sounds like bull chit to me.

I have a Pfaff LongArm...I work left to right AND right to left. Sometimes I even go up and down. Seriously, this machine can go ANY way you want!

The things work on a free-wheeling sliding carriage.
There is no right and left.
Seriously, if you can quilt a circle with it, and you can, then direction is irrelevant.

Where do people come up with this kind of stuff?! I mean really, it's crazy talk! Next we will hear you can only cut fabric one direction, or iron when the planets are aligned a certain way. I'm just amazed, it's like you actually met the "crazy quilt police"!

i have one too. i start out first row left to right. second row right to left. and so on. it still feels different right to left after all this time, though. but it keeps the fabric from shifting to the right, or in any one direction.

Only having tried one in a quilt show, it occurrs to me that you can quilt from both sides of the frame, can't you? That is if the machine has handles on both ends. So couldn't one just walk round to the 'other' side of the frame?

I don't know why she would say that. Left to right from the front is right to left from the back, so it doesn't matter. I work both directions, although I do prefer left to right because my mind works better that way. I haven't noticed any problems with my curves or circles either, and they go in all sorts of directions.

beverly

Actually, going from left to right and back to front (both measured as you stand in front of the machine) are the ways of least resistance. That's not to say that you can't go in circles, spirals, or right to left, front to back - but for maximum speed, sewing more or less straight lines, I was taught that you should go from left to right or back to front.

I believe this has to do with the way the machine is threaded. The thread comes from the right of the machine through the tension assembly, and goes front to back through the needle,then into the fabric. As you move the longarm head, you have tension from the thread that has already been sewn into the fabric and from the tension assembly. The thread going through the needle is pulled both ways and can snap at the needle if the tension is too severe. (Remember that the thread goes through the needle a gazillion times when making each stitch, so it can fray pretty quickly if it's being pulled too hard against the needle.) When you sew left to right, or front to back, the tension points (fabric already sewn and tension assembly) are on the same side of the needle, and that causes more thread breakage - but only at higher speeds, which is what you would do if laying a baseline for lining up your top for floating, for instance.

This same principle applies to free motion on the domestic sewing machine. If you move too fast in a direction that pulls your thread against the needle, you will get thread breakage.

Our Tin Lizzie can go any which way. However,when using the Lizzie Stitch(automated) it always works from left to right in the program.

if you do feathers or any other design that goes in many directions, then you're going in 4 directions. how can anyone say any differently?