I also like the look of crosshatch and it's fairly easy on a DSM with the little bar tool.

Yes, wonderful hints to fill up by quilting brain! Thank you!

Thank you for sharing this useful information. I have always hand quilted but it take too long so have started to machine quilt. It appears that simplicity is the key for a beginner like myself.

Sounds like she understands quilting well. I agree with her on every point. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the tips. I let my quilt top talk to me as far as design. I like curves as they soften sharp edges and points. I use pattern/square intersections as landmarks for my design. I usually use an air erasable (Leonis is my favorite low cost option for this - Amazon) to mark my quilts. A walking foot does beautiful curves. I look for as few of starts/stops as I can so I have fewer threads to tie off and bury. Stencils are good starting points for quilting motifs. I often will use a part of a stencil rather than the whole pattern. I often draw out the quilt section on a piece of paper. Then I copy it and use that to audition different quilting motifs on it. When I find one I like I save it for future use. For example if I'm working with 5" squares in one quilt chances are I'll do a quilt in the future with 5" squares. I also look on line at quilts and pay close attention to how they are quilted. I can then adapt some of those ideas to mine. I don't expect that quilting will be a fast project. Often times it takes me as long or longer to quilt than it did to piece. I use white thread for most of my quilting. Small print backing will take most quilting motifs and hide any boo boos.