Oh Sorry about your MS, hope it passes soon Nik!!

As and when you are well enough to get practising, I would love to follow your progress, you look as if you have a very talented Hubby there too, it looks very proffessional please tell him :wink: :D

The holes I drilled in my end pieces are JUST the same size as my dowels, and they fit rather tight in the holes.

My original idea was to drill guide holes for long screws, attatched to knobs like you would have on a drawer or something, but I couldn't find any knobs with screws long enough to go through the thickness of my end piece and far enough into the poles to stay put, plus, eventually with the screwing and unscrewing it would wreck the wood in the pole.
With the dowels, I'm thinking of drilling tiny holes through the ends that stick out past my end piece, and put a small rigid wire through all three ends to keep the tension. Like the thickness and rigidity of a metal coat hanger.

I like the price of the one mentioned from allbrands, but I dont understand how to adapt it so I can put bigger quilts on the frame... maybe I'm having a blonde moment and it's just not clicking in my head, lol, maybe someone else can fill me in?

the flynn frame comes with rails that can take a quilt 48 inches.

if you wish to quilt a top large than that you would buy electrical conduit at the home improvement store and cut that down to whatever size you need for the large quilt. you would attach muslin leader strips.

you attach the end caps that came with the flynn onto the ends of the cut down electrical conduit and you're good to go.

I see, ok, that sounds interesting.

Klue

Does the Flynn frame work well for you? Do you find any drawbacks
to using it with your home machine? Sewlady

the only limitation i have is not with the frame but with my sewing machine.

the throat on my sewing machine is about 6.5 inches - i would prefer to have a 9 inch throat machine.

i use the flynn to quilt my "all over" or "background" designs and i'm able to use needle down and advance the quilt to the next section. so its not as limiting as you'd think.

then i take the quilt off the flynn frame and do the more complex designs that don't work well on the flynn - like a 12 inch feathered wreath for example.

i haven't mastered how to do a large feather on the flynn with the small throat that i have - its just easy to do it free motion on my extension table.

i'm extremely happy with the purchase.

but my fabric doesn't slide up and down on the pvc pipes very well

I don't know what you mean by this but on my frame the take-up pole (with fabric rolled as quilted) has to be up off the machine bed. It really drags if it isn't....doesn't look like your frame can be adjusted up and down. Am I looking at the right thing?

After researching for months, I decided I wanted a frame that was stationary and the sewing machine did all the moving around. I know myself well enuf to know that a Flynn-type of frame would have driven me batty (or battier!) I finally found plans on the internet to build a quilt frame at http://buildaquiltframe.com/default.aspx. I'm lucky that my DH is handy because he built it for me last fall. Two weeks ago, we put a Janome 1600P with a 9-inch throat space on it. I am in heaven! It works beautifully. Now I have to learn how to use it! I have photos posted on www.hulahoop1.blogspot.com.

You can't see it very well in the pics, but the pvc pipes are a little higher than my machine, so the rods supporting the quilt are up off the bed of the machine.