Struggling with Quilting
 

I have stitched in the ditch on most (90%) of my nieces quilt. (The picture is the computer drawing I made, to design ut) I was going to fill in the zig zags with straight line quilting, but it didn’t look good, and I ripped it out. I’m getting frustrated with it, and just want to finish it, but it’s a gift, so it needs to look nice. Without taking out the stitch in the ditch over the entire queen sized quilt, how bad would it look to quilt parallel lines through it? Should I just leave the stitch in the ditch? The pieces were large (9”x3”), will stitching in the ditch be enough for the quilt to survive heavy use from a child? I’m also a beginner, this will be my 5th completed quilt, and my largest, and suggestions appreciated!

How close together are your quilting lines? If they are as close- or closer- than the batting recommends, I would say the quilt would be okay.

My batting says 4” apart, but the quilting is 3” one direction and 9” the other, based on the shape and pattern.
I do not have a ruler/ruler foot, I have a machine that can do free motion, but it’s not fancy (and I’m not great!) I was honestly debating running 1” parallel wavy lines from one end to the other over everything, but some of my stitch in the ditch spots will be perpendicular to that, so I didn’t know how bad or noticeable it was going to be.

How do you feel about some simple designs in each zigzag? I did a quick markup on my phone for you, so please excuse the unevenness!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]613784[/ATTACH]
S curves, big wavy line, wishbone, ribbon candy, circles on a chain, stars on a chain...

Basically anything on a chain would look good and fill the space pretty quickly - a small flower, different sized stars, different sized circles (alternate small vs big?), swirl circles, or whatever you are comfortable doing. Kind of like a chandelier, in idea.

Some designs will be easier than others to turn the corner. I usually have to mark some "hit points" for myself to space out the design and hit the right spots with the right part of the design, if that makes sense. Sometimes it helps to just draw the diagonal line from corner to corner so you know where the center of the turn is.

Alternatively, you could just fill the space with straight line zigzags? Lots of options :)

I love Lori Kennedy's blog for ideas and she's great at showing how to stitch out the motifs. If you have time, you might consider some of these? https://lorikennedyquilts.com/category/motifs/all/

I think she is just talking about how to stitch the "strip" piece. That's the only thing I could imagine is 3X9...
I'd straight stitch it in the ditch from point to point; making "X"s.
And straight stitch in the ditch the long straight seems left and right.
Let me know what you decide! =)

That would leave you with 3 x 4 1/2 squares....and 3 inch triangles on the sides...should be close enough...

Or if you wanted it closer....this is hard to explain; but you could stitch on the sides of the two skinny pieces from side to side....hope you get that....so it would be going from side to side, but half way through the square piece.

Wiggly lines inside a piece are always easier than straight. Add some loops and it looks like you planned the quilting. Many people use the washable Crayola markers and draw their patterns on the fabric and just follow the lines. I would test to see if the color you want to use will wash out. When I quilt on my longarm, my theory is, if all the lines are very straight, then I want flowing curves, feathers or spirals to soften the design. Just my 2 cents. Look at some of the pantographs available online. Take those parts you can do and don't do the rest of the design. Or, for each block of strips, put in a cute flower....I find those are easier than almost anything else... or maybe if it's for a boy, a truck, or maybe some outlines of animals. We tend to make the quilting part into the worst, and it can be a lot easier with some thought.

Oh sorry! I was reading fast and was a bit distracted with the 2 little ones running around and assumed the 9x3 was the size of the rails.

How do you feel about some kind of design off a central stem? You don't have to do it all in one go, and you can also mix up what designs you use. So something like this:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]613789[/ATTACH]

I drew feathers at the bottom, swirls/curls in the middle, and leaves at the top. You could easily make the leaf into a skinny long leaf so it'd look like a fern and then those lines are supposed to be very random, but leaves are randomly shaped anyway so.... Curls can always be different sizes. You could mix leaves and curls together to make a pretty design too.

As long as you leave no more than 3 - 4" unquilted whatever you decide should be fine. I most always just do FMQ. A lot of practice helps.

The 9”x3” is each piece of the rail, sorry for the confusion. I may try my hand at a little bit of free motion to better secure it, or I may just do whatever and leave it as is. This is a oversized queen, and I do not have a long arm, so quilting it is a frustrating and fatiguing process. Thanks for the input everyone! I’ll ponder a bit and post a picture when I finally can get it done