Thank you everyone for your kind and generous comments and feedback. I've found the transition to the longarm has been quite an eye opener in both quilting approach and moving the machine to do what I want to do. When I finally made the decision to put a deposit down (over the phone) on one, I began to freak out and wonder what the heck I was thinking!!! I called the dealer, about 8 hours away and shared my nervousness about it. He invited me to come and play on one of their machines in their shop (they rent out longarm time) for a day. So I took a quilt sandwich (about 36" square top) in of solid fabric, which I pre marked with some areas and borders to see what I could do with it. They showed me how to load it, what the buttons were for on the machine and where the prewound bobbins were and left me to it. I spent the day filling up my sandwich, trying designs forward, backward and up and down. It was a very humbling experience, but it gave me hope that maybe I could do this. Until then I had not even tried the machine I was buying and had only a few 30 second tries on long arms set up at a few quilt shows I've been to over the last few years. I have to say that the quilting I've done on my HQ Sweet Sixteen Sitdown machine and what I learned in the process have really helped me get up and running on the Longarm. You all have been so encouraging. Thanks again for taking a moment to comment.
Kathy