Originally Posted by vivientan
It seems like a few of you are not in favour of SID. This is my first time trying to machine quilt. Is SID a recommended method for beginners to machine quilting? If not, what would be another fast and easy technique? As mentioned, I'm not ready to do free motion quilting. My stitches look horrible! haha
SID provokes too much anxiety in me while I am doing it (keeping eyes glued on seamline), plus I'm bothered by the inevitable deviations from an exact straight line.
My favored method is to use a walking foot (feed dogs up) and simply guide the quilt to make wavy lines. With a walking foot you can guide the fabric to the right and left to make gently curving lines. These lines can be done in one direction only (always working from edge-to-edge) or in both directions to create cross-hatching. It's easiest to work top-to-bottom first, then side-to-side; however, if you're comfortable sewing on bias (and have heavily starched everything) you can also do cross-hatching on the diagonal.
Whatever machine quilting method you use, I advice starching as much as possible before starting. Starching stabilizes the fabric so it is less likely to stretch and distort and minimizes the chance for puckers. I like to *heavily* starch the backing fabric before layering. The top can be spray starched before layering. If the sandwich is already layered, even just spray starching several times (using a large flat sheet to catch any overspray, and no ironing) helps prevent puckers.