Well, for years I quilted on a vintage machine that could not lower it's feed dogs nor did it have a walking foot. There are others here who do marvelous things on vintage machines, but usually they lower their dogs or have a darning plate. With my vintage machine I couldn't do much more than straight grids or gentle curves like with an orange peel or clamshell design. I could get fancier going around the border, but it took me a couple of years of baby quilts to do that or to do up to king-sized (which I managed to do!).
Does your machine have a way to change the foot pressure? That might be a start.
I really like spray baste better than pins, and I'm going to try glue in the near future. When we say a lot of pins the general thing is to not be able to put your hand down without landing on a pin, or about 4", it takes hundreds. Again, I like spray baste better! But I tied my quilts when I started, and then I machine quilted with pins, and now I machine quilt with spray baste and when I can I try and get behind a long arm!
Edit: Forgot to mention that people tend to have more problems with the bottom/backing. Highly recommend using busy prints at first. Really bad pleats can simply be hand/invisible stitched down. Typically you want your back at least 2-4 inches larger than the top to account for shrinkage.
Last edited by Iceblossom; 11-13-2019 at 11:47 AM.