I started hand quilting my king size quilt tonight. This is my first ever quilt and I had decided to do Big Stitch quilting because obviously I can't do the tiny stitches yet.

So, I taped painter's tape corner to corner diagonally and managed to quilt from corner to corner on one side.

It looks terrible as I started out big stitching, but my stitches are getting smaller and smaller and more stitches per inch. I really tried to make them bigger. I don't know why I can't. But it looks bad because it's not consistent. One end has small stitches and one end has big long stitches.

try using tigers tape or mark the painters tape every half inch so that you have a visual gauge to guide you

Try the Tigers Tape, it will help. Another quilter I know used to scratch marks on her needles to help keep her stitches consistant.

I practiced on checkered fabric to get the feel of consistent length stitches.

It's possible your "big stitch" quilting will be smaller than the next person's. No problem if the thread and needle can handle smaller stitches; it's consistency that counts.


Jan in VA

This is not easy!!!!!

Persistence pays off...don't quit now!

It sounds like you can do the smaller stitches easier than you first thought. Maybe you could keep the smaller stitches and take out the bigger ones. I have the same thing happen to me whenever I try to do big stitches. So I just have excepted that my smaller stitches work for me. As Jan in VA stated, it is consistency that counts. :)