Handi Quilter HQ Amara 20

This is a frame longarm, sold with its own frame (the HQ Studio3, in a 10- or 12-foot version) rather than as a bare head: 20 inches (about 51 cm) of throat space, enough to handle a mid-to-large quilt without rolling it back and forth too often. Stitch regulation is servo-controlled and lives in the machine itself, not in a table: it keeps stitch length even from 4 to 24 stitches per inch even as your hand speeds up or slows down, and it reaches 2,500 stitches per minute.

The 7-inch color touchscreen runs the settings, and the needle laser shows where the next stitch will land, handy for following a pantograph or picking up a design you stopped midway. The high-speed rotary hook uses an M-class bobbin, larger than a domestic machine's. The machine is Pro-Stitcher ready, with the cabling already installed, though the tablet and software themselves remain a separate purchase.

It suits someone already quilting free-motion with some regularity who wants more room and speed than a sit-down machine offers; anyone without a frame yet also needs to budget for buying and setting one up.