rryder

I think you mentioned that your current domestic machine has a 10" throat. There are several domestic machines that have larger throat spaces in addition to the Viking that someone mentioned.

The new Brother VQ2400 and its more expensive sibling the VQ3000 have 11.25" throats. I'm not sure of the actual selling prices, though our local dealer told me the MSRP on the VQ2400 is $4000. You could almost certainly get it for less, but I'm not sure that the extra inch and a quarter would really help you out all that much.

The Bernina B8 series have 12" throats, I'm not sure of the price if purchased new. I have seen a number of used B820s sell on ebay for the $3000-$4000 range--but you wouldn't have a warranty.

If you find that your long arm is still not enjoyable after trying some of the trouble shooting suggestions that have been mentioned, perhaps you could try a couple of things that have helped me when quilting large quilts on my domestic machines which both have only 7" throats.

The largest quilt I've quilted without doing the QAYG joining strip thing was 81" square. The way I was able to do it was to split my batting. It was still a pain in the butt and I didn't enjoy it all that much, but it was the only way I could get enough of the quilt into the harp space and still have room for my hands when free motion quilting the middle of the quilt. I find that I enjoy doing FMQ on lap quilts and twin sized quilts on my machines as there is plenty of room for my hands to move the quilt around with those sizes. I accordian fold my quilts all around the machine, both in the throat space and also the parts of the quilt that stick out the back, side and front, that makes it easier for me to flatten the part that I'm actively quilting and it helps to keep the other parts of the quilt from getting hung up and creating drag. For quilts larger than twin size, I start quilting the middle section before I add borders. Once that's quilted it's not too hard to add borders using Marti Michell's techniques. You can FMQ the borders first, or you can add them to the already quilted top an then quilt them. There is still a lot of quilt to move around, but it doesn't have to go through the throat of the machine that way.

I have created a makeshift suspension system similar to the one that Leah Day uses and that has really helped with managing the quilts. I even use it when I'm binding my quilts and it has really helped to relieve the strain on my shoulders, neck and back that I used to get when doing that task.

Ann Peterson has a couple of courses on Craftsy that show a number of ways to quilt large quilts on a domestic machine. She's an excellent teacher and it may be worth it to you to take one of her courses to see if they help you FMQ with your current machine's harp space before plunking mega bucks down on a new machine that may not have enough additional harp space to make a difference.

Rob