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Questions about quilting a grid pattern

My rail fence quilt top has 6.25 in. finished blocks. To save time, I want to quilt it in a grid going thru the middle of each block both horizontally and vertically using purple or green rayon thread and a pretty little curvy vine/leaf stitch that my machine does. (I'm using Warm & Natural batting that can be quilted 12 in. apart, so the 6.25 in. apart grid should be safe???) I've never done an entire quiilt in a grid, so hows about some help? ;-)

  1. Should I do the verticals first going with the lengthwise grain of the backing fabric and virtually no stretch or go horizontally first and the stretchier crosswise grain?

  1. Does it matter if you quilt in different directions- for example stitch top to bottom and the next row stitch bottom to top?

TIA,

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

Reply to
Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.
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I like to work up and down.

So, say I'm doing a grid in the center of my quilt...I'll start in the top corner and sew down then in the ditch to get to the next line and the turn the quilt so I'm sewing back to the top and back and forth I go then I finally sew in the ditch to get over to the side of the quilt and turn things so I can go back and forth in the other direction. One start and one stop.

You can do the same thing to get a diagonal grid.

I prefer this to always starting and one side of the quilt and ending at the other because I have seen quilts where this has been done show some "creep". You can see the fabric is pulled to one side of the quilt. I'm sure some methods of basting would take care of that problem but I find it easy to do the way I do it so I don't worry about it and don't have the creeping problem either.

marcella

Reply to
Marcella Peek

Marcella, that sounds very interesting, but you lost me when you started in the first ditch! I was going to start in the middle of the blocks in the center row of blocks, sew thru the middle of the blocks from edge to edge and then start at the edge and make the next parallel row of quilting thru the enter of the next row of blocks.... now I'm lost! Help! LOL

Leslie & The Furbabies > I like to work up and down.

Reply to
Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

I'm not very good at all of that grain stuff, but in terms of what to do first, I can offer the wisdom I learned from a class with Kathy Sandbach this year (hopefully I'm not misquoting her lesson). She said in this kind of case, start at the top of the middle (in other words, half way between the top left and top right corner) and do all of the verticals from there out to the right edge, then turn the quilt 90 degrees, do the same thing, turn 90 degrees, do the same thing, etc. I think I've got that right and you'll eventually cover it all. :)

hope that makes sense

Lynn

Reply to
quilter

Because I said center of quilt I was meaning blocks in the center with a border all around. If you're just grid quilting through the blocks part then you can get to the next line of stitching by sneaking down the ditch between the block and border.

If your quilt doesn't have a border then you can just go off the edge of your quilt. But I do like to alternate direction even if I'm doing it this way.

Does that help?

marcella

Reply to
Marcella Peek

Reply to
Taria

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