In 2004, I went to the Quilter's Heritage quilt show in Lancaster, PA, and was mesmerized by a competitor’s longarm machine. I came home considering selling my car to pay for it! Then I came to my senses and decided waiting at the bus stop in a foot of snow in NY wasn’t worth a longarm machine.
My online quilting group, the Underground Playground, has been meeting once a year for 10 years. In October 2005, we met in NY and visited the Quilt Basket in Wappingers Falls. While the rest of the group shopped, our usual activity upon entering a quilt shop, I became entranced by the HQ16. Allan Anderson answered my questions patiently, even going so far as to show me how the quilt gets pinned to the leaders. I LOVED this machine. My group finally forced me out of the shop so we could visit the next one, but I couldn’t forget the feeling of quilting on that machine. And the Quilt Basket made sure I didn’t forget. After a few weeks, when the shop sample was removed from the frame, they mailed me the portion I quilted! That stayed pinned on my sewing room wall for a while, calling my name (well, I did write my name on it!). When my birthday rolled around in March, I decided I had suffered long enough and gave myself a present—a brand new HQ16 and the QuilTABLE. AND I didn’t even have to sell my car to pay for it!
I requested the day off from work when I was notified it would be arriving. The UPS driver from my job is the same one for my home and when he saw the name, he drove around with it all day making sure I’d be home from work when he arrived! How could I be mad at him when he finally showed up at 7 pm? Oh sure, it’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny when I was anxiously staring out the window waiting for it!
I assembled the table and loaded that machine on there myself. As you can tell from my photo, it’s not like I’m 18 and in great shape! But nothing was going to stop me from quilting on my new machine.
After practicing different designs feverishly on 5 yards of muslin for a few weeks, I began taking my finished quilts into my local shop, Pieceful Quilting, showing off what I’d quilted on my HQ16. The staff told me that a couple longarm quilters for hire had moved away recently and that customers were always asking for someone to quilt their tops. I started by quilting shop samples and gradually took on a few customers with small quilts as my courage and confidence grew. Now I have a waiting list. I still have a full time day job, but quilting for others gives me some extra income and the chance to see some gorgeous quilts.
After hearing me rave about my machine, two members of my online group now own the HQ16. Recently I test drove the HQ Fusion being demonstrated by the Quilt Basket at the Eastern Long Island Quilters Guild annual quilt show. I think the piece I quilted might show up in the mail one day soon . . . . .

I own the following HQ machine: HQ Sixteen