Hiding thread ends or just cutting them off
 

I am very new to quilting, I have 4 quilts in progress. I have only finished one - a turning 20 to be donated this Christmas. Someone else quilted it LA and I put on the binding. Now - all my others are from classes I have taken. All on a quilt as you go theme. I am machine quilting but leaving tails to knot and tuck into the quilt at night while watching TV. I am thinking I will never to a stitch-in-the-ditch or echo quilting method again! Maybe I will just do some crazy meandering next time. I should say I am using a wobble type stitch, width .5 and length 3, suppose to look hand sewen. One teacher told me she just uses a straight stitch and goes over a few of her beginning stitches when ending and lets it go at that.

Opinions please, because I gotta tell ya, I sure love all you wonderful quilters have to say. I think I have learned more from this board than anywhere!

Up to you. If you plan to enter your quilt in a quilt show, you need to go through the effort of sewing your ends in. If not, then tacking them down and trimming the edge is not a big issue. Most will stay down for the life of the quilt. Some won't.

By the way, when you wash and dry your quilt, all sort of imperfections disappear, so don't worry too hard about wonky lines and curves. You are allowed to be a beginner.

Unless its a utility quilt, I usually go through the time & trouble to bury the threads. A spiral needle helps with that so you don't have to try and thread the needle. I am just now starting to try taking a couple of tacking stitches, close together, and then moving on to the free-motion pattern and then tacking stitches at the end & clipping. So far so good, and once washed it looks pretty good. Good luck & enjoy...welcome to our addiction : )

Ditto on the show advice - definitely bury them in that case. I generally try to quilt in such a way that minimizes the number of threads I'll have to bury. If I'm meandering I always start off the edge of the quilt; if I'm stitching in the ditch I plan so that I can do the minimum number of starts and stops.

I made a small quilt this past year for a show which I quilted in many different color threads, so I had a ton of stops and starts. I did bury the threads and I think it probably was in the hundreds by the time I was done. It was worth it as I did end up with a ribbon.

When I make a quilt for a family member or a child, I'm much more concerned with the stability of the quilt, so I will end each row of quilting with small stitches or a back stitch.

I'd love to see photos of your quilts!