Originally Posted by
dgreen
Does anyone else feel this way? I am a perfectionist and am so inspired by the art of quilting; however, my struggle is with the actual quilting part. After working so hard to piece a quilt together, it feels like such a letdown to stitch in the ditch on my little sewing machine. I have tried machine quilting on my home machine, but it is very limiting, and just can't look as good as I aspire it to look. Does anyone else feel like "what's the point of quilting if I don't have a longarm?", and what area do you focus on to substitute for the fancy quilting done on these machines. I don't mean to sound like a whiner, I just need another way to think about this. Maybe i should focus on hand-quilting....
I dont have a long arm, don't plan to get one, I do make quilts and enjoy it. It takes a little more ingenuity to quilt on a home sewing machine, I use a blend of several methods out there for quilting as I go, not a block at a time. I find I can easily manage about 30 to 40 inches of width when freemotion quilting with no problem, so I plan my quilts to break at these places and use a little more batting and backing than if I were doing it all at oncel It seems that vertical strips work best for me so I study and if need be modify the directions for the quilt. I have made King size quilts up to 116 inches square (thick mattresses) with no problems.
Pat