Butterfli19

Do they really help your quilting or is it simply a matter of technique?

Like: my 8 year old car doesn't ride as smooth as a new one would and doesn't have all the new gadgets, but it gets me where I need to go.

Should I just keep practicing? :roll:

BKrenning

Try stuffing a baby quilt through the arm of a regular 6" harp sewing machine. Then try it on a 9", an 11" and bigger. Imagine trying to stuff a queen size through that 6". They might not make you a better quilter but they definitely make quilting easier so you spend more time doing it and you get better faster than you would have. And if you get one that has a stitch length regulator, you're able to slide up the learning curve faster.

I even found paper piecing is easier with a longer throat machine because your foundations don't smack into the neck of the machine as often.

scrapsoftime

I have a Babylock Quilter's Choice and often joke that it does the sewing for me. I just love it. It's many years old and think Babylock has a much newer version. I also love the place where I purchased. It's family owned, no pressure and they allow you to trade up/in etc (perhaps many places do).
I originally had gotten a crafter's choice machine but after a few months using realized I wanted the quilter's choice and some of the additional stitches etc it does. So I traded up and have been thrilled with it. It comes with a table to attach to base of machine to help with pull of fabric and a ton of different feet. Lots of decorative stitches (as I thought I wanted to do a lot of crazy quilting)... Ironically I've used some of those decorative stitches in my paper scrapping - yep I sew on paper as well when making cards. I also have liked how much I can adjust my stitches (lengthwise, or width wise if doing zig-zag). I couldnt do that much at all on my standard machine. Good luck!

Leigh

Butterfli19

Thanks! I didn't think of the height for quilt sizes, so far I've only done small things.

Thanks, Leigh, for the babylock advise. I'll have to check that out.

steelecg

I have a Pfaff creative expressions 2044 and really get a lot out of that machine, but for classes and retreats I use a Janome 760 - I love the Janome and like the Pfaff.

lalaland

The bigger throat space really comes in handy, especially if you're doing large quilts, but bigger throat space is not limited to just machines that are called quilting machines. Some sewing machines have way more throat space than other sewing machines. This holds true for both newer and older model machines.

The IDT system on Pfaff is nice, and it's now available on other machines as well, quilting and regular sewing.

I've done nearly all my quilting on regular machines and, aside from the throat space, the quality of the stitching when quilting is about the same.

One exception was the quilts I did on a Pfaff Tiptronic. The IDT system was great and the precision of the stitches themselves were probably the best I've ever seen, the throat area was okay, they were small quilts for Project Linus so I didn't need a lot of space.