How to quilt a big quilt on a little sewing machine

Quilting in Sections by Marti Michell

Last week I had an e-mail from a reader asking for recommendations for a home sewing machine with a wide throat area. She said a long-arm machine was not in her budget, but she wanted a way to quilt larger quilts at home.

I did some research and sent her information on a few different machines that advertise themselves has having a larger than usual opening but these were also pretty pricey and just too far out of my reader's budget. (And out of most people's budgets right now, I think!)

So instead of recommending a new machine, I recommended a new book - Machine Quilting in Sections by Marti Michell. Marti's husband Richard sent me this book along with some other books and tools to try out shortly before Christmas. I haven't had a chance to try the tools yet, but I have read the books and this one offers some great suggestions and techniques for quilting large quilts on a regular home sewing machine.

Marti has three main techniques:

1. Border Control
2. Low-fat Quilting
3. Quilting Big Quilts in Small Sections

Each technique shows you how to reduce the bulk of the quilt so that you are only working with a manageable section. This way, there is no huge roll of quilt that you have to lift, turn, or push through your machine. It's much easier on you physically (because you're not holding all that weight while also trying to manipulate it through the machine) and it's much easier on the machine because you don't have as much weight potentially pulling on the needle.

The Border Control technique is almost self-explanatory. Plan ahead for your borders, but don't attach them. Quilt the center part of your quilt, then add the borders and quilt those, then bind and finish as usual.

The Low-fat technique involves layering a quilt the usual way, but cutting some of the batting out on one side (or for on-point quilts, one corner) then quilting the part that still has batting. When that section is done, you reattach the batting and quilt the rest of the quilt.

Quilting in sections is also self-explanatory. Divide the quilt into manageable sections, quilt each one, then attach them to each other and add the borders. This is kind of like quilt-as-you-go, only you're quilting larger sections at a time, not individual blocks.

In this slim 72-page book, Marti provides step-by-step instructions and great diagrams explaining each technique in detail. She even includes case studies of real quilts (some of them award winners) that were quilted using each of these techniques. They include quilts with straight and mitered borders, strip quilts, on-point quilts, and standard quilts of pieced blocks.

For $20 it's not a bad investment. Far cheaper than a new machine and you'll be able to amaze your friends by saying, "Yes of course I quilted this myself."

Cheers!

Kelly