I spent a wonderful week at Quilts on the Corner in Salt Lake City Utah.
 

Each day was jam packed with learning and doing and more learning. Do I ever have an appreciation for all of you long-armers!!! By the end of each day I was completely bone tired; my mind was brimming over with new information and new use of muscles let me know about them too. The first day my anxiety was through the roof and by the end of the week the anxiety had greatly diminished.

"Boot Camp" for new users of the Innova Longarm is appropriately named. I was thrilled to be part of a 6 student class. We came from New York, Washington, Arizona, Idaho, and Utah. What a fine group of quilters! It was definitely a wonderful thing for me to do. I found out I could do it. I could learn how to operate a long arm machine. I also learned much about robotics. It took the fear away and replaced it with "I can really do this!"

Ranae Haddadin is the owner of the shop and a competition quilter. She is absolutely an incredible teacher and an amazing person, so willing to help us learn, coaching and guiding us all the way.Her quilting skills are unbelievable, spending hundreds of hours (if not more) on her gorgeous quilts. She has won many awards and placed first in many competitions. (the big ones, google it !)

I also had the privilege to study under Roberta. Her remarkable knowledge with robotics was taught with kindness and consideration. Her tremendous skills helped so much with learning. I'm so impressed with her.

My thank you's to Ranae and Roberta can't be loud enough or strong enough to convey the gratitude I have for each of them.

The answer is "YES!" I will go ahead with my plan for getting an Innova. I'll let you know when that happens!

I hear the emotion in your words and this was obviously an amazing experience for you. I look forward to seeing pictures of your work once you get your Innova. Congratulations!

Wow! Sounds like a great experience. Looking forward to hearing about you new longarm when you get it.

I've met Renae at quilt shows and at the Innova Tour that she hosted in Las Vegas several years ago. I've also watched her videos. She is extremely knowledgeable, thorough, and good at explaining things. She's very busy with her shop and Innova classes, but I wish she had more time to spend doing that extremely detailed longarm quilting that wins the big awards. Her quilts are fantastic.

I too have met Renae and she is an incredibly talented quilter. Very well know amongst "Innovians". She knows these machines inside and out and is so gracious to share her knowledge on line. When she partnered up with Karen Kay Buckley on show quilts they became a real winning team but Renae also does fabulous stuff on her own too.

As a fellow Innovian, congratulations and you’re gonna LOVE it! Hope you’re already on the Innova Longarm FB page. So much to learn there and Renae is also a member! Can’t wait to see what you create on your new machine, and so smart to take the boot camp before you bought it. Nothing better than playing with the machine for more than a few minutes to really see what the machine can do.

wonderful news, Rhonda! Know you debated about whether you should move ahead with a purchase of LA and whether you'd be up to the learning challenge---sounds like you've answered that question !