Originally Posted by misseva
bummer! you can tell I know nothing about a 127. maybe stopping & resewing over previous stitches IS the only way except to turn it around and that's not fun even on small items much less a quilt.
There's another trick I learned whilst making historical costumes. I still use this method for sharp darts and stitched down pleats... and it occurs to me that it might could be used to help stabilize a seam - but it would take a relatively long time to do so. Might not be 'worth' it.
You first sew onto a scrap piece of cloth, then sew off that and take a few stitches 'in air' before sliding the real work under the foot. Sew the seam as normal. When get to the end of the work, continue sewing off the material, taking several stitches 'in air'. Stop, cut threads so that you have long 'tails' at both beginning and ending of the work seam. Then at the beginning and at the end, use the two tails to tie a series of small knots at the edge of the fabric. Cut tails.
This is something... like i said... you do for garment/costume and 'finish' sewing. But it might help in this case too.
When I'm doing 'assembly line' quilt block sewing, I don't bother with backtacking at all. I first sew a scrap piece of cloth to the edge, the abutt the 1st of the blocks up/under the needle, assembly line sewing all the blocks, then sew off the last block and onto an ending scrap piece. Then you don't get all the thread snarls on the bottom of your work when starting on small bits of quilting.... I saw this on Bonnie Hunter's quilting site. She calls it, 'using leaders and enders'.