Stippling or Meandering
 

I am a self-taught quilter-learning everything from you wonderful ladies and gentlemen on the board. My question is why don't you want to cross the sewn lines when you meander or stipple a quilt? Does it harm the quilt or make the thread not as strong? Just curious.

No not at all. It is just that not crosisng a line is the perfect way to do it and it looks great. It is not a big deal if you cross a line here and there. Does not harm the quilt or the thread - just gets the quilt police worked up!

I think it is a style - nothing to do with harm or weak thread. of course, your quilt, your style, and lots of folks do cross over.

I try not to cross lines. Sometimes I do and just go on. No rules on it and no quilt police either.

I loop-d-loop and throw other elements like leaves, flowers, stars, spirals, etc, into my meandering all the time. The quilt police have yet to show up at my door.

Meandering with crossed lines goes more into the realm of loops which is a different style. General guideline of meandering is not to cross lines. Stippling is a tighter kind of meandering.

Isn't it amazing what you learn here? As I practice all my FMQ - I am just happy if I can get it to look uniform, I seem to get smaller as I go......I'll worry about crossing later.

the difference between stippling and meandering is---stippling no line crosses or touches---meandering means you 'meander' all sometimes stars, flowers, hearts, what ever- butterflies---what ever you want to meander across your quilt- the lines often touch and cross. back when quilting was predominantly done by hand people did not want their stitches to cross- (stippling) because the thread might (with friction) break with wear & tear- it is not as much of an issue now days with better quality threads and more machine quilting being done- now it's more of a design decision- if you want to meander you can (draw-doodle) anything you want meandering across your quilt----stippling is making the puzzle like designs without your lines crossing- if you enter a show and state you stippled the quilt the judges will check to see if you crossed lines---if you meander it crossing lines is perfectly ok.

lol, accepted? I'm guessing you are talking about judged quilts ;-)