My First Quilting With the Retro-Fit

Here is a photo of the first quilting I did with my newly retro-fitted Gammill Classic Plus. I put some muslin on the machine and drew some borders and blocks with a water soluble pen. Once I started quilting I realized that the verticle and horizontal channel locks would do a much better job at quilting straight, parallel lines than what I could do with a ruler and pen. So, away I went!

The feathers quilted up smoothly, too. It is so much easier to backtrack now that I can slow down in those places. I still need practice to get used to the way this machine quilts and moves, though.

Part of the retro-fit package included the Easy Glider wheels and 4 of the new beveled wheels. They are great and quilting is much smoother on the diagonal now. The machine goes where I want it to go and I don't have to get a strangle hold on the handles to keep the machine going on the diagonal. I had the older wheels with the white writing on the sides of them and had been contemplating switching to the Easy Glider wheels. Now it's done and I'm thrilled.

I also have the newer needle bar, and the new thread guide that is right above the needle as opposed to being on the side.

This machine is so much fun! Since I don't have to worry about keeping up with the machine, I can concentrate on the quality of quilting. That means much less frogging! Yippee!

This is the first customer quilting done on the retro-fit.

One thing I realized while I was at Gammill's headquarters and playing on their machines, is that my quilting frame is too high. I was so much more comfortable quilting on the showroom machine, so we measured the heighth and it was 2 inches lower than my frame. Last night DH and I lowered my frame and today I'll be quilting on it to see if this is a better heighth for me.

DD#1 is going to do some quilting today, too. She's been wanting to quilt for quite some time, but I needed to get caught up on customer quilts. I have a day to spare between quilts so I'll get her started on a practice muslin piece this afternoon. She also has been bugging me to get an account on FaceBook, so I had her set me up on that. It's going to be her job to help me keep it updated.

So if you are considering upgrading your Gammill to a stitch-regulated model, I can recommend it. It's so much easier to quilt with and it allows me to concentrate more on the quilting design instead of worrying about keeping up with the speed of the machine. I feel I have much more control than before.