I ditch stitch on my longarm, and find it extremely tough on my body and eyes. I also have an Intelliquilter, and the way I do it is to slow my machine speed way, way down, lower my needle so that's it's just slightly dragging on the fabric, and trace the ditch first, that way if I make any mistakes, I can just hit the undo button. Once it's recorded perfectly, then it stitches out perfectly. It probably takes me twice as long as it would if I used a ruler, but I don't have to worry about bobbles or ripping.

Same way I do it. Either that or raise and lower the needle each time which is even more physically demanding. I do have hydraulic legs on my Millenium so I can adjust the machine height. That helps. I do have a lot of SID on some wall hangings coming up.

I have hydraulics on my frame as well.... you want to hear something funny? I have the underside of my frame end to end filled with rubbermaid drawers, I can't lower mine without squooshing them! :)

being a l/a er, I do sid, but depending on the quilt I will either just go for it or use a ruler that I had made at a local glass shop....have had it for years and it has served me well. It does take a lot of practice and control - no computer here, I am a hand-guided L/Aer

I have a long arm and quilt for just a few customers. I am pretty happy with my free motion and my panto graphs, but some days my SID looks like I'm drunk! Using a ruler to steady the foot helps, but sometimes its not pretty! I try to practice on things that are 1. mine 2. won't show much or 3. destined for the dog rescue pile. If someone wants SID, I will show them what I can do and let them decide. (when I 1st started doing SID on my long arm , I felt like I was taking a bike riding class and was told I HAD to stay on a straight line...can you say: challenging? lol)

I have seen many 'freehand' quilting done by longarmers and I will take the computer designs anytime. I always choose designs that are done by computer machine stitching. I learned my lesson that free hand to the local LAs here mean miss spaced and uneven quilting.

If you limit yourself to only computer generated quilting, you can be losing out on alot of good quilters. You need to communicate well with your LAer so you are both on the same page. I have seen good and bad free motion quilting...and at the same time good and bad computer generated quilting. Communications is the KEY! My customers know I"m human and will let me know if they want/need something I am not doing.

Both of these quilts were done freehand...