Lynn Sykes
Marian and Me
My sister, Marian and I rent the HQ Sixteen from our local quilt shop, Pappy's in Maryville, TN. We have been doing it for a couple of years now. We took a class from Pappy and then rent the machine whenever we have tops to quilt. It has been great fun.
In the beginning, we would just meander. Then we started using the groove board. We love the groove board especially the baptist fan pattern. We have used that pattern on a number of quilts including our Smoky Mountain quilt which was hung at the AQS show in Knoxville this July.
Now we have started trying our hand at free hand quilting using Pam Clarke's method of marking the quilt. This is a great way to add some variety to our quilting.
This year we have rented the machine at least once a month. We challenged ourselves to make one charity quilt and month and we use those quilts to broaden our longarm quilting skills. We were lucky and when the shop got the new fusion, we were the first renters allowed to us it!
Maybe one day, the lottery people will knock on our door and we can own our own HQ Sixteen. Until then we count our blessings that Pappy's lets us use theirs.

I own the following HQ machines: HQ Sixteen, HQ Fusion