The back of the quilt (and the batting) needs to be slightly larger than the quilt top. I add a minimum of 4″ to the length and width measurement of the quilt top – giving 2″ extra on all sides – but you may want to add 6″ or 8″ for more leeway. The extra inches are helpful during the layering and basting stage and allow for any shifting during quilting. While most of the excess will be trimmed away after quilting, I also like to keep a little extra to ensure my binding is completely filled.

For large quilts, the backing may need to be pieced. Some quilters prefer to avoid placing the pieced seam along the vertical center of the quilt but I must confess that I don’t worry about that. I have been known, however, to place the seam where it will continue the design lines in the fabric – like hanging wallpaper! (Can you find the seam line in the above photo?) Other quilters piece their backs like patchwork, using up leftover fabrics or extra blocks from the front.

Wide fabrics specifically designed for quilt backings are available, but often the color and pattern selection is limited. Because I choose my backing fabric carefully to coordinate with the front and to complement my machine quilting, selection is critical! So, what am I looking for when selecting a backing fabric?

First, I am looking for the same colors that appear in the quilt top. This coordinates the back with the front and helps with thread selection for machine quilting. For quilters who like to use the same color thread in the needle and the bobbin, threads that work on the front will also work well on the back. Second, I am usually looking for pattern. If you want to showcase your machine quilting, choose a lighter color solid or near-solid backing fabric. But if you want to disguise minor tension difficulties, starts and stops, and back stitching, a busy print can be a strategic choice! I also enjoy pairing a backing print that connects to the subject matter on the front, and here are some of my favorite examples.

Tools of the Trade features papercut appliqué blocks of sewing and quilting tools.

The backing fabric is a color-coordinated print with buttons and thimbles!

King of Hearts includes a Card Trick block and papercut appliqué blocks of the four suits: hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades.

Here’s the backing fabric!

The Lord is my Shepherd depicts the 23rd Psalm with a patchwork block called Shepherd’s Light and papercut appliqué blocks of imagery from the psalm.

What better backing fabric than a print with sheep grazing in the pasture!

The backing fabric for Instruments of Praise was actually the focus fabric used for choosing the colors in the quilt.

And the fabric pictured at the beginning of this post? That’s on the back of Flourish on the Vine!

I am very frequently asked what kind of batting I use in my quilts. Why do people want to know this? Obviously, the batting itself is unseen in the middle layer of the quilt and only its impact can be observed. They can see the loft, or the thickness of the quilt, and the drape – how the quilt hangs or falls. They can feel the weight of the quilt and get a sense of its warmth and/or softness. Do they want to know what batting created the effect they observe in my quilts? If so, it is a good question.

There are many choices of batting available and some are better than others for machine quilting. Batting can be made from cotton, polyester, wool, silk, bamboo, alpaca, soy, flax, linen, rayon and assorted blends. It can be bleached, bonded, carded, scoured or siliconized. It might have a scrim and it might beard. How on earth will we ever be able to choose?

All I can tell you is about the batting I have tried. The rest I will have to leave to the experts and you will find a list of resources at the end of this post. My batting of choice, and the one you will find in the majority of my quilts, is Hobbs Heirloom Premium 80/20 Cotton Blend.

Hobbs 80/20 is made with 80% natural cotton & 20% fine polyester. It is needle punched and spray bonded to provide exceptional strength and durability. They claim that it offers more loft and less weight than traditional cotton batting and that it may be quilted up to 4″ apart. It is also available in bleached, black, fusible, natural, and natural with scrim, but I haven’t tried those. I find it very easy to work with for machine quilting and am consistently pleased with the results.

When you find something that works well, there is little inclination to try anything else. Nevertheless, after hearing rave reviews about wool batting, I was interested to give it a try. I used Hobbs Tuscany Wool, a washable wool batting that is carded and resin bonded to help retard bearding. It has a higher loft than the 80/20, so I struggled to machine quilt it without creating puckers. High loft, however, is a necessity for cut-away trapunto so it has become my preferred type of batting for this technique.

Another batting I have used and enjoyed in the past is Warm & Natural Cotton. Its 100% cotton fibers are needle-punched to prevent tearing, shifting or migration. The needling process holds the fibers together without glue or resins. They claim that the evenly layered fibers will stay in place inside your quilt even with generations of washings. I have successfully machine quilted with this batting and my only comment would be that it might be slightly heavier and bulkier to work with than the Hobbs 80/20 – a definite consideration for larger quilts.

These are the types of batting I have tried for machine quilting, but you will have to find your own personal preference. The batting resources below might also be helpful as you consider your options. Please feel free to share your comments and experiences – we love to hear from you!

Batting Resources

Quilt Batting Basics – The Curious Quilter
Quilt Batting Selection Chart - The Curious Quilter
Ultimate Batting Chart – Village Quiltworks
Choosing the Right Batting – Threads Magazine
General Batting Characteristics – All People Quilt
Hobbs Product Comparison Chart – Hobbs Quilt Batting

Tracing paper
Golden Threads tracing paper is wonderful for this.  It comes in rolls of various widths and it tears away cleanly and easily.  I trace my design onto the paper, then staple several layers underneath.  By stitching through all the layers using my sewing machine without thread, I can create many hole-punched versions of my design at once.  I pin the tracing paper onto my quilt, stitch the design, then remove the paper.

Vellum paper
Simple Foundations Translucent Vellum Paper from C&T Publishing is see-through, 8 1/2 x 11″ paper that can be used in a printer, and tears away easily after stitching. It can be used in pretty much the same way as tracing paper in terms of stitching right through the paper onto the quilt. The beauty of this paper, however, is that the machine quilting designs can be printed from your computer rather than traced.

Here is an example from my quilt Flourish on the Vine.

Masking tape
One-quarter inch quilter’s masking tape works particularly well for quilting straight lines without marking them.  Simply lay the tape alongside a ruler or other straight edge, pressing down lightly to adhere it temporarily to the surface.  A strip can be reused several times before it loses its stickiness.

Clear contact paper
Traditionally sold as a shelf or drawer liner, the adhesive backing on this inexpensive material makes it very useful as a temporary template.  I trace or draw my shape onto the contact paper, cut it out, stick it onto my quilt, then quilt around the shape.  Again, the template can be used many times – providing you don’t accidently stitch too many holes into it!

Hera Marker
A Hera Marker is a plastic spatula-like tool that “marks” fabric by applying pressure. It leaves a groove in the fabric that can be followed for machine quilting. Like any marker, it is more visible on some fabrics than others – but worth a try.

Tear-away stabilizer, wash-away stabilizer, and freezer paper would all work too. Stitch around a freezer paper template or stitch through a marked design and tear or wash away the stabilizer. Let us know if you have any other creative ideas for marking quilts without leaving a mark!

Design marking lines should not be visible on completed quilts.  (See the Canadian Quilters’ Association Quilting Standards.)  Any marks that are made on the quilt top should either be removable or be completely covered by the quilting stitches. Here are some tools to help with this task.

Sewline Fabric Pencil

Pencils
Mechanical lead pencils make a very fine line and do not need to be sharpened. While they may not completely wash out, if you can quilt on the line (and that could be a very big IF), the lines will not show after machine quilting. The Sewline Fabric Pencil looks like a lead mechanical pencil but the lines are easily removed from most fabrics.

There are a wide variety of colored pencils available for marking fabric. My issue with most of them is that they break very easily and need frequent sharpening. I don’t tend to use these types of pencils. I do like the white Prismacolor pencil for marking on dark fabrics. It sharpens well, makes a nice line, and rubs/fades out over time.

Removable Markers

Some fabric markers are water soluble. “The Fine Line” is a water erasable pen that marks in blue.  I like it because the tip is very fine and it makes a nice, thin line.  You can also get an eraser pen, which removes the blue markings.  This is great for fixing up mistakes!  But I find the best way to remove the lines completely is to immerse the quilt in water.  Spritzing or dabbing the lines with water appears to work, but often some of the blue returns once the area has dried.

“The Fine Line” also comes in purple and is air erasable. This means that the marks will disappear over time, so they may not last long enough for you to finish quilting over them! Still, I find this marker comes in useful for temporary marks such as registration lines for aligning quilting motifs and background grids.

Clover’s white marking pen is erasable with a hot iron as well as water.  Just take note that the marks take a few seconds to appear, so be patient.  The white lines show up well on the darker fabrics where a blue line wouldn’t.  Sometimes, I go over the lines a second time to make the white lines brighter.  Mistakes are easily corrected by ironing over them, but just be careful not to iron your marked fabric until you’re done with the lines!

Pilot’s Frixion erasable gel pens have been popping up at quilt shops and gaining popularity. The pens come in many colors and the markings can be removed with friction or the heat of an iron. There have been reports about the pens leaving a white line behind after ironing, especially on batiks, and the lines returning when exposed to cold temperatures. You might want to read this discussion before deciding to use them on your next project.

Chalk
I’m at a bit of a disadvantage here, because I haven’t tried any chalk marking products. Tailor’s chalk triangles and chalk pencils are available as are Quilt Pounce pads with wash-away or iron-away chalk powder. The advantage of the chalk powder is that it can easily be transferred between stencil lines or perforated paper, but I have heard that some people are sensitive to the airborne powder.

Light Box
When machine quilting design lines need to be traced, a light box is indispensable. The light source shines beneath the pattern and the quilt top making the lines easier to see and trace.

Transfer Papers
When fabrics are too dark to allow for tracing, the quilting designs can be marked from the top using transfer papers. Similar to carbon paper, graphite paper transfers images onto almost any surface but can be easily erased. Transdoodle is non-waxy, non-staining, reusable, chalky-color transfer paper for clear guidelines that never set – not even with ironing – and simply rub out with the swipe of a cloth or in the wash. It is available in white, yellow, and blue.

Of course, it is possible to mark your quilts without leaving a mark. We’ll talk about that next week.

We can audition quilt layouts in software like EQ7. We can audition fabrics on a design wall. But how can we audition quilting designs? Here are a few ideas.

Paper
Because I have created my own appliqué designs, I already have them drawn full size on paper. These drawings can be used as a base for auditioning quilting designs. You can create your own drawings of your blocks to use as a foundation. Be sure to outline the fixed elements with a permanent marker and use a pencil to audition the quilted elements.

This is my drawing of one-quarter of the trumpet block in the quilt Instruments of Praise. The red lines are fixed (appliqué) and the black lines are quilting lines.

Here is the block quilted.

I wrote about choosing my quilting designs for Flourish on the Vine in a previous blog post. That time, I placed a layer of tracing paper over my drawing to audition the quilting designs.

Tracing paper can also be layered over the actual quilt to audition quilting designs. Watch a demo here.

Clear Materials
Materials such as vinyl, plastic or plexiglass are see-through and work well for auditioning quilting designs. Be careful when laying clear plastic over the actual quilt not to draw past the edges and onto the quilt itself! Quilter’s Preview Paper, specifically designed for this purpose, is printed with a line on the edge to define the edges so you’ll know the boundaries of your drawing surface. Watch a demo here.

You can also use smaller clear plastic sheets such as page protectors, report covers, or overhead transparencies to audition quilting designs on printed quilt photographs. The downside of this approach is that the actual quilting designs will need to be enlarged before they can be used.

Digital Media
Quilting designs can be auditioned using your computer. Draw over your digital photos using Photoshop or other photo editing software and a graphics tablet. If you have an iPad, you might want to check out Adobe Ideas.

EQ7, from the Electric Quilt Company, includes a library of quilting stencils and a layer on the quilt worktable for auditioning quilt designs.

Here is the quilt top before the borders were added. If it looks familiar, it’s because the wreath is made from two of the same swags that were used in the borders of Flourish on the Vine. I am working on a series of smaller “flourish” projects to go along with the quilt pattern that will be coming out this fall – and you will hear more about that in the coming months.

So, the first machine quilting design decision is: allover versus custom fit. No question. We do not want to quilt an allover design randomly over appliqué, so we will be looking for a custom fit design. The first element to consider then would be quilting in the ditch. The appliqué and the border seams would benefit from this approach.

Next, we would think about motifs. This is the motif that was quilted beneath each swag in the original quilt.

Two swags, two motifs? I think so.

Here is how they would look on the quilt.

Now I think there should be a similar type of motif in the corners – something like this:

Here they are on the quilt.

Now we need to think about the background fill. At first, I was thinking about a diagonal grid to add some straight lines as contrast to the curves. I was particularly interested in this basket weave design…

…but I was concerned it would compete with the motifs. Maybe I could use it around the edges of the borders?

I liked the look of that, but there wasn’t enough room between the motifs and the borders. Maybe I could make the center block bigger?

Not sure. I wasn’t sure about the proportions, nor was I certain that the basket weave design fit with everything else. I decided to test quilt a small sample to help me decide (and to test different threads).

As much as I still liked the basket weave, I concluded that it would have to wait for another project. Stippling would once again be the background fill of choice. I then began to consider the possibility of a curved border treatment, and after many tries ended up with this fairly simple modification:

Quarter-inch circles quilted around the border edges might create a nice beaded look.

As for the quilting in the borders, I’m going to quilt the fabric print!

I might even curve the outer edges and add a clamshell edge finish – we’ll see!

Stay tuned to see how it turns out!

An obvious benefit of machine quilting the fabric print is there is no need for marking. It also eliminates the need to figure out ideal placement or calculate repetitions if used in a border. The quilting will blend harmoniously within the overall quilt design and play a supporting role.

This approach can be used as part of a custom fit design or as an allover design. Machine quilting the fabric print for an allover design means that the lines to be followed will be on the backing fabric. The quilting will be done in reverse, with the backing fabric on top and the quilt top on the bottom. The bobbin thread will form the machine quilted design on the top. I first encountered this idea in Quilting Makes the Quilt by Lee Cleland – if you have the book, you can check it out on page 65.

Suppose you chose a backing fabric with a bold, graphic design like this:

'Mission View' collection by Brejer for Robert Kaufman Fabrics

Machine quilting the backing fabric print would result in an allover design on the front like this:

While I haven’t tried machine quilting the backing fabric, I have definitely machine quilted various fabric prints used in the top. The diagonal lines in the border fabric of this Cottage Log Cabin quilt were just perfect to follow…

… as they were in the borders of Butterfly Mosaic.

I machine quilted the poinsettia fabric in this Poinsettia Wreath quilt…

… and the grape fabric in the borders of this Grapevine Wreath quilt.

Possibly my most successful use of machine quilting the fabric print was on a quilt I made using Paula Nadelstern‘s simple symmetry technique. After cutting and piecing mirror-image half-square triangles from symmetrical fabric, I machine quilted the kaleidoscopic fabric designs using a variegated copper thread in the bobbin and a solid black backing fabric. The results were stunning!

If you are just joining us, here are the past eight articles on the topic of machine quilting design:

1. Allover Machine Quilting Designs
2. Machine Quilting In the Ditch
3. Machine Quilting Motifs
4. Machine Quilting Motifs in Borders Part 1
5. Machine Quilting Motifs in Borders Part 2
6. Machine Quilting Straight Line Background Fill
7. Echo Quilting Background Fill
8. Stipple Quilting

The ninth and final (I think!) article presents a sampling of some more machine quilting background fill options. In an attempt to compress the background around appliqué or quilted motifs, quilters are continually looking for other creative choices besides good old tried-and-true stippling.

Teardrops
Start with a teardrop (or other) shape and echo it four or five times, making each repeat slightly larger than the last. Start another teardrop at the base of the first and echo it. Continue in this manner until the background area is filled.

I used a teardrop background fill around the thread painted roses in this little postcard sample.

Circles
Random machine quilted circles effectively compress the background and can create the effect of pebbles or bubbles. Some parts of each circle may need to be stitched over in order to move to the next open space. The circles can be roughly equal in size or varied.

Although they weren’t actually quilted, I machine stitched circles to create “seeds” in my appliquéd pomegranates in Flourish on the Vine.

Orange Peel
The orange peel design, created by overlapping offset circles, makes an elegant and formal background fill. It would likely be drafted and marked onto the quilt top to keep the circles even, although I’m sure some quilters are able to quilt it randomly.

I incorporated this type of quilting in sections of Flourish on the Vine, and you can read here how I “marked” it.

Clamshells
Another formal, marked background fill is the clamshell design, based on a semi-circle.

Although it wasn’t used as a background fill, one row of clamshells was quilted around the pieced borders in Flourish on the Vine. Notice the row of orange peel quilted in the green border as well.

Loop-de-Loop
As the name implies, this type of machine quilting is characterized by random free-motion loops. Other elements can be incorporated along with the loops such as hearts, flowers or leaves.

I used this type of background fill, along with hearts, in the quilt Butterfly Kisses.

“McTavishing”
Created by award-winning longarm quilter Karen McTavish, “McTavishing” is another choice for machine quilted background fill. It may be a little more difficult to execute on a domestic machine, but I have tried it and it can be done!

Here is how it looks machine quilted in the background of Butterfly Mosaic.

Stipple quilting – or “stippling” – is a continuous, curving line of stitching that never crosses over itself. Like echo quilting, it is a random, free-motion technique that is not marked on the quilt. The shape of the stitches has been described many ways, including puzzle pieces, vermicelli, coral, or little mittens! But it is also often mentioned that stippling is like handwriting, and everyone’s looks different. This is what mine looks like, drawn on paper.

Traditionally, true stippling was characterized by 1/8-inch spacing between the lines. We now tend to apply the term to lines spaced as much as 1/4″ to 1/2″ apart, but anything further apart would be considered meander quilting. The true impact of stippling is actually the space between the lines – the channel – rather than the quilted lines themselves. Therefore, it is important to keep the spacing as equal as possible and to avoid crossing over any previous lines of stitching.

Stippling is an excellent choice as a background fill because it does a great job of condensing the background and bringing adjacent unquilted areas into high relief. It is often used to surround appliqué and quilting motifs for this very reason. Tight stippling adds visual texture and can actually create a sculpted or embossed effect.

I learned a great deal about stippling from the book Guide to Machine Quilting by Diane Gaudynski. There are many detailed photos and helpful tips that are sure to help you improve your stitch, but one idea in particular made a huge impact on my stippling. Diane suggests that we start at the bottom and work up and away from ourselves. This way, we can see the lines we have already quilted and avoid crossing over any previous lines of stitching. What a great idea! I tried it for the first time on my quilt Bridal Tea and never looked back.

In my quilt Go Fish, stippling was used in the sky around the sailboats to make the clouds stand out.

Stippling is also a good choice alongside trapunto. The background fabric in the quilt Instruments of Praise disguised the stippling so much that it was barely visible. But it sure made the trapunto stand out!

As the name implies, echo quilting fills the background with echoes of the shape it surrounds. It is typically a random, no-mark technique with the spacing judged by eye or by the width of the presser foot. The distance between the quilted lines usually ranges from 1/8″ to 1/2″ and the lines remain evenly spaced throughout the background.

Suppose a flower was appliquéd or quilted as a motif. The first echo quilted line would outline the shape a fixed distance away from the shape.

The second line would echo the first…

… and so on. As the echo quilting lines get further away from the original shape, they start to lose definition. Points become rounded or disappear entirely. Eventually the lines reach the boundary of the block or quilt edge and must stop.

If desired, the remaining corners can be filled with more lines of echo quilting.

If adjacent shapes are echo quilted, eventually the quilted lines will meet and one line will surround the two shapes together.

Each echo can be quilted as a separate shape, stopping and starting a new line each time around, or the lines can be quilted in one continuous spiral.

Echo quilting emphasizes the shape or shapes it surrounds, both by compressing the background and by the impact created by the repeating lines. It is very often associated with Hawaiian quilting. But it can also give the impression of ripples on the water, hence it was the background fill I chose to use in my quilt Go Fish.