My friend Barb Magill is a longarm quilter and invited me over to her quilting studio to give me a lesson on how to use a longarm quilting machine. I've tried using one of these behemoths several years ago and, frankly, it frightened me. The machine is huge and stitches very quickly.
Since that first try, I've spent several hours on my home machine quilting and feel confident in my abilities moving the fabric under the needle. When using the longarm, the fabric is rolled taut and it's the machine that you move. For something so large, it's amazing how easily it moves. I had to remind myself not to hold the handles in a death grip. With the stitch regulator, I was able, after practicing for an hour, to get comfortable enough to know that, if I needed to, I could do a fairly decent job doing larger scale stippling, looops, daisies and other curvy motifs.
I liked using the machine more than I thought I would. Still, I don't really have the space for it and for now, I'm going to stick to my Bernina (with it's stitch regulator) and work on quilts that are not king sized.
Since that first try, I've spent several hours on my home machine quilting and feel confident in my abilities moving the fabric under the needle. When using the longarm, the fabric is rolled taut and it's the machine that you move. For something so large, it's amazing how easily it moves. I had to remind myself not to hold the handles in a death grip. With the stitch regulator, I was able, after practicing for an hour, to get comfortable enough to know that, if I needed to, I could do a fairly decent job doing larger scale stippling, looops, daisies and other curvy motifs.
I liked using the machine more than I thought I would. Still, I don't really have the space for it and for now, I'm going to stick to my Bernina (with it's stitch regulator) and work on quilts that are not king sized.
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