Hi Monique,
I spent the last couple of years trying every sit ddown quilter At the quilt shows and sewing expos. I liked all of the ones I tried. i did not try the Qnique so can’t comment on that one. i like both the George and the HQ Sweet Sixteen. The George is very smooth and has great visibility, the ones I tried were oriented so you quilted from the side like with a domestic machine. The HQ Sweet Sixteen is oriented so you quilt from the front. The George has multiple points that need to be oiled while the Sweet Sixteen just needs to have the hook oiled whenever you change the bobbin. i think you get the option of either an L or M sized bobbin with the George. The Sweet Sixteen comes with the M bobbin.
in general I thought all the sit downs were fun to work on, and I brought some challenging sandwiches and threads to try on all of them. I think I would have been happy with just about any of the sit downs as they all seemed quite capable of handling anything I threw at them. I
I ended up buying a used Sweet Sixteen since Even at show prices all the machines were way out of my budget. I’ve had it for 2months and am very happy with it. Mine came with a fantastic manual; the table extensions; table overlay; extra bobbin case, tons of bobbins, a gzillion needles, bobbin winder; the couching feet; the echo feet; the glide foot. The previous owner had also upgraded the tension system to the electronic one- which I don’t really pay any attention to as I do a tension check with every quilt and every time I change threads or change the bobbin, but I suppose would be handy for someone who likes to keep notes on exactly what settings worked for various thread combinations- if it hadn’t come with the machine it’s not something I would bother paying extra for. I did buy a new sure foot ruler foot from HQ because the ruler foot that comes standard with it is a little thinner than I like.
So far I’ve put a little over 400,000 stitches on it. I’ve quilted a baby quilt using rulers; several large art quilts that use multiple layers of batting and have a lot of micro quilting using 100wt thread; couched yarn onto two different art quilts using the couching feet, etc. All the feet come with handy little instruction sheets on how to get them properly adjusted and how to use them. Between the instruction sheets that come with the feet sets, the owner’s manual and all the youtube videos that Handiquilter has online, I haven’t run into anything that was difficult to figure out- basically it’s a very user friendly machine.
Rob