I think the 24" square seems to be the breaking point. Runners, miniatures, purses - no problem, but the larger stuff, I know what you mean about the whole sewing room bracing for it! I lucked out on my DD baby's quilt - I stopped into a shop during a Shop Hop and they where doing a demo of their long arms. The people were fantastic, convinced me I could do it, so I rented time the following week and finished the quilt in 2 hours - when I had originally figured on a week of fighting with the quilt to finish it.

No, it will help relax you and your quilting will be better for it. lol.

If it doesn't help us quilt better, it won't matter because we won't even care.

I'm really struggling with FMQ and the results aren't that great, but when it does go right, it's a great feeling! I've decided to go ahead and quilt some of the tops that have been sitting around for ages - I'm only going to learn by doing it. They're not precious heirlooms, were made for the interest of the design or method, it's not the end of the world if I mess up the quilting. And I can see that I'm very slowly getting a bit better at it - the other day I had a session that went really well -my machine didn't fight back for once and I really got into the flow of what I was doing - it was thrilling and made all the tears and swear words worthwhile!

:thumbup: :thumbup:

Seriously, some people do drink a glass of wine before doing FMQ to help them relax a little. Tension makes it worse!! IE...YOUR tension, not the machine's!! :?

And 3 glasses of wine afterwards if it's all a disaster...! ;)

I SITD 4 placemats on my DH's old Singer, regular foot and feed dogs up...used an entire spool of thread and hated it. Made my first quilt a month later, quilted by check for my first 4 quilts (really only had to pay for 3 because she messed up the quilting on my first quilt :cry: ), and then ordered my LA...best move I ever made!!! I'd much rather quilt anything then piece any more!!!

You got that right Gaigai!!! Amen!!!!!!

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: Sweetie we all KNOW how you feel. Anything larger than a nice size lap quilt I tend to either hand quilt, or send out to be longarmed.

Since backaches are a problem in general for me, and just sewing can hurt - imagine just what doig a whole quilt wold be like.

And yes, life is far far too short to waste time, energyand body on what will about kill me to do.

THANK YOU TO MY LONG ARM QUILTER FRIEND
JUlile

I just read today on the internet where a really fine free motion quilter said that she had all kinds of trouble with her tension if she dropped her feed dogs. So she left them up but covered them with a piece of a file card with a hole for the needle and said it took care of the tension problems. You might want to try it. All I know is what I read. HA It's a cheap fix if it works and doesn't cost anything but a little of your time if it doesn't.