Interesting... a place that "stretches" your machine to an 18" throat
 

In browsing through a new quilting magazine, I saw this ad for a place that "stretches" your machine to an 18" throat. I have the Brother 1500s and love it. Would love it even more if it had an 18" throat. :)

In my opinion, the price is a bit steep ($2,000) + $75.00 shipping back to you. Here is the website:

http://www.wowquilts.com/index.htm

Have you heard of this? Has anyone had this done?

I might would consider it IF the price was reduced down to $1,000.

Lots of people do this and love the results. There have been some recent posts about it on the homequiltingsystems group at groups.yahoo.com , though, with two people posting they were dissatisfied with the results.

What were they dissatisfied with? I was going to get my Juki stretched when my taxes came in. I've only heard good things about it but would be interested in the cons before I spent my precious money...

Yep, I own a Wow machine. It's a Singer 201, stretched to 18".

the owner used to just stretch his WOW machines. in the last few years, he's expanded to other machines... brother and juki, maybe more. i've only heard of one person not happy with the results, but i don't remember why that was. as previously suggested, try the yahoo group for the specifics.

Very very interesting. I'd never heard of this before!

I use to own a Wow machine and liked it very much. I have since upgraded to a Gammill. I had a couple of problems (I thought) and Rick was very responsive in helping me solve them. They were actually all user errors because I was relatively new to quilting. I would recommend them without any problems. Actually the price seems reasonable to me considering how much it costs to purchase a machine with an 18" throat.

How exactly do they stretch a machine? I saw the pictures, so do they replace the throat part?

Personally, rather than having a machine stretched, I would go with a Bailey machine, that way I have a machine for both and the price is very reasonable compared to a "real" longarm machine. They also have a good reputation and great service from everything that I've read and heard about. When I have the money and the space, this will be the machine I'll get.

I would do this as well and use the 1500 for piecing