3.19.2015

How to: Continuous Line Cross Hatching - On a Long Arm Machine - Sunday Stitches

I just finished up the machine quilting on this beautiful Irish Chain quilt. When MaryAnn sent me this quilt she asked me to machine quilt it with a cross-hatching pattern. The fabrics are super bright, and the quilt takes on a more "modern" feel, so she wanted it keep it simple, yet very clean with traditional cross hatching. Honestly, I wouldn't have thought to cross hatch across the whole quilt, but I'm so glad she had the vision and the idea. I love the result! I think it's just perfect.


As you know, all of my machine quilting is done on my long-arm, because of this cross-hatching isn't always the easiest pattern to quilt, it actually can be a bit difficult. Stops and starts are super time consuming and waste a ton of thread. 

When machine quilting a cross hatching pattern on a conventional machine you can stitch straight lines from edge to edge, when working on a long-arm machine you only have the throat space, and with my machine that's about 15".

So, I thought it'd would be fun today to show how I do my cross hatching. I'm a pretty simple person, I don't buy a ton of gadgets or rulers, in fact I really only own like three actual long-arm rulers.

The tools that I use for my cross-hatching are a blue Mark-B-Gone marker and an Olfa 6"x12" ruler, nope it's not a long-arm ruler, it's a rotary ruler, but I love the width and the length of it. Also, I think it's a must to have an extended throat base on the long arm, actually I keep mine on my machine all the time because I think it's so helpful for long-arm quilting.

Because this quilt has a lot of patchwork it makes the cross-hatching a little easier, you have a guide. If you are quilting this pattern on a quilt that doesn't have a lot of patchwork I recommend using your Mark-B-Gone marker and marking 2" points along the top and bottom of each row, and on the edges of the quilt.

Also, in the tutorial below you'll notice that I'm stitching along the sides of the quilt. I like to do that to secure the sides for binding.

Follow the stitching lines, I've included the grid in the tutorial so you can see how I've lined the cross-hatching up on the quilt grid.

Step 1.
Start stitching on the left side of the quilt, I'm choosing to start at the top of the second block, my lines are all 2" apart.
Follow the red line across the quilt, point to point, eliminating any stops and starts.


Step 2.
Follow the green line back across the quilt from the right side to the left. Again, no stops and starts.


Step 3.
Follow the orange line from left to right side with no stops or starts.


Step 4.
Follow the dark brown line from right to left side with no stops or starts.


Step 5.
Follow the dark blue line from left to right with no stops or starts.


Step 6.
Follow the pink line from right to left sides with no stops or starts.


Step 7.
Follow the dark purple line from left to right sides with no stops or starts.


Step 8. 
Follow the yellow line from right to left sides with no stops or starts.


Step 9.
 Follow the pink line from left to right sides with no stops or starts.

Step 10.
Follow the black line from right to left sides with no stops or starts.


Step 11.
Follow the dark orange line from left to right sides with no stops or starts.


Step 12.
Follow the light blue line from right to left sides with no stops or starts.


Step 13.
Follow the light brown line from left to right sides with no stops or starts.

Step 14.
Follow the light green line from right to left sides with no stops or starts.


Step 15.
Follow the light pink line from left to right sides with no stops or starts.


Step 16.
Follow the dark green line, stitch from the bottom right corner to the top right corner, then follow the line from right to left sides with no stops or starts.


Since all of those lines may seem a little daunting I created a little sewing simulator video, hopefully this will help.

Have a great day!

Click here for more information about having me machine quilt for you, for more machine quilting tips and tricks check out my bookBeginner's Guide to Free-Motion Quilting.

Thanks for joining me in this Sunday Stitches machine quilting tip, check out all of the Sunday Stitches tutorials & tips here.

Make sure to share your projects on social media using the hashtag #piecenquilt #sundaystitches or #nataliabonner

14 comments:

  1. Very cool. I could have watched that bouncing dot all day ;)

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  2. That is awesome, I never would have thought to do a cross-hatch that way!

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  3. What an awesome tutorial! I will definitely give this a try.

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  4. I could watch that video forever and not get bored!

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  5. Wow, you are so clever, I would have never figured out to to do this, I just knew I was not interested in wrestling that big quilt on my home machine. It's wonderful, thank you!!

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  6. Wow Wow and Wow! Great job figuring that out!

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  7. Love that! Very clever......thank you for sharing. xxxoxxx

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  8. You are amazing, such a great idea. Thank you for sharing.

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  9. Thank you for sharing! Now I know again a little bit more of the secrets of longarm quilting :-)

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  10. Thanks for the video. Amazing. The quilt is beautiful.

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  11. Another beautiful job. I feel giddy just looking over these stitches. I just read a couple of weeks ago a blogger who sent a quilt out to be quilted only to be shocked with how sloppy the job was when she got it back. After all the love, work and money that goes into a quilt, I couldn't imagine the disappointment let alone having to pay for it. This is beautiful. You've got skills!

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  12. That tutorial really helps to see how this was done. Thank you so much.

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  13. What tricks do you have for making the lines connect when you do the second set of cross hatchings? It seems that would be my downfall. Yours look seamless! Very nice.

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  14. I do cross hatching that way on my DSM. It gets a bit tough getting the bulk of the quilt into the throat of the machine, but it does for any type of quilting.

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