koigirl

As some may know I haven't made a quilt in years and then only stitched in the ditch on the old 1963 Singer machine that had basically one setting. I have a new machine and we have gotten to know each other better. She is a Brother 9050 with all the fancy stuff and stitches plus all attachments such as a walking foot, the free motion thingy and other goodies.

The quilt top is a scrappy D9P lap quilt. It isn't pretty but its not ugly either, but wanted to make a quilt for practice without getting into the good fabric. The questions don't involve patterns or design, but more along the lines of technical. I will be machine quilting and may likely involve a couple different designs so I can play around with learning to quilt.


1) I've read to start quilting from the middle and working my way out. But, if starting in the middle, how is the beginning stitch secured so that it doesn't come undo later down the road? Or is that even a factor?

2) Is there a certain setting I should use in regards to stitch length or width or just use a setting that is already programmed in the machine?

3) Can the walking foot only be used to quilt straight lines? Or can I do gentle curves? I know the free motion foot is used for random stippling and such.

4) Has anyone ever used the fancy stitches on the machine to quilt inside the seams (about 1/4" away from seam itself) on the small pieces of the quilt block? Or is that too hard as I would have to use the different feet with the different stitches?

I may have more questions, but these are the main ones, and I am on lunch and have to get back to work. Boo Hoo! Thank in advance for all the help.