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Quilt "build-up on the Lenni take-up roller


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I have a Lenni with a 12' frame, and will be quilting my first king sized quilt. I am planning to use a pantograph or all over free motion design. I am concerned about the loss of quiltable space on that relatively narrow frame as the quilted sandwich builds up around the take-up roller. The quilt is 100" wide (which I can handle), and 112" long (which will all wind up on the roller). If you have a estimate of the number of inches of quiltable space I'll lose as I come near the end of the quilt, it will help me decide on how wide of a design I can use. Thanks.

 

Sharon

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Nigel, that's true when you are quilting near the leveler bar. But as the quilt builds up on the roller, the back of the machine will eventually hit the quilt build up, reducing the quiltable space. The machine won't be able to move as far forward as it did when there was not any quilt on the take up roller.

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Sharon

You are absolutely right.  Sometimes I should keep quiet until I look at my machine.  It's never been an issue for me with the larger throat.  Your choice of batting will have a big influence though.  Ok I looked at my machine.  The maximum it can be is the distance from the bottom of your take up roller to the inside of your machine about three and a half  to four inches on mine.  At that point you will have heavy drag and be unable to quilt at all.

 

Nigel

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Sharon:  I lose about an inch and a half on my machine as I go from nothing on the take up roller to the end of the quilt.  My Ult 2 has about 14.5" stroke at the beginning, and about 13" when I'm done.  I don't think that your Lenni has quite that much stroke to begin with, but my guess is that the loss would be pretty much the same.  Therefore, start by measuring the starting stroke, and then subtract the inch and a half to give you and idea of the finishing quilting field.  Hope this helps.  Jim 

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Oh, by the way, it's the front part of the machine that hits the take up roller and the rolled quilt, not the back.  The arched "hoop" of the machine accommodates the take up roll in the back, but the flat back side of the hopping foot/needle bar enclosure is where you lose stroke.  Jim

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At the risk of restating the obvious: I just measured, and with nothing on the take up roller, I have a max stroke of 14.75 inches, stop to stop. The forward stroke is stopped by the arched hoop hitting the take up roller, and the stroke back is stopped when the machine head hits the take up roller. As the quilt accumulates on the take up roller the quiltable space will be reduced both as the arched hoop hits the quilt on the forward stroke and the machine head hits the quilt on the back stroke.  I will load a large lap quilt tomorrow, and will measure the loss in quiltable space as I go along. I can extrapolate that to estimate the amount of quiltable space left when I get to the bottom of the king sized quilt top that came into the studio today.  I will then get a good idea of the width of a pantograph I can safely use.

 

I love my Lenni (whose real name is Margie), but a larger machine is somewhere in my future!

 

Thanks to all for helping me think this through!! I really appreciate the APQS community.

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Sharon:

 

Why don't you just take some batting scraps put together a 120  inch length.  Then just tape some fat quarter together for a top and back, and then roll it up on the roller bar.  That would give you a TLAR (that looks about right) amount of quilt space you lose.  I only have a George, but I would guess that the space will change depending on how tightly you wind the sandwich around the roller bar.  Someone might be able to tell you how to wind the sandwich tighter around the roller bar, without making the guilt too tight to affect our quilting.  Best of luck to you.

 

Cagey

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Nigel:  You're right about the points of contact when there is nothing on the rollers.  However, when a quilt is rolled up on the take-up roller, the quilt contacts the the back of the sewing part of the machine.  Maybe the "hoop" on the Ult 1 is high enough that the rolled up quilt (approx. 5 inches in dia.) doesn't contact the front of the machine before the  hopping foot hits the leveling roller or back of the machine touches it, but that's not the case on my machine.  Now my 4 roller table is probably a little bit different in dimension than the Lenni, but I think the problems are probably the same, certainly the hoops are the same.

 

I very carefully structured my table to mitigate these restraints and maximize the quilting field I'd have.  I did raise the take-up roller in my configuration to keep the leveling roller/take-up roller to the smallest depth I could.  Perhaps my take-up roller is closer to the front of the machine than the Lenni's standard configuration.  If that's the case, maybe the rolled quilt doesn't hit the front of the machine on a Lenni before it hits the back.  But it does on mine.  I guess Sharon should roll fabric or batting around the take-up roller to make a 5 or 5.5" dia roll, and see where it hits the front and back or the machine, and then measure the stroke she has, so she knows exactly how much room she has.  Jim 

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  • 2 months later...

I quilted a series of quilts( 20) that were up to 24 feet long!!!!!!!!

 

I did do the maths and measurements of how much space it took up on the back roller but did not write the details down as I was doing a freehand from the front of the machine.  I would most likely have photos of the measuring if I wanted to search for them.

 

From memory I lost almost 4" from the quilt space on my Millenium.  Not much room between the back bar and the leveller bar with that much quilt.

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