Of course I didn't learn from this because over the same period of time I went from 78 records to 45's, to331/3, to 8 track, to cassettes, and now to CD's. Practly all of these are also thow aways and you can't even find a player for them if you wanted to save them for your kids or grandkids who would probably think they were a joke anyway.

This ought to be enough to give you some kind of an idea that I should have been at least a little bit smarter when it came to the machine quilting. Not me! I didn't know how to do this so I decided to start small and learn first before I spent the money on a big machine. I though that starting small meant that I could do what the big ones could do only slower but I would be learning. No such luck. I am going to give you the rest without brand names to protect the innocent. I started with a fairly good standard sewing machine that they claimed was a good machine for quilting. You also need a frame (track like apparatus giving the machine the ability to travel in any direction) so I got one of those. Of course I also ordered a set of handles and variable speen control as suggested in the ads. I needed a table to put all of this on so that had to be ordered. About $4000.00 later and a couple of days assembling all this stuff I was ready to start. Of course my wife would not let me touch any of her quilt tops until I "got good at it". I may not put much stock in my wife's ideas all the time but she was very wise at this juncture. I learned to make "bird nests" under the quilt, break needles, and generally screw up a lot of material before I got fairly decent with it. Now came the bitter truth---the machine was too small and I had to get a bigger one because as I started to quilt a pattern and filled an area then I had to roll the area done for the next section and my quilting area got smaller and smaller.

$1800.00 later I had a bigger machine and had to adapt the frame to fit it and extend the table so that it just about filled my living room. I actually was doing a pretty good job of quilting except it was very hard to keep the stitches even because the machine went at a constant speed and I didn't.

Next we decided to move and I did what my wife had told me to do in the first place. I bought a real machine that most of the professionals use. It is 12 ft long and occupies the place of honor as you enter the house. The picture on this page shows some of it. Now my wife will let me do her quilts and so will my grand-daughter and we are in business under the name Herd of Turtles. Elsewhere on this web site I explain the name and what we do.

I have spent more on quilting machines than I did for my first house and would advise anyone thinking about this to start at the top, learn right, and figure you are going to be in the quilting business for a long time.

Your comments are wellcome.

Rich