Quilting Robot: From Quilting Bees to ABB Sewing Cells

In a quilt shop or a home studio, a quilting robot usually means a longarm sewing machine with a computer at the controls. The machine rolls on rails over a frame 10 to 14 feet long, and the computer steers the needle through a stored pattern while the quilter loads the fabric and watches the thread. This post traces how quilts were finished before machines, from quilting bees around a wooden frame to hand cranked quilting machines and the first computerized longarm in the early 1990s. Then it looks at longarms moving into local shops this autumn and at ABB's robotic sewing cell, and asks what could come next.

A longarm quilting machine with a tablet screen at Quilting Studio, a quilting supply shop in Mexico City, in 2017. Photo: Thelmadatter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Quilting bees, wooden frames and hand cranked machines

For most of quilting's history, the last step of stitching the top, the batting and the backing together was done by hand with a running stitch, and in North America that work often turned into a party. Colonial Americans used the word bee for many shared jobs, and the term quilting bee took hold in the 19th century for women meeting to finish a quilt together. Older names include quilting frolic and quilting party. The diarist Martha Ballard noted quilting gatherings in the late 18th century, and Susan B. Anthony gave her first speeches for women's rights at quilting bees as a teenager.

Two Amish women quilting by hand in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in March 1941. Photo: Irving Rusinow, U.S. National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

A photo of a quilting bee from the 1910s shows how simple the equipment was: four pieces of wood clamped together at the corners with iron clamps, resting on four chairs about two and a half feet off the ground. Four or more women could sit around the frame and work on the same quilt at once. Amish and Mennonite communities in the United States and Canada still quilt by hand with a frame or a hoop. In Canada, quilting bees also came back during both world wars, when the quilts went to soldiers overseas and to British families who had lost their homes in the bombing.

A quilting bee in the 1910s, with the wooden frame clamped at the corners and set on chairs. Photo: Richard from USA / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

The sewing machine led to the idea of a quilting machine, which made its debut in 1871, according to the history of longarm quilting on Wikipedia. Its frame had just two bars, so the user moved the quilt and frame under the needle to sew straight, parallel lines. By about 1877 the design looked much like a modern longarm, and before electricity the operator moved the machine along its rails with a hand crank. Longarms today keep that layout, with a heavy sewing head on wheels running on tracks and rollers that hold the top, batting and backing taut. APQS says it has built such machines in Carroll, Iowa, for more than 40 years.

A longarm quilting machine with a quilt loaded on its frame in a sewing room, 2008. Photo: Jessica Hartman / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Computer guided longarms in shops and home studios

The step from machine to robot came in the early 1990s. Gammill, which builds its longarms at a factory in Missouri, says Paul Statler created a computerized quilting system and chose a Gammill machine to carry it, durability being one reason. He made the first one for his wife, Mildred. Quilter Kim Diamond saw it and wanted to buy that very machine, and Gammill says she still quilts on it. The Statler line now comes with more than 1,000 patterns and CreativeStudio software for edge to edge or custom designs. A Statler Ascend system costs $48,999 to $57,999 including delivery and training, and a $26,999 retrofit lets an older Gammill stitch hands free.

Close view of the Mexico City longarm, with its handlebars, a small control screen and a tablet above the quilt. Photo: Thelmadatter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Local news this autumn shows longarms moving into small businesses. On 19 October, We-Ha reported that Hartford Stitch, a sewing school in West Hartford, had moved to a larger storefront where it can offer something it could not before: a longarm quilting machine, equipment that can cost thousands of dollars. The long throat gives students room to work on big quilts without bunching the fabric. In El Paso, the new fabric shop Quiltfield opened in early October with plans for professional longarm quilting for customers finishing their own projects. And at a quilt show in Flandreau on 10 October, speaker Billie Jo Howard described the longarm service she runs from her home in Spirit Lake, Iowa.

A simple quilting machine in Haikou, China, its sewing arm running on a geared track over a quilt clipped to a frame. Photo: Anna Frodesiak / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

For factories, ABB sells a robot cell built around a sewing machine. The OmniVance Sewing Cell pairs an ABB IRB 930 SCARA robot with a Brother programmable pattern sewer rated at up to 2,800 stitches a minute. Inside an enclosure 2.1 metres square, the cell destacks pieces of fabric, leather or foam, a vision system locates them, and the robot feeds them through the synchronized sewing machine and unloads the result. ABB says this cuts manual intervention in textile sewing by 40 to 50 percent. The cell is aimed at car seat covers and trim, takes parts up to 750 by 500 millimetres, and is programmed with ABB's SewingWare on the FlexPendant.

ABB's IRB 930 SCARA robot next to a Brother sewing machine inside the OmniVance Sewing Cell. Photo: ABB

Where quilting robots could go next

Frank Henderson, chief executive of Henderson Sewing Machine Co. in Andalusia, Alabama, told Specialty Fabrics Review on 1 October that factory automation works best on flat handling steps such as sheets, pillowcases, pockets and cuffs. "We are not affecting the sewing," he said. "We are affecting the material handling." Quilt blocks are flat pieces sewn edge to edge, so piecing them in a cell like OmniVance is a possibility. ABB markets the cell for car interiors and says it can be adapted to other textile and garment work, but it does not mention quilts. Finished quilts are also much bigger than the cell's part limit, so it could only help with the smaller pieces.

The OmniVance Sewing Cell, a glass enclosure holding the robot, the sewing machine and the parts trays. Photo: ABB

In homes and small studios, a robot is more likely to arrive as a helper beside the longarm. ABB says its GoFa CRB 15000 cobot can work directly alongside people without fencing, uses integrated torque sensors to limit power and force, and can be positioned by moving the arm by hand. In a quilting business such an arm could in principle load fabric or swap bobbins, though we found no example of that yet. Researchers are also stretching what the longarm itself can make. In 2025 a Carnegie Mellon team used a CNC longarm with a 32 inch reach and a 13 foot frame to stitch plywood and acrylic panels between layers of fabric, making a foldable chair, a lamp and a backpack.

Moving a GoFa CRB 15000 arm by hand, the way a position is taught without writing code. Photo: ABB

Cost comes first. Gammill's complete systems start at $16,499 and its top computerized model goes past $57,000, while ABB's sewing cell weighs 800 kilograms and leaves part specific grippers and part programming out of its standard scope. Then there are skills. Digitizing patterns and planning stitch paths is software work, much like building robot programs in RobotStudio. Safety matters around a fast needle, and ABB's cell runs behind glass walls with access doors. Meanwhile hand quilting, Wikipedia notes, is enjoying a resurgence worldwide. For more on robots and thread, see our post on the embroidery robot.

The FlexPendant showing ABB's SewingWare screen for the OmniVance Sewing Cell. Photo: ABB

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