GGal I have tried many different ways of quilting reasonably large quilts, start from the centre and work your way out to the edge, start on one side and work work way across the quilt, just pick a random area and work on that, but I always seemed to get puckers in the backing.. So now I spray baste my quilt and do all the stitch in the ditch work and voila no puckers, it now doesn't matter how long I take to do the free motion work everything is stitched in place and I get no movement. I can fold the quilt up and come back to when I have the time. Hope this helps