Grace Frame Update

Last week I told you about my decision to order the Grace Frame and now it's all set up.  When we opened the boxes and saw the 100s of tiny baggies of nuts, bolts, bits, and pieces, I was sure this would not be the 2-4 hour assembly job indicated on the Grace Co. website!

Sure enough, it took about 9+ hours before the whole thing was put together.  DH was a trooper, and despite a cut finger and sore feet, he survived the ordeal!  The next step was my department, preparing the printed cloth leaders.  They needed to be trimmed to size and then hemmed.  I was able to get them onto the rails using the fabri-fast tool, basically cramming the fabric into the slots with plastic tubing using a wheeled tool.  It wasn't easy but a few blisters and cramped hands later, I was done...only to realize I'd put them in backwards!

I had some problems with my Horizon on the carriage.  Because of its size, the Horizon's throat space was obstructed by the take-up bar, thus reducing its wonderful 11" throat space by at least a couple of inches.  Also, the thread stand needed to be removed because it didn't fit inside the handle-bars.  Also, the included speed controller didn't seem to work, despite setting the pins to correspond with the 7700.

Once everything was in place I decided to try a test quilt.  I loaded up a cheater panel and some monopoly clear thread.  Had I not taken the Gammill longarm lesson loading the quilt layers would have been much more of a mystery and much more complicated!  Once I started stitching, using (luckily) the start/stop button instead of the foot pedal, I was amazed how good my stitches looked for a first time try!  I discovered that it was almost impossible to see where I was going because the casing on the Horizon on the left of the needle is so big it obstructs the view of the needle!

I also realized after that I was rolling the quilt OVER the rail instead of UNDER the rail, making it more difficult for myself to quilt!

So despite all the problems, I am pretty happy with my test piece, so much so that I finished it up and added a binding.  After washing it I put it up on my design wall to decorate my office!

The second half of the story is that I decided the Horizon was not going to work well on the frame.  Besides the size and visibility issues, it was also a shame to 'waste' all the features of the Horizon just to do a straight stitch.  Therefore, after the weekend setup, I went to the dealer and got a Janome 1600P straight-stitching machine.  The footprint is much smaller and visibility is much better!  I just tried it out on a practice piece and it works really well!  All is right with the world!

I also turned the frame around so I could face 'out' of the room and also see the tv if I would like to glance up.  Even though I had some problems, the frame is large and forced a re-arrangement of my space, and I had to buy a new machine, the cost of this setup is still thousands less than a true longarm.  I am really happy with it so far and think I'll have a lot of fun.  I still have lots of learning to do and lots of practice to get used to the quilting area limitations and the speed control.  I might end up getting a stitch regulator as well...we'll see.

Here are a few photos of my setup.  By the way, this post was waaayyy longer, with a ton more detail, but something happened as I added the last photo to the original post and it wiped the board clean!  I lost an hour's worth of writing and didn't have the heart to go back and try to re-write it exactly as before - my fingertips were sore from typing already!

 

Comments

[Pamela L.]

Wow Angie, you setup looks great! What nice flooring you have. There'll be no stopping you now -- I thought you finished a lot of quilts before - now, I'll never catch up! I'm happy for you.