Great answers, I'm learning a lot here. One thing I'll add is that most domestic sewing machines (not long arms or high end embroidery machines) that have a "stipple stitch" produce a 5-9mm wide stippled strip. It's a cute, fun, deco stitch. It does work for quilting through the layers. But it is so small that if you were to try to use it to fill backgrounds, you'd *go crazy *spend hours and miles of thread *end up with cardboard. It's small a close. I have a few stitches like this on my machine and when I use them to quilt a thin strip it's so closely quilted that it's stiff and very flat. Cute and useful on minis. I hope I've explained well.