Beginner Quilting Design

My first quilt pattern was designed to be beginner friendly, but the pattern for this quilt, “Find the Nines” is even easier than “Pumpkins ‘N Patches”! I post quilty pictures on social media A LOT. One of the comments I usually get is something along the lines of “I’d love to make quilts, but I could never do that.” Well…., you can make quilts, and this could be your first quilt. This pattern was designed for people who want to make their first quilt but are overwhelmed and afraid to get started. Just remember that every advanced quilter was a beginner at first too.

Since this pattern is designed for absolute beginners, I decided to quilt it in a beginner friendly way. Free motion quilting is my favorite, but it can be intimidating, especially for someone who’s never made a quilt before.

It’s so exciting when you complete your first quilt top! Give yourself a pat on the back, stand up and take a bow, humble brag; you deserve it! But now what about finishing your quilts? I do have some posts on basting your quilt and binding your quilt, but for this post, I’m going to talk a little bit about actually quilting your quilt.

Straight Line Quilting using a Decorative Stitch

Quilting with plain straight lines looks great, and I did that on a lot of quilts before I picked up free motion quilting. Doing straight line quilting with a decorative stitch can add a little bit of extra movement in the quilting without any extra work or skill required. Even if your machine doesn’t have a lot of decorative stitches, a simple zig zag stitch can add a little extra to your quilting.

For this quilt, I did some diagonal lines going in both directions. I actually just eyeballed it for this one, but it took me a while to be comfortable with doing straight lines without at least marking some of the lines.

Marking your quilt lines

There are a lot of ways to help get straight lines, but my favorite painters’ tape. I’ve always been skeptical of marking my lines with fabric markers. The thought that it might not wash out completely is one of my MANY neurotic quilt making fears. This is probably silly of me; so if your an experienced quilter and use fabric markers successfully, we can definitely still be friends. For beginners, I would definitely suggest doing a test swatch and seeing if the markings wash out before putting any marks on the quilt you worked so hard on.

Start by lining one edge of the tape up through the corners of the blocks. For this quilt, I went through the corners of all the big squares.

You’ll do the same thing again, running another piece of tape beside the first piece of tape, also lining it up with the corners of your blocks.

I didn’t actually use my taping for this quilt, but I taped it up anyway and left it there long enough to get these pictures so you can see what it looks like. You’ll line the edges of your foot up with the tape, and sew diagonally from edges to edge.

Start and stop in the batting so that you don’t have to worry about backstitching or burying your thread. You will trim the excess batting when you square up your quilt, so those thread will just get trimmed off anyway. I talk a little bit about squaring up your quilt in my post about binding. Once you finish a line, you can pull that piece of tape off so that it’s out of your way. Keep going until you have sewed a line along side every piece of tape.

Once you’ve finished the diagonals in one direction, do the same thing going in the other direction to get the diagonal grid design.

I use my walking foot for straight line style quilting. It helps to feed the layers of fabric evenly through your machine.

Pro tip: Start quilting in the center and work your way out to the edges. The center is going to be the hardest part because you will have the most quilt to have to fit into the throat of your sewing machine. It will get easier and easier as you make your way to the edge of the quilt. Once you finish one side, flip the quilt around and work your way out from the center again.

Stitch in the Ditch

Stitch in the ditch is a quilting technique that involves quilting a straight line in the seams. It does take a lot of practice to get the stitch line to stay in the seams where you want it, and you’ll need to go really slow to keep it looking neat, especially when you’re first starting out.

The nice thing about a decorative stitch is that you don’t have to worry about hiding your stitch line in the seams. You aren’t really stitching IN the ditch but stitching OVER the ditch. This will help disguise it if you get a little off track from time to time. Just try to keep the seam lined up with the center of the walking foot as shown in the picture.

*** Note: I have a Janome with AcuFeed, so my walking foot probably looks a little different than yours.

For this quilt, I did both the diagonal grid and some stitches over the ditches. It gives the quilt a little extra texture if you want it.

One thing to remember with quilting is to be sure that you have enough of it. This doesn’t mean that you have to have the super dense quilting like you see in more advanced quilts, but you do want to be sure that you have enough to keep your batting stabilized so that it doesn’t bunch up on you when you wash your quilt. How much quilting you need will depend on your batting. The specs on you batting should tell you the max on how far apart your quilting can be.

This quilt is available in my Etsy Shop, along with my “Find the Nines” quilt pattern if you want to make your own. This would be perfect for YOUR first quilt!

I hope you found these instructions useful. As always, feel free to leave me a comment or email me if you have any questions.

Happy quilting!