This was helpful to me too as I have not done any FMQ for over 25 years--lost my old Elna in a fire--and lost heart, I guess--so will be trying this when my new (old!) Viking comes!

I do this also and make a couple of stitches forward and back, then take off.

Thanks

I like to pull my bobbin thread up to the top of the quilt before starting. I pull enough of both upper and lower thread so that I can slip the threads into a quick thread "cheater" needle and burry them when I've finished. I have had advise to just take a few stitches in one place before starting and then snip the tails, but I'm becoming more and more of the opinion that those little "blobs" of thread are messy looking.

This is what I do.

That's what I do do, just don't go over the same spot repeatedly unless it's near the edge and will get covered with binding - otherwise you'll end up with a 'nubbin' of thread that will be quite obvious. If you don't pull up the bobbin thread and clip them both as soon as you sew far enough away, you might end up quilting over them, and that's hard to get out! Ask me how I know!! :)

Oh, and no matter which method you choose, you always want to bring the bobbin thread to the top at the beginning and secure it along with your top thread. This will prevent knots and thread nests underneath.[/quote]

Wish I had known to do this when quilting my GD's quilt for Christmas. I wound up with several "rat's nests" on the bottom. Of course' the top thread kept breaking which didn't help. It was the first quilt I had ever quilted and I wasn't happy with it. I'm going to have her send it back and redo it. It got the the stage where finished was better than perfect. :)

I recently purchased some spiral eye needles to make it easy to bury the threads. Here's a link:

http://www.spiraleyeneedles.com/Needles.html

You don't need to put the thread through an eye -- so the needles might not be secure enough for a lot of stitching -- but they work really well for this application. You can easily do both threads at the same time.

After watching Leah Day's video on this, I bought some "self-threading" needles at Joann's - they are not expensive - and I just love them and this method of hiding tails!

I can't express how much I keep learning on this board!!! This is a perfect example. So far I only hand quilt & do SID on my machine. Yet this will make my SID quilts look much better! Thanks every one!