Moving the Grace Qnique to a Frame!

It’s finally time to share a new video on the Grace Qnique 14+! Early this month I moved my sit down longarm machine to it’s new home on the Grace Continuum Frame. I shot timelapse videos throughout the build so you could see how this changed my basement sewing room:

Click Here to learn more about the Grace Qnique 14+. Currently Grace Company is offering a terrific sale on these machines, but make sure to call the company and mention Leah Day said Hello My Quilting Friends in order to get bonus accessories with your order!

Initial Feelings about Longarm Quilting on a Frame

I couldn’t be happier with this machine set up on the Continuum Frame. It’s so easy and fast to move the machine and far less effort on my shoulders to move the machine rather than a quilt.

I originally set up the frame low, but after watching Jamie Wallen’s video on Longarm Machine Height, we adjusted the legs to the highest setting. I can clearly see what I’m quilting and all around the needle and my shoulders and back are staying straight instead of hunched forward.

As I said in the video, I feel a bit silly for not making this change sooner. It’s not that quilting on a home machine is so much harder. I’ve been quilting on a home machine for years and I still love it and think it’s a great way to quilt your quilts. I wouldn’t have created so many designs or spent so many years teaching this method of quilting if I didn’t think it was awesome.

But longarm quilting on a frame scratches an itch for speed I didn’t know I had until this machine was set up in my basement. I can quilt faster, with big open designs that get the job done quickly. This isn’t glamorous show-style quilting, but it is adding texture, simple designs, and getting the project finished so it can be used and enjoyed.

I knew longarm quilting would be faster because I’ve rented time on a longarm at a local quilt shop. But there’s a difference between showing up once every few months to use a machine and actually having it in your basement. I can slip into the room first thing in the morning, click on the machine and quilt half a quilt in half an hour. I can jump back on the machine after watching a show with James and Josh in the evening.

Lately I’ve been eyeing the stack of Quilty Box quilt tops and wondering just how many I could quilt in a day, or a week. Because now it’s no longer a question of when that quilt will be done, it’s a question of what do I want to finish next?

The Frame Quilting Experience

Longarm quilting on the frame does feel very different from quilting on my home machines or the Grace Qnique when it was a sit down / table mounted machine.

I spent a few days after we set up the frame trying to put my finger on the difference in feel and flow from these two styles of quilting. What I ultimately realized is quilting on a frame just feels lighter and faster. I’m standing up, moving my body and arms with the machine, and with very little effort I’m stitching a 5 inch path of Zippling from edge to edge across a quilt.

That same 5-inch section would have taken a lot more time on a home machine because of all the shifting, scrunching, bunching, and smooshing required to fit the quilt through the arm of the machine.

It’s also faster because I can run the machine as fast as I can think of the design. I’ve been critical of stitch regulators for years because on a home machine, they tend to be clunky and can limit the speed you can stitch.

With the machine on the frame, I’m regularly running the machine at full speed and the stitch regulator keeps the needle bouncing up and down to produce perfectly spaced stitches. It’s easier for the stitch regulator to work because it’s just the machine moving over the quilt.

There are little encoders attached near the wheels of the carriage which keep track of how fast you’re moving and adjust immediately when you change speed. I found I liked the Cruise setting best and usually set my stitch length to 16 stitches per inch, which looks almost identical to the quilting stitches I make without a regulator on my home machine.

But What About Your Home Machines?

Of course this is the point where lots of quilters are going to start pointing fingers. But you’ve said for YEARS home machine quilting is just as good? Weren’t you the girl that wrote 7 Reasons Why I Don’t Want or Need a Longarm?

Yes, and Yes.

Most of the reasons I listed in that post were about money and at the time I didn’t feel like the juice was worth the squeeze.

I also wrote that post more than 6 years ago and the machines and prices have changed a lot. The cost of larger, higher end sewing machines have also increased rapidly. Yes, you can get a home machine with a 11 inch harp space and all the bells and whistles, but it will cost more than the Grace Qnique!

So prices have changed to the point that a small longarm machine on a small frame no longer requires you to go into business. It’s still a chunk of change to shell out all at once, but so are the larger home sewing machines.

It’s time to think about what you want out of your machine and what you plan to do with it most so you get the most bang for your buck.

And NO, I’m not switching full time to quilting on a longarm! I will still be making videos, quilting workshops, and books on quilting on my home machines!

Next year we’re going to quilt along with walking foot quilting, a quilting style you can only do on a home machine. Click Here to check out the schedule and materials lists for the three quilts we’ll be making together.

I do want to share videos on quilting on the longarm and I’ve been thinking a lot about how to incorporate them into our weekly schedule. What I’m considering right now is to combine our weekly new design video so we quilt half of the design on a home machine, then switch to the longarm and see how it works there.

It will be cool to see how the designs are quilted on two different machines, plus helpful to see which style of quilting is easier for particular designs. I know already that travel stitching and hitting exact points will be much harder on the longarm than it is on my home machine.

So that’s what I’m thinking about right now. Please let me know what you think of this new video series idea and any other suggestions for new videos quilting on the longarm frame. I hope you’re as excited about this new quilting adventure as I am!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day