if you check out the websites of a few of the long arm dealers, like gammil, innova, tin lizzy......you will be able to see the differences between using a long arm and quilting on a regular sewing machine.....although there are regular machines now that have much larger throat areas (up to 11") that make quilting much easier.....there are quite a few quilters who use the older singer feather weights to quilt on as they have a lot of throat room too and are very dependable.