I bought a Grace SR2 frame last year....about 100 inches long. It does o.k. for baby quilts and some throw quilts, but won't do a queen or king size quilt. The problem with it is in the lower take up bar....one end is always jumping out of socket when advancing the quilt and then you have to push it back in and advance some more. I've spoken to others and they have the same problem with this frame. I have a Janome with a 9 inch throat on the frame which means I may only have 4 or 5 inches I can stipple or meander in at a time. For what I do it's o.k., but not perfect.

I had one very similar to that. the space that you could actually stitch in ended up so narrow and I found it very frustrating.
I did pay around that price for it. It came with a mega quilter machine and some kind of stitch regulator. My husband put metal tubes on to hold the weight of the quilt.

My first set-up was this frame exactly. I purchased the wooden pattern boards and a Brother PS1500 sewing machine with an 11 inch throat. I loved this set-up and it worked fine for me for 9 years. There was definitely a learning curve for me and I was quite frustrated trying to coordinate my sewing speed with my movement of the carriage...but eventually, I got it. I really loved that you could expand it to do larger quilts, yet keep it smaller when doing smaller quilts. Depending on what machine you get with it...I think it's a good deal. Just make sure you get all the parts and the rails and the carriage. I used the pattern perfect boards a lot and did stippling. The design of the carriage makes it hard to do a diagonal line...or maybe I just wasn't coordinated enough. But, I used that for 9 years and actually still have the frame and machine and carriage. I'm selling the pattern perfect boards to someone else on this board. I would still be using that set-up except my husband generously purchased an Innova 18" quilting machine and frame. Due your due diligence and find out as much as you can about it....just remember the learning curve (which you would have with any frame set-up). There is also a yahoo site for Grace Machine quilters...you might take a look at that too....I don't have the exact site handy. Good luck in your research and decision!

Hi All - New to the community.

We have a Grace Frame SR2 (Queen) and a JUKI 2000Q. My husband DIY'd the rear pantograph table so we could dabble with *print your own* patterns.

The first (and only) pattern we did was about 4" (point to point) and seemed to be working well until we got half way down the quilt and ran out of throat space. I understand the limits of the JUKI, but has anyone (with a similar set up) nailed down a process and/or proper size for this type of ETE?

Thank you!

One thing you can do is remove the quilt when you are halfway done and re-mount the quilt from the other side. In that case, I would start from the middle (where you left off) and work to the bottom.

If you want to try the above method, you might want to spray baste the sandwich together (ideally before starting on the first half, but you could also just spray baste the second half before mounting). This could make it easier to keep all the layers lined up.