Thursday, March 15, 2007

For the Uninitiated

THIS is a quilting machine.





This is the one that I own now. This will be my small one when my new one arrives. The sewing machine sits on a frame, which has tracks which go left to right, and on a carriage, which has tracks which go forward and backward. This means that it can move smoothly in all planes by pulling the machine across the quilt as it sews. This frame is four metres long to allow me to quilt even the biggest quilt by pinning it to the rollers that you can see. The actual sewing machine, which is to the right of the photo, is only a sixteen inch throat, meaning that I can quilt the width of the quilt by about fourteen inches at a time. This one attaches to the computer, so I can program a pattern and it will stitch it out using vectors.

My new machine has a 26 inch throat, but only a 3.6m frame. It has stitch regulation (the feature that I was desperate to get), which means that when I move the machine across the fabric it will do ten stiches for every inch of movement. The motor is activated by movement, so if I move slowly it stitches slowly. I will use it to do custom work by hand.

Does that make sense to everyone? Now you can see why I needed a big space to fit it!

9 comments:

molly said...

Wow! and I'm having conniptions here about quilting my small grandson's quilt! I love designing and piecing. When it comes time to actually quilt,the old mare stops in the middle of the road and has to be beaten into finishing the job. If I lived near you, you would SO get my business!

Tracey Petersen said...

Molly, if you lived near me I would insist on quilting your quilts for you!

meggie said...

Hear hear! I am with Molly! The quilting is daunting to me, having only my Janome, & aching shoulders!
You are going to have such fun with your new 'toy'. Lucky you!
I am thinking I will just be using in the ditch for my chequerboard.

Aunty Evil said...

I love it when you talk dirty...

Now, what exactly did you say? :)

molly said...

If I'm down in the dumps all I need to cheer me up is a comment from Aunty! It doesn't even have to be on my blog.....

nutmeg said...

The only piece of equipment I use that is that long and wide is my car - even then I'm told I don't use it to it's full "potential" (a nice way to say that I don't drive well!)

That looks extremely intimidating and to think the new one is bigger! But when you are a professional I'm sure it must be great to use such excellent equipment. Are you going to sell via the internet (or are you already doing this)?

Stomper Girl said...

Blimey!

Are you still counting the sleeps till the new one arrrives?

Tracey Petersen said...

Meggie - email me. I'm happy to quilt it for you, I can just post it back to you. This is a genuine offer!
Aunty - it's all just quilter speak
Nutmeg - I am a service provider. Ladies make their quilt tops and send them to me. I quilt them (put the backing and the wadding and stitch the three layers together) and give them back. So I have nothing to sell, but my skill.
Stomper - IT IS HERE!! watch this space.....

nutmeg said...

Ahhh - see, I don't really have a clue do I about this quilting game? But now I understand... :-)