Gigi59

Thanks Gail, My husband and I looked at it again this morning,  we noticed one side arm was tilted slightly forward, so just realigning the side arms, allowed the ruler base to slide with ease under the quilt top bar.  Such an easy fix, as usual, it ended up being our error. Thanks again for your input, it’s always very helpful!

Thanks again to everyone.  I’ve taken out what little basting I had on the bottom2/3 of my quilt, pinning lots as I go now and trying the floating.  It’s looking much better!

Safety pins work fine.  The one benefit they offer is that they don'e accidentally come out.  Use whatever you like.  The point being that you must stabilize the quilt before you roll.  Jim

Sorry, I missed your post earlier.  I do a ton of quilting around embroidery and applique.  I machine baste the sides then use pins around the areas I'm working on and remove them as I finish the area.    I float my quilts,  so I also have pvc clamps to hold the bottom of my sandwich firm on the roller it's draping. However, it sounds like your not floating the quilt.  Sorry Jim,  I never heard of using safety pins on our longarms, not to say it wouldn't work.  I would think small safety pins would roll fine.   Amy (APQS educator) suggests using the flower pins, they are very flexible  but be careful of getting stabbed by them. 

Generally when pinning for longarm quilting, you use straight pins not safety pins.  The pins should be a hands width or less apart.  You will be pinning all of the unquilted areas, leaving the pins in until you are ready to quilt that area.  Some do all of the SID on a quilt, pinning the rest; some do all of one colour thread, pinning the rest.  Make sense?

Hi there - 
 
I just cut this from another post I wrote a little bit ago... maybe it'll help you.
My new Lenni arrived a few weeks ago and I'm just now getting to be able to practice (mostly) daily for an hour or so.  I noticed the other day after several hours of practice, that there was a harmonic vibrating sound coming from the top of the back of the machine - the 'hood' is loose around the top part of the machine in the back - screwed on.  After searching the forums I found it was not unique and after reading some of the 'fixes' people had - I used a few small felt pad circles (the kind that go on the bottom of chair legs to slide/protect) tucked in at the edges and VOILA - no more sound/vibration!