Longarm Quilting Studio Tour & What to Know BEFORE Buying! Why a Longarm May Not Be Right for You.

welcome to my long arm room so today i am downstairs in my home with my long arm to answer some questions that you guys have uh asked me over the past couple months about long arms and i'm gonna show you my space and then talk about the things that i wish i had known before i bought my first long arm because i recently upgraded to a new machine and i learned a lot in buying my first long arm and using it for about three and a half years before i decided it was time to upgrade so hopefully i can share those things with you if you are thinking about buying a long arm if you've even briefly considered it or if you're just curious on how they work or um kind of what a space with a long arm looks like then this is the video for you so why don't i first show you around my space so let's start from the door where you enter the room and you can see the long arm does take up the great majority of the room in this room i do have this walkway here that goes kind of behind my machine so i can access the power cord and do any maintenance from behind the machine that i need to do you actually turn on the carriage from this back side so i do need to get back here pretty regularly i also load the backing fabric from this side of the machine so having this walkway is really important now i do have this power cord that's still kind of dangling across this walkway and i did order a rug that is going to kind of go this entire kind of runway um part of this room so the cord will at least be under a rug which will keep it from being a tripping hazard so from here you can also see i have pegboards for my thread and two bookshelves that hold all of my bolts of backing fabric as well as all of my dream big panels and then on top i have all of my white fabric for dyeing or just kind of playing around with it's all white kona i think it's mostly 60 inch but there's a few bolts of 108 wide then we come around this way now this desk area was the closet in this room and we just took the doors off and built in these floating desk and shelf so underneath is a little messy right now i have some single cuts of backing and stuff that are kind of waiting for me to find a home for them but i have more pegboard here and all of my conus watches i'll have magnets on them i have my little cookie jar of all my thread ends and some reference books and some chocolate because you know priorities and my baby yoda and then up on top of this shelf these are all of the tops that i have that are ready to be quilted so i have them not terribly well organized but i'm gonna go through them and separate them into tops that i'm gonna do a computer all over design and tops that i'm going to do a little more custom work on and then i have this aqua cabinet that's kind of a mess right now but this is where i keep my bobbin winder all of my extra bobbins um little random tools and in the drawers are kind of all of my tools for my machine screwdrivers and such and then there's some extra cones of thread in the bottom and um extra single cuts of backing fabrics in this middle drawer so these are just single like two two and a half yard cuts of random backing fabrics that i've bought and then these threads are all um duplicate colors on this wall i have my big tv that i listen to with my headphones while i'm quilting and my awesome quilt with my ribbon on it so this quilt was my entry into the 2020 quilt con stripes challenge and i did end up winning a beautiful ribbon so i'm really proud of that quilt so i thought that was a good one to hang up and then we come around to kind of the machine working side of my long arm so i have my little mat that i stand on here all of my batting slides under my table and i have a little petal here this petal when i wind it or unwind it it activates this motor which winds the completed quilt top up for me which is very nice and on this side of the frame i have my hydraulic controls and these buttons raise and lower the whole machine there are some hydraulic canisters right there so i don't know if you can tell but the whole machine goes up and down so i can raise it so it's at a more comfortable working height when i'm doing detail work or lower it if i want to be able to actually reach all the way back there and then here's my little necessaries table my humidifier because it does get a little dry in this room and my iron my tools that i use all the time my scissors little thread catcher oil and compressed air and then this wall has all of my favorite threads on it so this is a heavier weight so fine this is so fine 30 weight and then some micro quilter i don't have a ton of micro quilter and then i have kind of a rainbow of so fine 50 and i use this on my top thread when i combine it with this bottom line thread which is a 60 weight thread or i will use my so fine 50 weight as a bottom bobbin thread when i am quilting with glide which is a 40 weight thread and then i have a few metallics that i don't use terribly often but they sure are beautiful and shiny so as far as batting goes i do keep rolls of a pretty wide variety of battings i have um a roll and a backup roll of wool which is my favorite batting to use and then i also have a roll of white 80 20 which i like to use for quilts that have white fabric as the background i also have some warm and white and white that i'll use and then i have a silk bamboo blend that is really gorgeous a thick cotton this is a 100 silk and then i have a warm and natural in kind of the creamy color and those are all my go-to battings so it depends on what the purpose of the quilt is and what colors are in it but i do like to have a variety on hand and then we have my machine itself i do have the ruler base on here which is this plastic thing and that just allows me to balance rulers on top of the machine when i'm working i have my computer tablet here which runs the robotics on my machine if you aren't familiar with robotics you can see that there are these belts that go along the table of my machine as well as that black belt that runs on the carriage of my machine so when i want to use my robotics i simply engage these clamps here and that one back there and it locks my machine into these belts and then there are motors on both the carriage as well as the table here that run those belts according to the design i'm working on and when they're not engaged it runs it moves really smoothly so i can't even tell that there's a belt on my machine when it's not engaged and that was something that was really important to me because i do like to do a lot of freehand work i wanted to be sure that when the robotics weren't engaged that the machine still really had a really nice smooth feel overall i'm really happy with this machine so far so as you can see this isn't a particularly large room it's one of the extra bedrooms in our house and i believe it's about 11 11 and a half by 11 and a half or 12. so this room is very functional but it is awfully tight so keep that in mind when you were thinking about a long arm is that it is really going to take over an extra bedroom or like a large portion of another larger room in your house so my main reason for making this video was to talk about the things that i wish i had known before i bought my first long arm that may have been able to save me from having to upgrade just three and a half years later and if i can save someone else from having to make that first initial step of buying a long arm that doesn't quite suit their needs then um that would be awesome because these are huge investments in money and space and time so the first one that i want to talk about is throat space now the throat space on a long arm is just like the throat space or harp space on a regular machine it's the distance from the needle to the back upright part of the machine where the motor kind of curves around and connects the needle and the bobbin now on my old machine which was a handy quilter simply 16 that space was 16 inches um this one is millennium 30. so in this machine the space here from the needle to the back is 30 inches so it's much larger than my old machine but what both of those machines don't include in the name or in the kind of um advertising materials is the actual quilting depth of the machine now this machine is on a frame and you can see this blue bar and there's another bar that's kind of white that's right under it those are this is the take up bar the blue one and the the white one is called the leveler bar and both of those bars go through the throw to fat machine and on this model they take up about four and a half inches of space so my actual quilting distance is about 26 inches which on this machine leaves me plenty of room to do even large blocks but on the 16 inch machine that was a much more significant portion of my quiltable depth so it was advertised as 16 inches when in reality it was more like 12 inches at the start of a quilt and by the time i had advanced through a decent sized quilt that bar this blue bar this is the backing fabric of the quilt i'm working on on this and as i finish quilting and this rolls up the finished quilt it gets bigger and bigger so by the time i got to the end of a quilt on my old machine that 12 inch distance was really down to about 9 inches if i was lucky during that last pass of a large quilt now 9 inches is still a lot more room than you might have on your regular machine but it was a frustrating change to go from 12 inches which is a pretty common block size so i could kind of design my quilting design for the block and figure out how i worked around the block and um by the time i had done a couple of rows of blocks then i could no longer do that same thing because that block no longer fit in the quilting depth so i found myself rolling the quilt forward and back just a little bit a lot and it was pretty frustrating so if you are in the market for a long arm and you are comparing machines be sure to ask what the actual quiltable depth for the machine you're interested is because even two similar machines say a 20 inch machine from handy quilter and a 20-inch machine from gamble i don't know if they even make a 20-inch machine but because they their frames are different and those bars might be slightly in different places or the machine just might sit a little differently on the frame that quilting depth is it could be very different even a couple of inches different if i had known that to start i don't think i would have bought a 16 inch machine because it didn't really give me that much more than my large domestic machine i probably would have held out for at least a 20-inch machine so the second thing i want to talk about is the kind of finances of starting a business as a long armor now most manufacturers will have a section on their website that is something like return on investment or how to start a business long arming something like that and it is a way to show you how you can pay for your machine by quilting for other people and there are a lot of successful long armors out there who make their living quilting for other people so i don't want to diminish that as a potential business idea or a way to offset the cost of your long arm but i feel like it does gloss over some of the realities of owning a business and the cost associated with that so if you are looking at those kind of printable downloadable pdfs then make sure that you are also thinking about the cost of business insurance so if you are basing this out of your home your homeowners insurance may not cover a home-based business you may need business insurance to cover um clients coming to your home like if someone comes to your home and slips and falls and breaks their arm you may be personally liable and that could cost you a lot of money and uh could risk your long arm your business your your personal assets so you wanna make sure that you're properly insured you're also gonna need business licenses um personally i have an llc that kind of encompasses all of the parts of my business and um there's a setup cost to that uh you'll also need business licenses in my area i need a city county and state licenses or tax accounts that i have to pay to upkeep every year i also need to pay yearly to keep my llc in order i have a website that i pay for um there's a lot of yearly and monthly kind of incidental costs that are associated with um owning a business and that little handout is just gonna give you like the income what someone pays you for quilting that quilt and kind of that's kind of what they're assuming you're gonna get but you also need to pay taxes from that amount um this is income you are a business and i personally keep 25 of all the income that comes through my business to set aside to pay my federal taxes i don't have state income taxes in my state but i do still have to pay federal income taxes um every april so be sure that you are taking into account those costs um subtracting those from the income you think you can make by quilting for others and see if that can still offset the cost of your monthly payment for a machine if you finance it or gives you like an acceptable kind of um minimum hourly wage that you're willing to work for another thing that i didn't know when i first got a long arm is the amount of extra stuff you need um most long armors and i see most there are some that use cotton thread and do it very successfully but most long armors use a poly thread there are many brands and everyone has kind of their opinion on what is the best combo and um because it shows on the surface of your quilt you do need a lot of colors available and um so count on spending a couple hundred dollars in thread just to kind of get up and running um even if you're just quilting for yourself so the last thing that i wish i had known before i bought a long arm was that most machine service shops like if your local quilting shop services machines as well most of them will not service your long arm and so you'll be faced with a couple of options you will have to find a rep for your company who does basic service um you'll have to learn how to do it yourself and then you may be faced with the cost of sending your machine back to the manufacturer if there is a significant problem or in need servicing um if they won't send you parts and show you how to do it yourself then shipping a 50 pound machine back to a manufacturer is um it's a big deal so i've been lucky in that i haven't ever had to do that my handy quilter was actually like really reliable and i never had a mechanical problem with it and i went with apqs this time largely because they do send you the parts that you need and will walk you through any repairs that are really necessary so that you can do them yourself so i've mentioned a few times that my handy quilter ran really well the stitches were really nice i didn't have any mechanical problems but i do want to talk a little bit about why i did decide to upgrade um in the discussion of throat space we've already talked about how that space that actual quiltable space did feel pretty limiting the other thing that felt limiting about that machine was the speed i do a lot of free hand free motion quilting and i like to stitch fast and the handy quilters um stitches per minute i think it topped out at 1800 maybe 2100 which seems so super fast but um as i progressed in my quilting and got more comfortable quilting then i was kind of maxing out that speed when i was doing kind of large um free motion quilting by hand i also wanted to add robotics to my machine up until now all the quilting that you guys have seen me do has all been freehand which means that i'm standing there holding on to the handles directing the machine and i wanted the option of being able to use the computer that's sitting up there that tablet right there so i can input a design and get it all set up and let the machine move the head of the quilting machine over the quilt and it will quilt the design out itself as you guys know i make a lot of quilts and i do a lot of other computer based work so i wanted it to be able to be stitching out while i'm sitting here working on my computer multitasking now there was a computer available for my old machine but it didn't feel like the right decision to put that much money adding a computer to any machine almost any brand runs about ten thousand dollars and it didn't seem like it was a good investment to put that money into a machine that had other things that i wasn't really happy with after trying all of the brands that i could get my hands on um anova gamble handicalter jukie um i'm sure there were others i ended up with an apqs machine and so far i'm really happy with it um i've had it for about two and a half weeks and i've just really begun starting to play with the robotics and it's just a really nice option to have so i'm glad that i i took the jump now all of that being said i do not think that long arms are right or necessary for everyone i love having a long arm and for me it's an essential tool i chose to get a long arm because i really loved machine quilting and free motion quilting on a domestic machine does take a little bit longer than it does on a long arm because it's just a bigger tool bigger faster tool i also have like a health issue that makes it really painful for me to baste quilts and so having the option to stand while i prepare a quilt for quilting was the number one reason that i ended up buying a long arm i was faced with the decision of either sending my quilts out to a long armor or simply buying one myself so that i could finish quilts that i was piecing and because i really loved the machine quilting part that really kind of led me to the the decision that long arm quilting was right for me but it's not a necessary tool you can cool very successfully on your regular sewing machine forever the long arm is an eventuality and if you do want to try one then there might be someone local to you either a dealer or someone who owns a long room who rents time on machines so if you don't quilt a lot or there's only a few quilts that are the really giant ones that you wish you could do in a long arm that still may be an option that's open to you to just rent a few hours on a machine that someone else owns and then you're not left with the maintenance cost and giving up your house for one it'd be really nice nice option now if you are in the market for buying a long arm let's talk a few of my suggestions so that you are happy with your machine forever because i do feel like this is like a really long term investment and the first one is try as many brands as you can and not just the brands the different machines because some manufacturers have a wide range of machines like handy quilter has everything from their kind of entry level machine that they just uh released called the moxie which is a fairly small machine on a smaller frame all the way up to their high-end machines i think they have an infiniti which is a 26 inch machine so there's a wide range the feel on the moxie is going to be different than the feel on the infinity so try as many as you can because everyone has their personal preferences things they like you may really dislike the way the handles are laid out in one machine and really prefer a different layout from a different manufacturer there's nothing like having that hands-on approach now hopefully cool chose will start happening again soon but um even if there aren't quilt shows or you can't travel to one then at least talk to as many people as you can and instagram is a great resource for this um long armors post pictures of their long arms all the time while they're quilting so ask them send them a message or reply to one of their posts and ask them like what model that do they have and what do they like about it and most importantly what do they not like about it because that will at least give you some kind of pros and cons for the different models that are out there so that if you do get a chance to try one then you'll at least kind of know what you're looking for now when you go shopping for a long arm if you are buying new from the manufacturer and all of my advice here is based on buying a new long arm because that is the only experience that i have had there are probably great deals to be had buying a la a used long arm but i have never done that so i don't want to speak to that but i'm sure there's great deals so you may ask around at your guild or locally and see if there are used machines available i know there are a few websites out there that also act as kind of a clearing house for long arm sales but um you're on your own as far as my advice is there just because i i don't know that market at all but if you are buying new then you want to think about all of the upgrade options that are going to be available and there are going to be a lot available um for my machine um this machine came only on this one table option but some of the other models from apqs have two different table options a regular table or a deluxe table so if you have the chance to try both then kind of give the tables a little wiggle see how stable they are you want this to be like a really nice stable solid piece of furniture if it has a lot of wiggle to it then maybe upgrading to a better chunkier table is a good upgrade think about those add-ons and what is um essential to order with your machine like um there were two different track options for apqs and swapping out the tracks later would have been a significant expense so that was something that i really wanted to order with the machine whereas robotics are an add-on that could have been added at any time or the hydraulics it was just a kit that i could have purchased and added on in a month or a year or five years so think about the things that you want and think about the things that are essential that you get now to save hassle and money in the long run so if you have any other questions about long arms then be sure to um post down in the comments and i will do my best to help you guys out and um answer any questions because i know that it is a big investment it's a big deal to buy a long arm so until uh next video i hope you guys have a wonderful week and happy quilting

Channel: Tiny Orchard Quilts

Views: 16,798

Rating: 4.9730821 out of 5

Keywords: quilting, quilt how to, quilt, tiny orchard quilts, quilting tutorial, how to make a quilt, quilting studio, quilting studio tour, quilting room tour, longarm buying tips, before buying a longarm, buy a longarm, longarm business, longarm quilting business, quilting as a business, should i buy a longarm, sewing room organization, longarm quilting machines, buying a longarm

Id: su7jRgSsbUY

Length: 27min 15sec (1635 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021