Hey Watson, the Tiara quilters are essentially the Sweet Sixteen machines made by Handiquilter and rebadged by Babylock. If you can’t find info on the Tiara 1 check when it was made and then look at Sweet Sixteens of the same age to get an idea of specs.
The ones I tried were identical to the Sweet Sixteen. The older Handiquilters and probably the Tiara 1 had a foot that was cumbersome to swap out. You can get an upgrade kit that makes changing the feet easy, and if you want to use any of the specialty feet, like the couching foot, thicker ruler foot, echo feet, etc. you will need to install the upgrade.The original owner of my machine had the upgraded foot system installed which I find very useful. I can fairly quickly switch from thick ruler foot to open toe foot, to couching feet etc. whenever I want to. I assume that you can also get the Tiara 1 foot system upgraded if the original owner hasn’t done so. I think it was $100 US for the HQ upgrade kit (maybe a little more).
The original Tiara sat a little higher in the table than the later models do which meant that you had to add an overlay for rule work to prevent your ruler from being a little tippy. The older Sweet Sixteens also had this problemas well. Mine came with the overlay but I still needed to put a small shim under the overlay on one side to make sure my rulers were perfectly flat when doing ruler work
the later models of Sweet Sixteen and probably the Tiara 3 (maybe 2) now have a digital readout on the screen for the top tension, on the Handiquilters there is an add on for older models that upgrades the tension. It sits above the screen. i would imagine there is a similar upgrade for the Tiara 1 (or it may be able to use the HQ add on). The newer Sweet Sixteens also have a basting feature that is not on the older ones- mine doesnkt have this feature and I”m not sure what the advantage would be since it I donkt see how it would completely take the place of spray or pin basting a larger quilt.
I think the newer HQ also have a timer that you can set to tell you how long youkve been quilting, or perhaps to remind you to stop at a certain time+ mine doesn’t have that, but if I needed to I’d use the timer on my smart phone.
thatks all the upgrades I can think of off the top of my head. If you can’t get the info from BAbylock give Handiquilter a call, they can probably tell you how the Tiara 1differed from the later models.
Rob