What is stippling and how do you do it?

A picture is worth a thousand words.

http://www.ohfransson.com/oh_fransso...-quilting.html

Type quilt stippling tutorial in Google search & you will find more tutorials or videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg3xk...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpUww...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-d_c...eature=related

Here are several videos which will give you a good idea of stippling. Basically it is a free motion design that wanders or you can pretend as if you are drawing with your needle. The experts say don't come close to previous stitches, but it is really up to you. You usually use a darning foot, put feeds down, and guide fabric with your hands.

If you have a longarm or midarm you move the machine to do the wandering.

What a nice, conversational tutorial! :D

thanks for the links

Very carefully!

A little trick I use to keep my sizing fairly regular is to visualize a marble (or sometimes one of the larger buckeye type marbles) as the diameter of the loopy bit in stippling.

I've hear other people who visualize puzzle pieces. IF you do a lot of jigsaw puzzles, you have a sense of the basic size and shapes, and can translate that to your stippling.

I actually find the act of stipple quilting to be very boring, but I think it is often a good choice of quilting style.

RST

Just to mention it - you can also do stippling by hand. The rows of handquilting are done very close to each other and it looks like that:

Very Very carefully! LOL

As I understand it, stippling is smaller (tighter) meandering.

To do either it takes practice, practice, and more practice.

I am now comfortable to do meandering. But have not tackled stippling (but getting closer). Before I start meandering on my quilt, I pull out a scrap sandwich and do a short practice before I start on the quilt. This gives my mind and body some warm up to get in the groove.

When quilting you need to find your "sweet spot". That is where you and your stitches and machine are working together. It may be fast, medium or slow. Mine is in the medium area. But my friend leans closer to fast. We each have our own "sweet spot"