I've been making quilt tops for a while and have started to learn about free motion quilting on my home machine. I feel very frustrated as most of the books I have or look at don't tell you much about the mechanics of quilting a top from start to finish. The pretty much give basic instructions on basting your quilting and binding the finished product but just say go off and quilt it........ I personally can't afford a fancy qulting machine setup or to have it professionally done, so I am trying to get better at doing it myself.
For instance, the binding I apply is very flat and not at all full. I was looking recently at a quilt someone was in the middle of binding and noted that the quilting design stopped about 1/4 from the edge leaving a nice fluffy batting edge to fill the binding. Well I've been quilting off the edge of mine to maintain a 'continuous' look. How do you stay continuous but preserve that 1/4 unquilted for the binding? Another tip I stumbled across was how to pull your bobbin thread up to the top when you start. All this stuff must be written down somewhere. Anyways, I suppose I am just wondering is there a really good book or two that is on how to quilt on your home machine -- not just patterns to use making tops or when quilting, but the true mechanics of doing it on your own?
Sorry to rant. Please help.
Adri