I need some help. I going to quilt a 60 X 70 quilt on my domestic sewing machine. The quilt is safety pin basted. The blocks are 6 1/2" and there is sashing. In the blocks I'm going to FM a simple design. And I know something has to be done in sashing but not sure what.
BUT - a friend suggested that before I do anything I should stabilize the quilt at least with one line of stitches down the center top to bottom and one across the center from left to right. I don't usually stabilize because I don't like the look of that stitching interferring with my FM quilting. But in this case along the sashing as close to in the ditch as possible might be the "sashing" quilting needed. The cornerstones formed by stabiliizing can then be quilted with a smaller version of the block quilting. SO, how do I stabilize on each side of the sashing. Do I go from top to bottom and do all the vertical lines and then do all the horizontal lines? Or, one vertical, one horizontal, one vertical, one horizontal....... If all vertical first then do I start at center of quilt and do center to right, then go back an do center to left? And then do the same for horizontal lines? Or is there another way.
You can see I need some help. My first impulse was to quilt in the blocks first and then see what I thought was appropriate for the sashing, until friend said you really should stabilize the quilt first.
What do you do, or, how would you do it?
Thanks for you help with this, I'll let you know how I finally do it and if I can figure out how to post a picture I'll do that too.
Peel