual 10 SPI, and changing the quilting speed to medium instead of fast.  He wondered how I knew all that, and I told him I looked in my quilting notes – duh!  Well, who knew that everyone doesn’t keep notes about every quilt?

    I started making yearly quilting notes back in 1999, when I was really doing professional quilting for clients.  I found that if any quilt shop was teaching a class, and I happened to quilt the class sample for them, then people taking that class tended to want me to also quilt their quilt exactly the same as the class sample.  Well, picture people finishing a quilt top, which might take months and months (often years), and I would be quilting so many other quilts in the meantime that I had no memory of that quilt – what it looked like, or how I quilted it.  There were times that I’d get ten quilts exactly the same and everyone would want them quilted exactly the same.  So I started making notes about every quilt.  That’s a lot of notes when you get into the hundreds (and in my case, over 4100 quilts so far.)

    I make a new note in my word file for each year and label it ‘Quilting Notes 2025′, then start #1, date, client name, name of quilt, and size of quilt.  Then below this first line, I list memorable things about this quilt.  For example if was totally square of if I had to make adjustments.  If the borders are really flared, then I make a note to give the customer the printed tutorial about how to make your quilts square, especially when attaching the borders.  I put the colors of thread I used on this quilt (this is very important if you end up quilting multiple quilts that are using the same fabrics – this saves sooooo much guesswork in the next quilt.)  I’d put what batting I used in the quilt, and if I supplied the batting or if the customer sent their own choice.  And then I list how I quilted it.  For years and years, I only did custom quilting, so every single block was different, so I detailed how I quilted each block.  If I ever did a pantograph design, I listed the design.  Once I started having computerized designs, I would put the name of the design and the size I used.  Then I’d comment to myself if I liked the end result or if I’d change it in some way if I ever quilted this again.  At the end, I put what I charged the customer, and then what date they paid me and how I got paid (check, cash, Venmo, Credit Card, etc.)  It’s all in the details.

    So – here’s my hint.

1.  TAKE PICTURES of EVERY quilt!!!!  Take a good overall and several closeups of different blocks.  Take a picture of the quilt back.  Make a folder in your pictures called MY QUILTS, or Quilts I quilted.  Something like that so you can find the pictures quickly when needed.

2.  Document what you did on every quilt, making a file on your computer or in a simple notebook that you keep by your quilting machine.  This simple step may save you so much time in the future. For example you can document a new design you used and if you should never use it again, of if you’d like it larger so it won’t be so dense next time, or if the design took forever to stitch out, or if you had problems with it.  Or if you used a new thread and loved the way it worked so you can order more, or if you wanted to throw it in the trash.

I hope this helps at least one person for the future!  I would have loved to have someone tell me this when I first started quilting. As I was quilting professionally, the more time I could save in the future meant the more quilts I could quilt and the more money I could make. (or truthfully, the more time it left me for sewing my own things.)

Happy Quilting!
Kathy