I bought my first longarm from Craigslist and was so excited! I loaded fabric and batting and began to stitch. The stitching looked horrible. The tension was really bad the thread was laying on the top like a straight line. That meant the upper thread is too tight or the bobbin thread is too loose. I wasn't afraid to adjust the tension because I thought it's nothing more than a big sewing machine. The first thing to do was get the bobbin tension fixed. I removed the bobbin,

Drat. I just finished a quilt and discovered that the computer missed a small area because of the quilt pattern being cropped. I had already trimmed it so I needed to reload in order to finish quilting the missed area. I pinned tabs of fabric onto the top edge of the quilt to load it onto the take up bar. Next I used magnetic bars that I purchased at Home Depot to hold the bottom of the quilt. Longarmers call this “floating the quilt” when it's not rolled up onto the longar

Longarm maintenance is important to keep your machine running smoothly. We have paid a lot of money for this equipment and want it to last for a long time. I'm going to talk about Handi Quilter because that's what I have. Every time I put in a new bobbin I use a brush and really get in there and brush the lint out of the bobbin area. You need to really get the brush way back in all around the whole bobbin area. I'm always surprised at how much lint comes out of there. Just a