I have a newbie question
 

I was just watching a Leah Day video about FMQ where she mentioned hiding the beginning and ending threads. How important is hiding them rather than taking a backstitch to secure? My quilts will never be in competition, I just don't want them to unravel because I simply back-stitched. Is hiding the thread more secure? And how, exactly, does one hide them? She suggested using an open eye needle and popping them inside the quilt, is that what most quilters do? Thanks

I don't bury my threads and a lot of people don't. I bring my bobbin thread to the top and I take tiny little stitches with a few back stitches in there to secure the beginning and end of the stitching and clip the threads after. It's a matter of personal preference, both ways are fine unless you want to enter into competition, then that's another matter.

I think it's totally a matter of preference. I don't think a buried knot is any more secure than taking a few tiny stitches, maybe less so. As I recall, Leah Day said she buried knots because she prefers the way it looks, not because it's more secure. On all the FMQ videos I've seen, people have done the stitches rather than burying knots.

Burying knots is the way you start and stop in hand quilting. You make your quilters knot, ending it about 1/4" above the surface of the quilt. You then slip the needle into the batting, and bring it up about 1/2" away, and use your thumbnail to help ease the fabric over the knot while pulling the thread, until the knot slips through the fabric. You could probably find a youtube video that shows the process. When I FMQ, I bring the bottom thread up, knot both threads together on the top of the quilt, thread the two threads into the cheater needle, and proceed the same way as with hand quilting.

Just my observation, but, have you ever tried to take out those "few tiny stitches"? They seem very secure to me, almost impossible to pick out.

i think those little stitches are very secure because i have tried to pick them out and it was a horrible job. i can always see where i do those little stitches from the back though so i bury the knots most of the time. sometimes i get impatient and just do the little stitches.
i should add that i am a newbie too.

I tie and bury my ends, both starting and stopping. It is a matter of personal preference. I like the look of it better than backstitching or little stitches. I find it relaxing to tie and bury yet for others it would be a frustrating aggravation. Do what is comfortable for you and what works. The end result is that you don't want the stitching to come undone and there is more than one way to accomplish that.

Sometimes you can plan it so the start and/or stop is on the edge and will be under the binding anyway. I'm lazy and hate to bury threads, but I think tiny stitches look kind of bad, so whenever I can, I start and stop on the edge. It's a lazy girl way of burying threads!

My quilting is all edge to edge. I hide the quilting threads by machine binding over them while attaching the binding. The binding also stitches over the quilting near to the end of a row of quilting, so I think that makes them secure enough.

One thing that I learned the hard way - if you have lots of small patches, you also have lots of seams that end at the edge of the pieced quilt. Before sandwiching and quilting, stitch 1/8th" to 1/4 " around all the edges of the quilt top. That keeps seams from unraveling at the edges as you quilt.

One back stitch isn't sufficient but doing 5-7 tiny stitches would do the trick. I use that method. Make sure to pull the bobbin thread up to avoid the nest.