Originally Posted by
NatalieF
It seems like no matter how well I sandwich my quilt together, or how many pins or dabs of glue I use that I get puckers (tucks, gathers?) when quilting, especially when quilted lines intersect so I wind up with small tucks in certain spots. This happens with a walking foot at that. I'll be sewing along and all of a sudden I have a bunch of loose material in front of my foot.
I don't know if my batting is too fluffy to get a good taut top, or what I'm doing wrong. Or is this a problem that everyone gets and you just roll with it? Maybe I'm just fooling myself into thinking I'm using enough pins?
what kind of bat are you using? a cotton/poly (80/20) is probably the easiest--higher loft poly bats really seem to give trouble. are you starting from the middle of the quilt and working out? That way you can adjust your pins. when I was quilting on my DSM, I found that the fusible bat always needed adjusting and really didn't work like I had hoped. I've never used glue but it may work the same way--I needed to be able to unpin and smooth as I worked out. Also, on doing lines, you need to be sure that you switch the direction which you are working so that it doesn't stretch as much. Your pins should be about the width of your hand (side to side) apart. Once I figured out using the hopping foot and FMQ I found even doing lines with that foot worked smoother than my walking foot--but you have to go slow and mark the lines. Also, long lines of quilting across the quilt are more likely to stretch the fabric and you'll get those tucks--so try to design your quilt design so that you can break the lines more (and re-smooth the top!)