Originally Posted by Hockeyrabbit
Hi-
I have a baby lock quilters pro choice straight stitch sewing machine..very similar to the Juki machine. I am wanting to buy a frame so that I can machine quilt at home. I do have some questions first though.
1- is there such a thing for my type of machine?
2- how do you actually "sew" on the machine if its hooked up to the frame and there is a quilt on it?? I don't have the option of hands free sewing as this machine only works with a foot petal..so how do I "quilt" on the frame with the machine if I am standing up?
I am confused and new to this..thanks!
1. Any one of the home quilting frames will work with your machine.
2. Your machine doesn't hook up to the frame. It just sits on a little trolley (carriage is the official term). Some of the carriages have a trigger piece on them that pushes down on your foot pedal while you are moving the carriage around. You squeeze it to make it work. There used to be a really good picture on the Grace Co. website showing their gizmo. For a PC Quilter, we buy a puck that has a dial on it that you set for how fast and a button that tells the machine to sew. Hand controls use the same technology only it's a little box mounted on your handgrips instead of a puck. I actually taped my foot control to the handles of my first carriage/frame and I could regulate my own speed going around curves. It worked very well for me. Other people sit the foot pedal on the floor to operate like normal and just keep kicking it along. I much preferred taping it onto the handle. On some machines, you can just set the speed on whatever you want and then press the "go" button on the machine but that is the speed you have to quilt at--no slowing down in the curves or points. That doesn't work very well for newbies or even oldbies if they are trying to do detail work so I don't recommend even trying to do it that way unless you go buy another device called a stitch length regulator and they aren't cheap. I think they start at $500 and are machine & sometimes even frame specific so you can't buy a used Juki or Janome one and put it on your Babylock--unless your Babylock is really a Janome clone. I can't remember if that was one of the clones for the 1600p or not.
Check out craigslist for your area and look for HandiQuilter, Grace, Hinterberg, Superquilter, New Joy, Inspira, etc frames. Search those up on the web first so you won't be buying such a pig-in-a-poke. Some of them have been around a long time and the originals went through many upgrades to make them more usable--particularly Grace & HandiQuilter had issues with stability, bowing of the poles, and hard to steer carriages in the early years.
Join the Home Quilting Systems &/or Machine Quilters yahoo groups and look back through their message archives.
How much space do you have to setup a frame? How much can you afford to spend? Will you want to put a larger machine on it later or upgrade to a completely new system? Can it stay up all the time or are you going to have to take it down often? What is the largest size quilt you will need to be able to load on it? Have you got a good sturdy table or base to set it on or do you need a free-standing model?
The answers to the above questions will narrow your choices down but definitely keep an eye on craigslist and the yahoo groups for a bargain on a used frame. Even ebay is a possibility if you know what you're looking for. I got a super deal on a ProFlex frame with a Voyager 17SLR machine on ebay so I know it can be done. In my deal of the decade, the seller did not do a very good job of describing the setup but I was in the right place at the right time & knew what it was. I saw a HandiQuilter 16 machine go for $2000 a few years ago when they were still new. Easily worth $5000 at the time.