no ideas here but wanted to say "LOVE THE QUILT". It's beautiful. But I'm curious why male teenagers always want black, red, white quilts?

My son wanted a quilt (my avatar) and it had to be these colors. I know of others who've made quilts for their teen sons - same colors.

I know he'll love it as much as my son loves his -- Great Job !!

Very beautiful quilt,I have to make my son one as big,
as yours,in the star fan pattern for his pool table.I am going, hand quilt it.

Awesome quilt!!!!!!!!!!! :thumbup:

Ahh, First...that is NOT a pool table, ok? It's a quilting table....sometimes we let the others in the house use it to knock balls into the thread catcher pockets...sometimes!

That said (LOL)...I would rethink the stitching around each block. I know you are thinking to save time/headaches...but cutting out the stabilizing of the quilt will most likely end up giving you more headaches than not stabilizing.
Does not need to be Stitch in the Ditch...use a zigzag (or, if you have it on your machine, a stitch that resembles an "
S" curve...just go over the outter block seam...across the row in one direction, and back across the next row in the oposite direction. Repeat down the quilt...then do the long seams. This will not only stabilize the quilt, it will give a "home" for each design motif...giving a nicer finish to the back, just my opinion...from having done many a quilt on my home machine...learning that shortcuts aren't really shortcuts.
the quilt is beautiful...your son will love it.

Oh, for design motifs...look at coloring book pages online..find some you like, that will be easy to do...print them, trace onto freezer paper, or Parchment paper (I like parchment, as it tears away nicely.

I lay the printed design on top of as many layers of the parchment paper (or use Golden threads if I have it), run through my sewing machine without thread...and pin those to my quilt and stitch over the punched designs. Tears off really easy (because of the holes to start & your stitiching holes..you find it starts ripping itself off as you stitch).

I use the above motif method even now on my longarm machine at times...when I need a special motif that I don't have in my files.

You know, you could just do the zigzag down the center of each sashing, instead of the seams of each block. that would give you a larger design motif area....just ignore the blocks and put the motif in the area each zigzag square creates.

You asked what problems you might encounter when doing this. Without stabilizing first, there will be sections of unquilted area on the backing...may cause the backing to shift and depending on if it's a solid or print...may be really visible. You may get pleats in some of the motifs, etc. Stabilizing will help prevent all these.

You could just pin with safety pins, every corner of each block, and in the sashing every 6 inches or so....and remove as you go...that may work...especially if you don't want to segregate each motif.

may I recomend outline quilting? that will show up nicely on the back, and complement the top, too.

If you have a picture or pattern that you like, you could trace it onto tracing paper, machine stitch the tracing paper without thread, and then use a pouncer wiped across the tracing paper (over a quilt block) to evenly transfer the pattern onto the quilt blocks.

Love your quilt! I don't know if I would try to machine quilt on such a large quilt w/o a long arm or such. Good luch on what ever you do. I always use stencils and mark before I quilt.

This design would lend itself to 1/4 inch spaced straight stitching. I did this on a log cabin I made and I really liked the outcome.:)

Jane, Your son will love this quilt fabric ! I like you approach to stencil FMQing I can't draw stick people so trying to just let go and do design. My throat is too small to be very creative with designs so this is the only alternative to hand quilting. Charity quilts only want MQing so I'm forced to do MQing. I've thought of using this method too and just pinning in place. Thanks for sharing this with us and happy quilting always. :-D :-D :-D