MaryKatherine

Think about how many quilts you plan to make. Family? Friends? Church? Business? To justify the cost, how is the purchase going to pay for itself. Now if money is no object great! But......... If I have any regrets, it's I didn't buy the best.

Still Sew N

Like you - I wanted to quilt my own quilts and was interested in a long arm. The prices always kept me from purchasing. I focused on a sit down machine due to space. At a quilt show, they were featuring the Janome Artistic 18" which is the same as a Tin Lizzie. They offered free financing and for around $100 a month, I purchased it! I have no regrets. I really love having a specific machine for free motion. That's just pure heaven. I had learned to machine quilt on a domestic with an 11" throat space and there just simply was not enough room for the quilt. I found it very frustrating to have to move that much bulk around. I paid my longarm machine off early and have no regrets. None. It has been a solid machine. There is not a computer program, it's pretty much a straight forward machine and I do the free motion quilting.

I'm going to add that I actually wore down the ring on the self winding bobbin. After much research and no assistance from the dealer or Tin Lizzie, we were able to purchase the "rings" from Amazon. My next purchase will be a separate bobbin winder and that will completely eliminate that problem. It will also eliminate the need to purchase two cones of quilting thread! I have also heard that Tin Lizzie is pretty much going out of business. I heard that from a competitor at a quilt show. I have a trusted sewing machine repair man who assures me my machine has years and years ahead of it. In the four years that I have owned this machine, I have quilted enough quilts that my machine has paid for itself and I can be proud that I have really made every quilt from start to finish!

It's good you are taking the time to glean as much information as you can. Doing your homework will pay off!

sewbizgirl

When you only consider how many quilts you are going to make and how to make the machine pay for itself, you are not factoring in the amount of fun and relaxation you will have using the machine. How can you put a price on that?

If you ever fall out of love with quilting, there is a pretty big market for used machines.

feline fanatic

Also true for some of the major show quilters. Gina Perkes was a Gammel girl she is now a proud Innovian and is a dealer for them too. Jan Hutchinson has also made the switch to Innova. Both of these ladies are award winning major show quilters. The largest Gammel dealer in the US dumped Gammel for Innova, Boersma's out in your neck of the woods Peggi. I for one absolutely love my Innova and the after care you get from ABM is unparalleled.
Here is a story for you. My dealer badly messed up when he recently upgraded my machine to Lightning Stitch. The machine quit working all together. Michael (one of the owners at ABM) tried to walk me through all the things that could be wrong, nothing worked. Neal (Michael's son) was going to be at their NY facility and offered to fix my machine if I could get the head to him. So I did. Neal not only fixed my machine, but found several other issues I didn't even realize and found my circuit board was also going bad. He fixed it all and replaced the circuit board and they didn't charge me a penny! Wouldn't even let me buy them lunch when I went to pick it up. I seriously doubt any other manufacturer will give you that kind of service and support on a 9 year old machine but Innova does. Oh and my dealer, they are pulling his franchise. So they don't mess around if the dealers can't offer the service and support.
So after market service is a definite consideration. Innova is one of the only longarms on the market that the machine is capable of retrofits and upgrades. So if you start out with the standard stitch regulator and want to upgrade to robotics, no problem they can do it and you don't have to buy a brand new machine. Another testimonial to happy Innovians is the fact they are darn near impossible to find in the resale market. That is because once we get our hands on them, we don't let them go. The most common upgrade is to a larger throat size. That can't be retrofitted.
To the OP, test, test, test. Find places to test drive them all and look at everything! Visibility, is anything blocking your site to the quilt and where you are quilting. Rack, is the rack well built and solid and can you customize it to how you want it. Ease of movement. Can you move the machine with one hand, and using only two fingers and your thumb on the handle? Do you have to buy all kinds of add ons? Different feet, rear and front handles, laser light, etc? How much fiddling do you have to do with each advance of the quilt? (with a dead bar rack, you don't have to raise the quilt roll with every advance like many other setups) How readily can the machine be upgraded if some new feature comes out that you want? What service requirements are on this machine (some require you to bring the machine head to an authorized dealer for a maintenance call on a fairly regular basis). How easy is the machine to self service? Can you easily reset the timing if you have to or adjust needle bar height, or swap out a check spring or tension assembly on your own (with phone or youtube guidance). How much and often do I have to oil? (some longarms are known oil hogs)
Most people research a longarm purchase a year or more but even at that so many don't even consider half the questions I posed above.

Peckish

No offense to MaryKatherine as I'm sure she meant none, but I have a real problem with "justifying" the cost and making the "purchase pay for itself".

Yes, this exactly. And I'm also in the "get the best you can" camp, and fortunately my husband agrees.

Peckish

Yes, I love Boersma's! Jack, the owner, is amazing. If there is a used Innova or Gammill anywhere in the Pacific NW, you can call Jack and he'll know everything about that machine. I called him once about an older Innova that was listed on Craigslist. He looked at the listing and was able to tell me all about the guy who had bought the machine, what he used it for, how long he'd owned it, how often he quilted, when he'd last had it serviced, what was serviced on it. He was also able to answer a lot of questions I had about the machine and setup that weren't addressed in the ad, and the seller was very slow to respond to. He then told me about another machine that was for sale that was comparable in price but had more options and less wear & tear on it - and all of this info was free, he didn't profit in any way. Except maybe impressing the heck out of me and gaining word-of-mouth business.

My understanding of the Gammill fiasco is that Jack dumped Gammill because Gammill sold to a new owner and they stopped honoring their dealer warranty work. So the dealers were repairing the Gammills and not getting reimbursed for their time and parts.

Jack has an interesting back story. He's a huge bear of a man, the third generation owner of Boersma's. When he was a little boy, he was a pro at repairing sewing machines. The ladies would bring in their machines for repair, the clerk would write up the repair tag for the "technician", then take it into the back room for Jack to work on. I wonder what these ladies would have thought if they knew their sewing machine was being fixed by a 10-year old boy.

One of the great things about Innova machines is they are designed for you to do your own maintenance and repair work, if you want. It's fairly easy and they walk you through it. If you can't repair it on your own, their service is outstanding.

rryder

I think it’s really important to figure out whether the reason you don’t like quilting on your domestic is because the size of the throat space is a problem for you, or if you just are not happy moving the quilt itself. If you don’t like moving even a small quilt on your domestic, there’s a good chance you won’t like moving it on a larger machine.

Also, if you decide that a sit down might work for you do not hesitate to take large quilt sandwiches and a. Variety of threads to try out. I made sandwiches using a wide variety of fabric, different battings, multiple thicknesses of battings and also brought a variety of different threads to all the shows and spent a lot of time on each machine to see how they all handled my materials. My experience with the dealers at the shows was that they were very friendly and had no problem with me taking lots of time to play with their machines once they realized I knew how to Fmq.


if you decide you'd rather move the machine, then it might be a good idea to take some lessons and then rent time on a machine so you can decide if you like quilting this way. Some folks prefer piecing and don’t like quilting no matter what kind of machine they are using and there is nothing wrong with that. Plus, if you rent time and do decide you really like quilting on a longarm, you will then have a better idea of what features you want on your machine and frame.

Rob

hobbykat1955

I can't FM so I use my emb machine to quilt all my quilts

RuthiesRetreat3

There was a company named Bailey's that made mid-arm machines that were less than $2000 at the time. Don't know if they are still around (I think they were in Maine or Vermont), but google them and get the info.

QuiltnNan

yes, they are still around and are about 30 minutes from me. very reliable company and very easy to work with.