201 on a frame?
 

I'm wondering if anyone out there has tried putting a 201 on a quilt frame (like a Grace frame, or the like), and if so, what sized quilts have you done with it (was the harp big enough for a king?), are you happy with it, etc. :)

And, if anyone *does* have one on a frame - I'd love you forever if you'd share a pic! :D

Thanks in advance!

My sister likes the machines that open in the front side because it is easier to change out the bobbin.

What I think would be great for quilting would be a two spool stretch. Wouldn't have to change the bobbin as often then.

Joe

I think you would like a 15-90, or a 15-91 on a frame better. The harp size is similar. There's a reason that all of the LA, MA and SA systems that I've ever seen have a vertical bobbin. The quilt being on top of the bobbin's slide plate would be inconvenient to change and disruptive to the quilt.

As for a king, I think you'd find it incredibly tight. The take up bar will grow in size very quickly as you roll the quilt. By the time you rolled to the end, it would likely be about 3ish" per row. Size your pattern accordingly.

You can turn the quilt to "regain" some space for the last half, but your design still has to be very carefully chosen.

miriam, thanks for that! totally makes sense.

J Miller, thanks for your reply. To be honest I'd never heard of a two-spool machine, I had to look it up. *blushes*. Thank you for the suggestion! I have to do some more research into it.

ArchaicArcane thank you for that! I thought my pattern would have to be small, but never thought that small. Hmm. And the bobbin orientation makes sense.

Blargh. I was really hoping that using a 201 would be doable. I don't really want to have to buy another machine. I have a 66-16 but want the harp space for a king. :(

I really appreciate all of your responses. You guys are great.

The 66 also has the horizontal bobbin. ;) I was estimating the size of the pattern. I know on the Juki 9" (it's actually about 8.5") it shrinks very fast. You could probably calculate it something like this:

smallest harp dimension - (diameter of bar +( (width of sandwich x 2(number of layers per roll)) x number of rolls to traverse the length of the quilt to the last advance)) = largest space in which to put a design.

That's not exactly right - the number of rolls per advance will change somewhat because the bar will be getting fuller...but it would give you an idea...

If you plan your designs in such a way that you can split it top to bottom, you can make a larger design.

For instance if you draw the spine of a feather close to the bottom of the space you can quilt in, you can quilt the top of the feather in one pass, then the bottom of the feather in the second pass. I managed to quilt a 14" feather this way when testing. Where it gets to be less fun is in on side border designs for instance where you advance once per feather frond.

I have seen people turn out beautiful work on the smaller throated machines. I'm not that good. I opted for a larger throat.

I've got the 2 spooler but now need to find spools for it. no wooden spools left in my stash.

Might be worth trying to rewind empty ones. You could ask on the board, I know some people throw them out.
If you rewind, you can use the thread of your choice. I did up a post about how to rewind them a while back. It's on my site and also somewhere here on the QB.

I saw a 201 on a frame for sale on CL a while ago. Because I thought to myself "I didn't know they used those". Don't know how it worked for the person, or if it didn't and that was why they were selling it.

I don't think there's any reason it wouldn't work. I think there are better machines for it that would be more convenient to use. The benefit of grabbing the frame with the 201 on it would be 1. getting the frame. 2. getting a heck of a good machine. If down the road, the two were separated, it's no loss at all.