Last week I shared a tutorial on Crazy Matrix, which could win awards on just how wild a quilting texture can get. Let’s try quilting a curving grid design again, but this time with careful spacing to create a beautiful pinstripe effect:
Tips for Quilting Pinstripe Matrix with Walking Foot Quilting
Walking foot quilting really shines with straight line quilting designs, but that doesn’t mean you can’t quilt curving lines too. You just may need to take more time to focus on the lines and stop to pivot the quilt occasionally as you stitch the deepest curves.
Pinstripe Matrix is the doubled version of Pinstripe Curves so make sure to check out that tutorial for more tips on spacing your lines.
Personally I don’t mind stitching the first curving line, but echoing it ¼-inch away can be challenging if you have a walking foot with a wide base like mine. The foot has a little notch to indicate the ¼-inch mark, but it’s tough to see and even harder to line up consistently with the first curving line.
When it doubt, grab a marking pencil and mark the lines instead! As I mentioned in the book, marking a quilt is 100% allowed, and downright required for quilting certain designs. How could I have created the Love the Light Wholecloth quilt without marking the lines on the fabric first?
Find this quilt pattern in the book Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day.
Marking all the lines will take a bit more time before you begin quilting, but once you start stitching, it will definitely speed up the process to have the lines in place and easy to follow.
Tips for Quilting Pinstripe Matrix on a Longarm
I currently have the Double Stripe Diamond Quilt installed on my longarm and I’ve been having so much fun quilting any design that pops into my head in between the colorful diamond shapes. This has been the perfect quilt to practice ruler foot quilting on because it has so many seam lines to line up with the rulers and nice narrow spaces to fit the designs.
I quilted Pinstripe Matrix using the Super Slide ruler as a guide. This longer ruler has a deeper curve which can create even more interesting quilting designs and effects.
I first quilted a single curving line through the quilting area. If you stop ¼-inch from the edge, then shift the ruler to ¼-inch from the opposite edge, the line will be continuous. You can also turn the ruler around 180 degrees and shift it to match the curve you’re quilting. The curves on both sides of the ruler are identical to make it easier to keep your lines consistent.
I changed the spacing a bit with the Pinstripe Matrix on the longarm. My rulers can space the lines up to 3/4 inches away easily so that's the distance I used for the wider spacing, then lined up the edge of the curve with the stitched line to do the echo quilting 1/4-inch away.
Moving the machine instead of the quilt is a very different feeling. The rulers help you maintain control over where the machine is going, but as you can see, this is a bit time consuming and involves a good bit of careful travel stitching.
Understand that quilting Pinstripe Matrix into this area of this quilt was Custom Quilting, a style of quilting designed to go over and above what a quilt usually needs to be finished. You can quilt over the whole quilt and ignore all those lines of piecing and stitch giant curves all over the place if you want to!
There's never a wrong way to quilt a quilt, except to leave it unquilted and unfinished forever. I hope you'll use Pinstripe Matrix to finish a quilt you have stashed away!
Would you like to see more quilting tutorials with both walking foot quilting and longarm quilting? Click the links below to find more videos comparing these different styles of machine quilting!
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What am I going to do with the square I quilted with my walking foot? That's a block for the Marvelous Mosaic Quilt! Click Here to find a tutorial on connecting your blocks together!
We're quilting all 30 designs from the book Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day and we're going to connect together the best 20 to create the Marvelous Mosaic Quilt.
Click Here to find all the walking foot quilting videos I've shared so far. We're making three quilts together from this book and you can join in the fun and follow along anytime!
Let's go quilt,
Leah Day
