MadQuilter

Plan the quilting from the center out. That way you only have to deal with half the width under the throat. I don't roll unless I stitch in the ditch. Instead I pleat or puddle. I also wear gloves to move the sandwich. Make sure that none of your quilt hangs up on the table or falls off the back. If that happens, you end up with uneven stitches. Craftsy has a good class by Ann Peterson about handling a large project on a domestic machine.

JENNR8R

I use a taped-down Teflon cookie sheet with a hole cut it in for the needle and dog grooming arms to hold the quilt up. I bought some clamps from Home Depot to attach to the grooming arms.

https://www.amazon.com/Linden-Sweden...+cookie+sheets

https://www.amazon.com/Go-Pet-Club-Aluminum-Grooming/dp/B00DYYLRRY/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1515680956&sr=8-7&keywords=dog+grooming+arm

EmiliasNana

I have a Tiara mid-arm sit down quilter, but Leah Day uses the same system on her DSM. I posted a thread about it here: Hung up and ready to quilt It made a world of difference on my shoulders, neck and back and improved my FMQing by reducing the drag. Good luck.

Beehiveof9

I do a lot of smooshing and puddling, but I love the suspension idea. Noodling that one over for my own workspace in the future.

cavmom

i agree with madquilter. I divide the quilt into quarters and work from the center out. That way only half the quilt is puddled under the arm of the machine. You also need a surface big enough to support the quilt so that it's not hanging off the table and not letting you smoothly move the quilt under the needle.

mjkgquilt

I quilted an 80" by 80" quilt from the center to the edges by dividing the working (quilting) area in quarters. The plain blocks in an Irish Chain quilt were stitched using the hoop, an outlined Shamrock and my Husqvarna Designer One machine. A shamrock was embroidered in the corner of each plain block. The other blocks had straight stitches from corner to corner. The pattern fabric had an "X" stitched through it. I rolled the quilt. [ATTACH=CONFIG]586923[/ATTACH]

mjkgquilt

On the right-hand side of the above photo you can see two of the four shamrocks stitched using my embroidery machine.