dunster

I don't SITD on every quilt. I quilt on a longarm, but I don't mind ditch stitching on it. Sometimes I do SITD, usually because I want to stabilize the quilt so that I can roll it back and forth easily while working on various areas. Sometimes I don't want to SITD because I don't want those stitches showing up on the back and messing up the quilting design.

Rhonda Lee

I SITD and echo on most of my quilts. I've done some fm but not yet comfortable with it. I'm a piecer and like to showcase the pieces. This seems to work for me with my scrappy quilting. I use my embroidery machine to do some quilting but not most of the time. The rehooping is not a favorite thing for me to do when quilting.

Scraplady

I rarely SITD, but then I mostly press my seams open and ditching does not work well when seams are pressed open. When I do ditch quilt, it is usually only because I WANT to emphasize the lines of a particular design element, sash or border. I will do it with a walking foot before doing any FMQ. I think it's a personal choice, depending on the design, the combination of fabric & batting you are using, and the amount of quilting you plan to do.

ruby2shoes

I like to do all over/edge to edge close quilting, either straight line or spiral and usually as close as 1/2" apart. I will, when I do paper pieced works prefer not to do close quilting...I would rather my quilting be more subtle and in that instance I stitch right alongside the seam. I'm sort of lucky....my walking foot sits a bit crooked so my needle is not centred but rather is right alongside the "left tong" so to speak. This means that if I line the "tong" up right on top of my seam my needle then stitches beautifully a hairs width alongside the seam. I like the look. BTW, don't get me started on the saga of my Juki walking foot...suffice to say I'm making lemonade out of lemons!!!!!

quilterpurpledog

I quilt on a DSM. I always STID around the blocks, sashings and borders to stabilize my quilt. After examining the back to be sure that all is straight, I go back and quilt each unit. It saves a lot of twisting and turning because I can concentrate on one smaller area at a time. I have a large level working space and use the 'puddle' method. I have good success.

wildyard

This is also what I do to most of my quilts. I am not good at SITD.

rryder

I have found that I do a better job of staying in the ditch if I’m FMQ rather than trying to use walking foot or stitch in the ditch foot. For some reason I’m also more likely to stay in the ditch without using ruler than with, even though I have a good ruler foot, rulers that ought to help and lots of experience using them...go figure

Rob

quiltingshorttimer

I quilt on a long arm and will SID some parts of almost every quilt (I rarely do pantos) even with edge 2 edge I will usually SID borders, etc. to stabilize it. Each quilt seems to dictate whether SID is called for--sometime I will because I know I'll be rolling it back and forth to change thread colors, or because it needs stablizing around the blocks so I can FMQ the actual block. One place I rarely will SID is with 8 point stars or similar, since many people will press open the seams on stars that have multiple points and I don't want to jeopardize those seams. I prefer to use SID to stabilize a quilt than doing basting on one. SID definitely will emphasize that seam nicely--Judy Madsen (Green Fairy Quilts) suggests you SID every single piece!

tuckyquilter

On larger quilts I do a couple of rows of SITD both vertically & horizontally because I don't have a LA and none of my machines have a large throat space to work in. The quilt gets moved around more due to the smaller space to work with.


I also do QAYG by Column. The only thing I do different is I make my entire back as one piece, and leave a good 1/2" from the edge to have plenty of space to sew the next column of blocks on. She does a lot of talking in the beginning, but hang in there and see if it might work for you too. Check out this gal. Candy Glendening and she has 4 videos on this method.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_b9WjeP0mU&t=9s