Do you send your quilts out?
 

I have never quilted my own quilts. I use long arm quilters to do the quilting. They do such a nice job...so much better than I ever could. And sometimes I have them do a custom job on my quilts, even though it costs much more. Do any of you send your quilts out to be quilted? There seems to be a lot of LAQs that do it for a living.

I send out quilts that are too big for me to quilt myself on my machine. I and to up to twins, and even double but once they get to be queen size, that is more than I can handle quilting myself. Good thing I don't make too many quilts that big! It is expensive sending them out to be quilted!

I am a LA'r but before I got my Gammill, I did my own quilting on a Singer Athena 2010 and on a Bernina 1008. They are both workhorses, and I'm sure, made quilting a lot easier than it could have been. Needless to say, I LOVE my LA! But I did do up to regular King-sized quilts on those two machines with no problems.

Til now I have sent all my full size quilts to a LAQ or handquilter.

Gradually I am learning machine quilting on my DSM, working my way up from smaller pieces to bigger sizes. The largest so far has been a baby quilt. I have no interest in owning my own LAQ, or doing handquilting for a full sized quilt. So the big ones, I'll probably still send out.

JCrow ... perhaps you'd enjoy the LAQ yourself, and your DH would buy one for you? It'd save the costs of paying someone else, plus you'd be able to be part of the process through to the end.

When I first started quilting, I sent my tops to a LAQ. Then funds got a little tight and I had to learn how to FMQ on my machine. I now FMQ the smaller quilts that I do and send out the Bed Size quilts. I have not made a Twin size quilt before, so am not sure if I would send that out or not. Depends on the quilting I would want done on it I guess. I have quilted large lap size on my machine without problems. In fact, that is how I learned to FMQ was on large lap size quilts. I started with a meandering stitch and got that down real well. I am now working on other quilting designs and find it very enjoyable and relaxing to do.

I've never sent a quilt out. they're mine from start to finish, well, until I give them away.

I used to send mine out, but now I mostly make smaller quilts and do them myself by hand or machine. When I do make a larger one than I can handle these days, I barter services with my longarmer and no cash changes hand.

As I understand it, you bought the Bernina quilting frame when you bought your 830 a year or two ago and haven't even taken it out of the box yet. If I already had that equipment, I sure as blazes have a couple years practice in on it already and would have stopped sending mine out long ago!

That's the way I think too. It's a challenge for me and I am still mostly doing straight quilting with the walking foot. I did send one out a long time ago when I finished the top for an older lady whose grandmother had made the blocks. I knew I couldn't do it justice.