Originally Posted by
BoJangles
Well that does sound smart!
My Grand Quilter has never given me a lick of trouble with the tension or anything else. I have always used King Tut quilting thread top and bottom, but I don't think it would care what I used - a very dependable machine! I can certainly see why you had a problem, though! I can't even imagine trying to quilt a large quilt with a 9" harp space when the machine is sitting on a frame and you are rolling the quilt! I have only used mine on the table with me pushing and tugging and positioning the fabric, which is really pretty easy because you don't have a big roll in the way!
Even the HQ16 is too small at times. I can do up to a 108" quilt on that frame and any length, but the larger the quilt the smaller your quilting space becomes! If I had it to do over again, I'd get at least an 18" head!
Nancy
I have a BabyLock Quilters Choice Pro with a 9" throat, on a 10' quilting frame, and I quilt up to 100x100 quilts with it. I do find that I have to keep my motifs at about 5" on the larger quilts, otherwise I run out of space when I get to the last few rows. If I am just doing FMQ or smaller than 5" pantograph motifs on larger quilts, or am quilting smaller quilts, it works fine. I bought it second hand a few years ago, and I am perfectly happy with it. I rarely have a problem with thread, tension or anything, except for Operator Error, which happens when I am too tired!! :-)