Originally Posted by Barb in Louisiana
I was in my LQS recently & the lady who owned the shop told me that Long Arms are intended to work from left to right. She said that the stitch would be different on the back of the quilt, if you went back...from right to left as with a pantograph. Is this something any of you with long arms have experienced? I would have thought you could go any direction with no difference in the stitching. We were discussing a Tin Lizzie. Maybe the Tin Lizzie likes to got from Left to right???
Wow, I have an Innova 18" and I go all directions. I don't do pantos, just hand-guided free-motion quilting. I don't notice any difference in the feel of my machine or the quality of my stitches, no matter which direction I'm going. I do know that the needle is bent in different directions, pulling it away or towards the hook, but in a quality quilting machine, it does not make a difference in your stitches. That is the big difference between a machine built for quilting and a machine built for sewing - on the quilting machine it it expected that the machine will go in all different directions and still produce a good stitch. A sewing machine is not made to be stitching in all directions and that is why it is so much more difficult to have good stitch quality when quilting using a DSM.