Long Arm Quilters
 

Since you have probably done both. Do you find it is easier steering your machine to FMQ quilt on a long arm or steering your fabric on a regular machine

i find it much easier to steer the machine. personally, i'm not very good at moving the fabric. and my hands and arms get tired trying to move the fabric. the downside of moving the machine is that the setup takes up soooo much room!

Good question, as for me they are definately two different motions. I am better moving the machine. It's more like writing/drawing with a pencil.

I find it much easier to steer the machine with the exception of Stitch in the Ditch. SID is easier on my domestic machine.

machine. you still have to practice like crazy for both. Now, I don't have one of those sit down 'long arm' models I used to try on domestic sewing machine. So if your asking that sorry

For me MUCH easier to steer the machine. Straight line quilting is easier on a domestic though, especially all over crosshatch grid.

Ditto for me. It's also very tiring to try and shove anything larger than a crib size through the throat of a domestic machine--even the larger ones. I bought a frame & 9" throat machine after quilting 2 baby quilts & a throw size using the sit & quilt method. My shoulders just couldn't take it.

think of the fabric as paper and the machine needle as a pencil. I find it much easier to move the pencil. For straight lines, like SITD, I simply use a LA ruler and have no problem. Both DSM and LA take practice as there is a learning curve for each. I have the HQ16 and can do a relatively simple quilting pattern, even on a large quilt, in well under a day. Used to take much longer on the DSM and an added perk is I have no pain in the neck/shoulders at the end.

The difficulty with steering the fabric on the DSM was the bulk of the large quilt. If I was doing a very small piece, I could steer the fabric okay. The things I like so much more about the longarm - not having to pin or spray the fabric sandwich. Better visibility of the whole design. With my Innova, the ability to stitch through the heaviest intersections. The machine stitches at a much faster rate than the DSM. I have absolutely no shoulder or back problems from wrestling with a heavy quilt. And in the summer it's so much cooler than sitting at the DSM with mountains of quilt falling onto my lap.

Edited to say that after some practice with rulers I now think that SITD is also easier with the longarm than with the DSM.

My arms and shoulders could never take working with a domestic. I even graduated to computerizing the longarm with Intelliquilter just to protect my body so I can quilt for more years. I love it!