By Diane Harris, HQ Stitch Brand Ambassador

This is my best machine quilting trick. It’s easy to do and it looks great. I’ve done it most often on smallish quilts but I’ve used it on a throw-size quilt, too.

I tried it for the first time on this little red quilt, which is a free pattern on stashbandit.net. Such a simple idea! You won’t have any trouble executing this as long as you have a walking foot for your machine.

I took photos as I was quilting my swap quilt for the Modern Quilt Guild last year, so this is the process for a small quilt.

Attach a walking foot to your sewing machine. Sew a test run on a sample to be sure you’re getting a nice stitch and that you’re happy with the colors of top and bottom threads. Layer the quilt top, batting and backing and baste the layers together.

Mark a gently curving line across the quilt top. I started out using a flexible curve, above, but I’ve had better luck just sweeping my hand in a gentle curve with a chalk mechanical pencil. Since I had both dark and light fabrics here, in the end I went with a paper guide instead. Today I would use the new Handi Iron-Off Pencils.

Tape two pieces of paper together so it is large enough and then cut a nice gentle curve. Pin the paper to the quilt sandwich.

Guide the edge of the walking foot along the edge of the paper and quilt the first line. Remove the paper.

Use the first line as a guide to quilt subsequent lines, spacing them equally. I moved the needle to the right and used the edge of the walking foot as my guide. You can also use a seam guide bar (comes standard with most machines).

The spacing is up to you, but I think 5/8″ or 3/4″ between each of the lines is about right for a small quilt most of the time.

Continue adding lines, equally spaced, until that portion of the quilt is filled up.

Next, determine where an opposing line might look nice. Make a decision, mark the line or create a paper guide as before and quilt the first line. I try and curve this line differently from the first one. The idea is to oppose the other line in some way.

Use the first line as a guide to quilt the rest, just as you did with the first set of lines.

Create a third set of lines so that all of the quilt is covered by an undulating grid. It’s magical when you see this start to happen.

Things don’t always go perfectly. When they don’t, just relax and take out the stitches as needed with a surgical seam ripper (Havel’s is what I use). It goes quickly.

I am not sure if I stopped at this point or what, but this is the last photo I took of this quilt. Then I gifted it so I can’t take any more. Notice the bottom right-hand corner. I don’t like what is happening there. I think the problem is that I let the lines become too far apart. Rest assured that your skills will improve with practice.

What I really love is how the shapes in the grid change. In some places they are square, in some they are diamonds, and in some places they’re really wonky. It gives you a reason to keep looking at the quilt, which is always my goal.

I hope you’ll give this method a try and send me photos: diane@stashbandit.net. I’d love to see your results!

Quilt on,

~Diane~