I have the same opinion of the BSR! It was just annoying to
me when I test drove it, the saleswoman said that I've been doing so long without out that I didn't need it.
I agreed with her.

Trying to understand. To embroider on a quilt, I can sandwich it within the hoop and let it rip? I don't need to use stabilizer or anything else, just put it in the hoop and go? Thanks.

the quilt patterns you can buy on the net are great. i use them all the time. i have a janomi 11000se with the quilting upgrade and the magnetic quilting hoop. i got hooked on machine embroidering my blocks. hope i can get the pics to attach. my dealer is putting my 11000 on ebay this weekend, i'm getting a multiple needle machine. will piece on my 30 yr old workhorse. go to "JANOMI AMERICA" to see the quilting features i'm talking about. enjoy, connie
sorry, couldn't get the pics to attach will try again

do you have the quilting upgrade? it comes with a large magnetic hoop. watch the video with marie osmond about quilting on janomi's site "janomi america" . take a class from your dealer if you can

ohhhh i wish i had a embroidery machine after hearing that you can quilt instead FMQ on the quilt , it looks great on the quilts ive seen it used on

I have the Bernina BSR and truly love it. I don't try to go so fast. I just relax and the stitches are perfect every time. I also have it on my Gracie frame.

I do both. I hoop the quilt like some have said, stitch it out then sometimes fill in with FMQ. One teacher took us to a famous person's work in a book and said "look at her stitches" "she wins awards and her's are not perfect" "so get over it and enjoy it". That was freeing for me and I have been doing it myself every since.

What is fun on the Janome 11000 is to resize circles or stars and over lap some then quilt that all over a baby quilt.

I also use painters tape on the hoop grid so I know where the design will go. I seem to be able to move the hoop around and quilt quite a bit that way fitting them in.

I have a Janome 11000SE. It comes with automatic stippling patterns. I used them to stipple the entire border of a quilt and it looked great. The trick is to make sure you line up the border exactly each time you re-hoop. Then it's almost impossible to tell where the pattern stopped and started. I have also made blocks with an embroidery design in the center and stippling around the design. It looks great.

I have a B with stitch regulator, and have not practiced enough to FMQ. Thanks for jogging my memory, need to put that high on my priority list for 2011. Oh My!!!

I'm still using my good old Pfaff 2140 upgraded to 2170. It dosn't have the wide throat of the new ones, so I can't do the BIG designs, but I had no trouble with this quilt. I think I could embroider/quilt up to a full size.

I've FMQed a queen size, but I think I would have trouble trying to use a hoop with a quilt that big. It's not the hoop itself, it's trying to stuff the rest of the quilt past it that would be the problem. I could do it if I used one of Marti Mitchell's methods and quilted only part of the quilt at a time.