Sewing Machine Advice requested

[JaneV2.0]

I've made quilt tops on my Bernina and an antique Singer Featherweight. For quilting on a bed sized quilt, a larger harp space would be useful.

[sweetana3]

Interesting perspective. I do everything on a single machine: tailored clothing, I made a new canvas cover for our tent trailer way back, I quilt, I mend......not sure why this is your perspective?

My machine's throat size makes it difficult to quilt a large project. It is fussy about too many thicknesses of heavy fabric. What it does, fancy stitching and lots of piecing of all kinds with the necessary bells and whistles, it does well.

If someone wants to do heavy duty or multi layer work, I suggest ensuring the machine they are considering can do it. My friend's machine could not handle machine binding over 6 layers plus batting and neither could mine. If they want to quilt large projects in one piece, a wider throat is very helpful. Not that you cannot do most anything with a vintage Singer which I also own, but things like needle threader, needle up and down control, knee lift, etc. are not on most vintage/antique machines. Just like I use only 2 of the feet for my machine, I only use three stitches of the 500 my machine can do.

I just found a free motion quilting foot for the Singer Featherweight so most anything is possible with enough work. Just wanted them to know to check because depending on what use you want, the machine can be too small, too cheap, or unable to fulfill the need.