Thank you, everyone.
quilting curious, I have my 301 in a Kenmore cabinet so I have a large surface. It sits near a vintage Necchi in a cabinet, so I have that available, too. The ironing board goes behind me on the left. When the quilt is sandwiched (the Sharon Schamber method with the boards worked great)and pinned, then I go to the machine and start FMQ. I start anywhere and work my way around. The quilt is puddled around the needle area. Oh, a quilting foot from april1930sshoppe is my choice. I have a piece of heavy vinyl from JoAnn's for the quilt to slide around on. Plus, F &P quilting gloves.
This quilt was allover meander because I wanted the rounded curves with such an angular pattern. My past ones - ( I am a newbie, too, just over a year) were done block by block. I did a lot of thread painting in the panels on my son's wildlife quilt. The 301 will do whatever I ask of her, except put the needle down when I stop. That would be a blessing in FMQ, but what is, is. I just need to be sure nothing has shifted before I resume quilting when I stop, which is often. I usually do a flower and leaf continuous pattern for the border, but this quilt just wanted descending figure eights.
For stitch in the ditch to secure borders, I use a SITD foot from the same site. On this quilt I used a huge serpentine stitch centered in the first black border. I recenty rescued a vintage MW machine and wanted to try it out. FMQ is one of those things that you just have to sit down and do it. I haven't used a pattern or stencil yet.
You can go my started threads and look for ones that have 'birthday' in the heading. The back of the Carpenter Star shows the quilting well. Just don't look too closely!