Machine quilt or QAYG?
 

I'm trying to get back into sewing with a lot of starts and stops because of you know, life stuff. I've never attempted a large quilt because the thought of actually quilting it stresses me out, lol. I did take a class a few years back on QAYG and made a very small table runner which came out pretty, but I'm wondering now if getting back into it whether I should start with that again or just jump into machine quilting. I have machine quilted smaller things, but nothing larger than a changing pad for a newborn. (sigh...chicken me)

Any thoughts? And, a few years back when I proclaimed I was "never sewing anything ever again!" I gave away lots of books and fabric (I know, I know, never do that) so please feel free to recommend any newer books you have purchased that you find inspirational and not too overwhelming.

Thank you!

Hi and welcome back to the sewing/quilting world. The best answer to your question is you can do both and don't have to choose one over the other.

Find a project or fabric that you love first and use them for inspiration. I like the success of completing small projects to learn techniques or build skills.

I am a chicken too. I hate the thought of ruining a project I spent hours/days working on with a bad quilting job. I tried free motion quilting but wasn't very good at it. I've done a couple of QAYG projects using the easy method described at:
https://www.stitchedincolor.com/blog//2016/08/how-to-assemble-finish-quilt-as-you-go.html

I used cotton batting and the walking foot on my Singer Model 201 to quilt the blocks before joining them. After the blocks were joined, I stitched in the ditch to attach the back. I was very pleased with the results.

I found two books extremely helpful for walking foot instructions: "Walk" by Jacquie Gering and "Foolproof Walking-Foot Quilting Designs" by Mary Mashuta. Both books contain lots of great ideas for walking foot quilting. Katie Pedersen spoke at our guild meeting yesterday all of the quilts she displayed used straight line walking foot quilting. They were gorgeous.

There are lots of tutorials on QAYG and walking foot quilting available online, including a couple by Leah Day at:
https://leahday.com/blogs/machinequilting/how-to-connect-supersized-quilt-blocks-quilt-as-you-go-tutorial

Welcome back to quilting.

There are different methods of QAYG. Check them out and then pick what's
appropriate for you. I'm not good at FMQ and probably never will be.
I prefer walking foot quilting. Right now I'm working on a large quilt.
Divided it into sections and I'm very happy to quilt it that way.
No sore shoulders and a lot easier to quilt. Plus I can make fancier
designs that just straight lines.

Practice your free-motion on a panel or charity quilt.
 

You will enjoy getting back into quilting again if you don't put pressure on yourself as you machine quilt. One way to free-motion a larger quilt is to divide it into 4 sections with a plus sign. Start in the middle of the quilt in each section and quilt your design, always keeping the bulk of the quilt to your left. I can not remember where I read about this method. Maybe others on the board can chime in with a link or tutorial.

Another tip is to use a panel to practice free-motion quilting. You may not be timid and more relaxed knowing you aren't quilting over your pieced blocks that you have invested alot of time and $. Lastly, if you do a charity quilt, you will be giving it away and you won't keep going back to your beginner mistakes that others will never notice.

Good luck and welcome back to the quilting world!

I love piecing - free motion quilting not so much even though I have a mid arm sit down machine. I have given myself permission to quilt by check for large quilts. Works for me.

I know where you're coming from. I'm struggling with machine quilting but getting better with practice. I bought a machine large enough to handle larger quilts. But for my bed (King) I always send to a longarmer.
As for books- I haven't bought any and got rid of most of mine. Haven't missed one. There are so many things on the internet and tutorials etc. No mags either.
Machine quilting is all about practicing. Good luck!

Funny how this should show up in today's digest. I woke up in the middle of the night with a solution to a quilting problem I have been thinking about (unfortunately this often happens at 3 am!!!). I am going to be making a LOTL quilt for my soon to be SIL and wondered about the quilting because I want to do different things in each block and will be quilting on my home machine. Since I will be piecing the back anyway, I thought why not do a combination of regular quilting and QAYG ?? I am thinking it will be 6 blocks by 8 blocks and if I 'split' it and do 3 x 8 twice and quilt them and then combine the 2 sections as you would QAYG, then trim and add borders and quilt the borders - it should work out. What does anyone think about that? (I would do a straight stitch down the edge of the 'regular' sections sashing so that the back would look then same in the connected section)