This is my new pride and joy....a long arm quilting machine and frame! I'm sure most of you have no idea what this is but for a quilter it is the height of luxury.
After piecing together a quilt top if you want to machine quilt it (and believe me I am not that interested in hand quilting) your choice is to roll the quilt and run it through your sewing machine. The roll has to fit between the throat of the machine and the needle which allows for pretty much only straight lines. If you are really good you can do a stipple pattern which is a freehand sewing technique that requires you to turn the quilt in all directions to get the stitching in all the areas you want to quilt. As you can imagine this can be pretty tricky with a big quilt top and it makes it difficult to keep the batting and backing material from puckering.
So the logical step was to investigate how to make the process easier. The answer seemed to be a longer arm machine that would allow for more material to fit between the needle and throat and then it made sense to put it all on a frame that would hold the fabric taut and instead of moving the quilt you would move the machine.
After looking at a lot of the options out there (and boy are they expensive!) I came across a guy in Nevada that buys old sewing machines and cuts them apart and extends the throat. Mine is 15 inches which will allow for about 12 inches of pattern area. It's a pretty crude machine that will only straight stitch but I got it at a fraction of the cost of a similar new machine. I also dragged Ron around to some quilt shops and made him look at a lot of frames online to convince him that he could build me one a lot cheaper. As usual he accepted the challenge and the picture shows the results. We still have a few kinks to work out and mostly that involves practice on my part but I am very pleased with the whole thing. The sewing machine moves on guides the length of the frame and also on rails that allow it to go front and back so you can stitch in all directions. All you have to do is start the machine up, grab the handles and go to town. Sounds easy, right? Well sort of. If you want to just do a random pattern (remember stippling?) it's not too bad but if you would like to make a definite shape, like a circle or square, then that takes some talent. Think of trying to make a circle or a straight diagonal line on a etch-a-sketch, not very easy to do, right? So while I get good Ron also made me a board that I can attach templates to so I can use the handy stylus that he installed to just trace around the pattern and, voila, a perfect shape.
Well, that is probably more than you wanted to know about quilting machines but believe me I am the envy of the quilt club. Unfortunately other "house" projects have taken a back seat while all this was going on but, hey, you have to have your priorities!!
