Originally Posted by QuiltswithConvicts
Originally Posted by Lacelady
Nice haul Kathy - you still didn't mention the Avante - didn't you see one?
Oh, yea, DH & I played with it. I didn't do as well this time as I had done back in November. It's gone up another $1,000. They've gotten in some new accessories for it. I really liked the "Groovy Boards." They have the pattern engraved in these plastic 2' long boards. There is a stylus - optional - that fits into the grooves & you follow it like a pantograph, but the grooves keep it more in-line. Each piece is $45.00. The 12' table is in 3 parts, so you can have 4', 8' or 12' table. If you were to buy enough boards to fit the 12' - it would cost $270.00. Yikes! I was asking about the Sweet 16 since, right now, it doesn't have a stitch regulator, but the lady said there is a rumor that they are working on having it be available. The stitch regulator on the Avante is track driven - there are sensors that make note of the movement of the wheels on the track to know how fast you are stitching. The Bernina stitch regulator senses how fast the fabric is moving underneath it. I don't know if it would be an upgrade for existing Sweetie or not. I guess I'm going to hold out for a while to see if the rumor is true. I will work on getting better with my own FMQ.
Everybody - please keep our ladies on the eastern seaboard of the US in your thoughts & prayers. Terri is in the direct path for Irene. There is a small child missing righ now somewhere in North Carolina. Loads of damage, 358,000 without power, so far. They are predicting this going all the way up to New England. Hurricane Gloria went right over our home in 1989 in New Hampshire, but she was falling apart quickly. CAn't sustain the momentum over land - need the waters of the Atlantic (cold) to build up steam.
So sorry to hear about the child - what a dreadful worry for the parents, must have got out somehow.
Re Stitch regulator, Sweetie has speed control, in that you can dial a set speed, then put your foot flat on the floor, and it keeps to that speed. So I find stitches easy to manage, I just move the quilt at a regular speed, (well as much as I can, I suppose, but it works out quite well). I am not really a speed merchant, and I don't think I have been above 60% of her total speed since I got her. Obviously you can still slow down by lifting your foot a bit. Sorry the Avante had gone up, but then I wouldn't be up for standing up anyway, and now I have had Sweetie for a while, I am not sure I would want to be restricted to a line - however wide, across my quilt before I then rolled it on. I can start in the middle of my quilts and work out if I want to, and I can go all the way round the final borders, no problem - no remounting on Sweetie, so she definitely has advantages in some ways.
The groovy boards sound good though. Surely you don't need a whole row of them - can't you just move one along, or perhaps have two and leap frog them?