Prism99

I don't have one, but wanted to buy one at the last quilt show I attended. You need just 2 dowels; one for the top, and one for the bottom. You roll your quilt on the dowels so that you are working on just one section of the quilt.

I would probably make "leaders" for the dowels. Basically you thumb tack a doubled piece of heavy-duty fabric along a dowel, leaving a flap of fabric sticking out (maybe 6 inches). To attach your quilt to a dowel, you just pin the quilt to that flap of fabric.

Once you have the quilt pinned to the leaders on the dowels, you can roll your quilt to a manageable size. The dowels simply sit on top of the curved metal arms. One dowel will be near the back of the harp of your sewing machine; the other dowel will be forward of your machine. The quilt in-between will then be at the correct height for FMQ.

I think the only time you would not need the dowels is if you use the machine in the typical FMQ way -- moving the quilt rather than the machine. If you want to FMQ by moving the machine, I'm thinking you need at least one dowel to roll the quilt up under the arm of the machine, and I think you'd also need the second dowel to keep the quilt at the right surface height so that you can move the machine around easily. If the quilt were to drape around the machine.

I had the opportunity to sit down and try out the setup at the quilt show. Loved it! But, it wasn't in the cards for me. Maybe someday......

Edit: Ah, yes. After reading BK's post, I can see that with a smaller quilt you could simply roll up the sides without dowels and place the rolls in the holders.