Quilting Question
 

Hey ya'all

This might be a dumb question, but I was wondering. Do people rent "time" out on their longarm machines? Is this something that is done? Or is it strictly you send the longarmmer your quilt and they quilt it for you for a fee? It would be wonderful if I had a freind that had a machine they would let me use sometime. Although I do not :(

I apologize if this is a dumb question, but I was curious.

Thanks in advance :)

Not a dumb question at all. There is a place in my town that has a longarm for rent. You are required to take a lesson or two first, which you pay for, and the owner hovers while you're quilting, just in case there's a problem of some kind. After the first quilt, it's cheaper than sending it out to be quilted by check.

Ask around, see if anyone knows of a place in your area. :thumbup:

There are places that will rent out a longarm, but keep in mind that running one is not to everyone's taste. It can be physically demanding, and it takes practice to turn out a quality product. Some people love it (like me!), some people hate it. But you'll never know where you fall unless you try! Hope you can find a place near you.

Andi

I was thinking it might be a good way to learn if you like the process or not, before committing to a longarm of your own. There was a thread here a couple of days ago, a woman had purchased a longarm system and discovered she does not like the quilting process at all. She prefers piecing. However, because of the amount of money she spent, she's uncomfortable telling her husband, so she forces herself to use it. I felt so bad for her.

Our LQS and the local LA dealer both rent time on there machines.

I've never heard of an individual long arm quilter renting time on his/her machine. Some quilt shops, however, have a long arm you can rent. The one where I live required 12 hours of instruction/class time before you could fly solo on it.

These are all wonderful answers! Ill have to make some calls to the quilt shops :)

the one I went to was a sewing & vac store. It was worth the investment to take the lesson before you decide if LA quilting is for you.

There's a local sew & vac shop that rents time, but even that gets expensive. You have to take 3-4 'certification' classes before you can use the machine, and they never let you use it on your own; when you're renting time on the machine you're also "renting time" from a store employee. (And it's just one person, so she has to be available.) They charge $40/hr with a 3 hour minimum. So each quilt, if you can get it done in one 3 hour session, costs you $120 to quilt. Ouch!

Certainly much, much cheaper than buying your own LA machine, but not inexpensive. I have managed to FMQ a king-size quilt on my domestic machine so at this point I haven't been motivated to rent any long arm time.

I did get to PLAY with that machine during a break in a class they were teaching, and I thought it was a lot of fun and I think I could get pretty good at it. But at $120 a whack....I could buy a lot of nice fabric for $120!

Various non-professional longarm owners on the board, including myself, have posted asking about the pros and cons of renting time on their longarms. The majority opinion seemed to be that it would be a bad idea, because of the need for business liability insurance, risk of having strangers in your home, risk that your machine might be damaged by a novice, etc. In my area I am not aware of any shops that rent time on their longarms, but the shop where I bought my Innova in Ephrata WA did rent time.

I am not actually convinced that you would save much, if any, on the cost of getting your quilts done, or that you would be happy with the finished product, until you become very proficient at loading and quilting, and that takes some time - time that you are paying for in rental and instruction fees.