Recently bought one from a friend. My main interest in the machine is to quilt with it. Was wondering if any of you have cards you no longer want and want to sell or if anyone knows of some sources where I can buy them. I want to see how I do with it before purchasing a new one.

I quilted with one years ago. It's slow and tedious. The hoops won't take the thickness of the quilt. The real problem is it takes two people or more to hold the weight of the quilt up as the machine stitches. That Deco just doesn't have much power. The newest is much faster but the format is different so cards won't work. We were quilting a school mascot for a present. I've only done it twice since and only with a newer Deco so it's a lot faster and only with a wallhanging.

I agree with EvelynB.

You might find some free designs on the internet, but then you would need a reader/writer box to make a card to insert in the Deco.

You might try using a "Hoop It All" hoop, using the sticky stabilizer. Think the site is www.hoopitall.com

When I bought my Deco 500 used, wanted to mostly make the quilt labels. That Deco is still going.

In Jeanine Twigg's series of books, there is one on quilting. It comes with a disk with some designs on it, but still need to get the designs to the Deco. You might be interested in the first one in the series, it is on basic embroidery.

You can also embroidery some designs on squares, do your piecing to make quilt tops. You could also just embroidery quilting designs on small pices of the quilt sandwich, then piece those together. That would overcome the weight of the quilt issue. The hoop does need to move freely to do machine embroidery.

Good luck and have fun with your new toy. You will find that you will be able to do a lot with it.

Keep the info coming. I have a lot to learn. I agree with the weight problem but I am a huge fan of quilt as you go and thought I could combine the two. For sure I don't want to try and get a full quilt on there but table runners and wallhangings should not be a problem and quilt as you go should work fine I HOPE.

I don't have much to add except that I did have one for a long time. I learned to do m.e. on it. I had the scanner so I digitized with it, by drawing by hand and I had a lot of fun. I had a ton of designs and about 6 mos. ago sold them on: SewItsForSale -one of Yahoo's groups. If you go on there and post a ISO "In Search Of" you'll be surprised on how many responses you'll get. I now use a Bernina 630.