- 1). Locate the center of your quilt. You will begin quilting here, moving outward. This will help prevent puckering or shifting of the layers as you work. Fold the quilt in half horizontally, then vertically. Mark the center point with a safety pin.
- 2). Set your stitch length to slightly longer than normal. Thread the needle with a thread close to the color of the predominant fabric in your quilt, or use a neutral color. With stitch in the ditch quilting, the object isn't for your quilting stitches to stand out.
- 3). Position your quilt beneath the sewing machine needle at the center point of the quilt, so that the needle will come down in the center of a seam. Begin sewing, aiming your needle at the center of the seam. Guide the material with your hands, but don't force it. Allow the material to feed naturally under the needle.
- 4). Follow the seam all the way to its end. This will be either the end of a block, or the edge of the quilt, or to a border. At the edge, take one backstitch, then lift the needle and clip the thread.
- 5). Reposition the quilt at the center once more, and follow a new seam as you did the first. Sew each seam from the center outward. Depending on your quilt design, sew all the seams for a block or a section, then move to the next block or section.
- 6). Stitch in the ditch along the seams joining each border to the body of the quilt. When you've quilted in all the seams, finish your quilt as usual, trimming away excess batting and adding binding.
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