decorative stiches - need advice
 

OK, so I want to do some decorative stitching on a quilt that has cotton sandwiched with minky. I tried the stitches on a scrap piece of cotton on minky; didn't work too well. Then I put typing paper underneath and it worked fine, so I tried water soluble tear away stabilizer and that worked fine too. But I've tried 3 times on the actual quilt with stabilizer and paper, and it doesn't sew it right. Why would that be? It scrunches up the design. I'm reluctant to try again, because I don't want to ruin the quilt top, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks!

on the sample pieces are they exactly the same as the quilt, same top, same bottom, same middle ???? could it be dragging some where from the total weight ?????

That's what's so weird, they are the same--I just put a piece of the same cotton along the edge of the minky backing. And it's not dragging. I just don't know what it could be.

I tried quilting with a minkee back one time and had to give up and tie the quilt. I had a terrible time with it. But if it's being used as batting I don't understand why it would be so much trouble.

So, I got it working, but it wasn't easy. First I put on the monogramming foot instead of the walking foot; not sure that helped at all. Then I saw that I needed to really encourage it to move forward during the forward part of the stitching, and stay in place when it was sewing in place--I slowed down to the lowest speed possible and counted out the forward moving stitches as I pushed slightly, and counted out the in-place stitches as it stitched in place. Whew!
I don't understand why the feeding didn't work right even with a stabilizer, but it's done, and I'm happy now.

possibly the stabilizer is what is dragging (sticking to the bed of the machine)

I don't think so--it was much worse without the stabilizer.