Piecing stitch
 

I have a Babylock Ellegante sewing machine. Amoung the many stitches is a piecing stitch which places the needle a scant 1/4 inch from the edges of my regular presser foot so that a special 1/4 inch foot is not necessary. However, the backstitch function doesn't work with the piecing stitch. I 'm wondering if that's because you're not supposed to backstitch when piecing quilts? Is this true? If so, if you make a mistake in a small portion of the seam (flipped seam allowance, uneven seam, etc) how do you fix it? Do you take out the whole seam and restitch, or do you take out only enough stitches to enable you to correct the error and restitch only that portion of the seam.? If it's the latter do you backstitch at the beginning and ending of the corrected area to secure the stitching? I'm referring to seams that are connecting two rows of blocks or patches.

I start and stop before and after the current stitching line by about 1/2 inch, so for about 1/2 inch before the new stitching and after the new stitching there will be 2 stitch lines on top of each other.

This is how I do it. If you are really worried and can't backstitch, perhaps there's a lock stitch you can use.

That's how I do it too.

Look again at your piecing stitch picture on your machine. If it has 2 dots above it, it means you will sew in reverse when you hit the reverse / reinforcement button.

If it has just 1 dot above , it means you will only stitch a lock stitch when you hit the reverse/reinforcement button.

I don't see any straight stitch pictures with no dots above them.

Note that the reverse/reinforcement button is different than the start/stop button. Are you maybe forgetting to choose this when beginning to stitch?

I don't back stitch since I'll be sewing across all the seams. I do use a shorter stitch length.

I don't back stitch in piecing and overlap missed seams like the others. Never had a problem.

Generally, I don't worry about back stitching when making a block; short stitches take care of most of that.

However, if a quilt has many, many seams at the edges, then I will stitch around the 1/8th to 1/4 edges of an inch in from the edges of the quilt to ensure that it doesn't come apart.

That only had to happen once for me to learn my lesson.

I chain stitch when I piece and leave about 1/4” between pieces. When I cut them apart, I do not cut at the piece but so that there is a tail of a few stitches beyond. I feel this would be less likely to come apart. I also use a smaller stitch, like a 2 to 2.1 on my machines.

You can always do it "Old school". Stop stitching, take the stitch length to zero, take a few stitches, then return stitch length to original. This will secure the ends very well.