Zigzag Quilting

Recently I made an oversized pillow for my upcoming book, Christmas Figs, with the lovely ladies at FQS and I needed to quilt it. Well my long time friend and quilter, Diana, no longer lives right around the corner from my house so unless I wanted to ship the pillow to her in the Pacific Northwest, I needed to figure out a solution on my own. Plus there was that whole deadline thing happening too.

So I had seen some "uneven" straight line quilting that I loved before, something about the lines the moment they became uneven, made the entire thing feel like hand quilting to me. I wasn't sure why it felt so different from regular straight line stitching but I absolutely loved the effect of it. I  experimented with the method a little bit with some pillow props at the last Market and I was very happy with how they turned out so I decided that I was going to do my version of utility stitching or quilting on this book project.

I made my zigzag stitch as long and as large as my machine would allow and I played around with the proportions a bit until I liked how the lines felt when they were next to each other. It took a few different experiments and had one that I liked and voila... Insta zig zag straight stitching that looks almost like large hand stitching when it is done. Seriously... I love how the finished look feels all vintage and slightly puckered and yet even all at the same time.

Many of you wanted to know how I did it when I first showed this pillow on Instagram so hence this post. That is all there is to it. Aurifil ivory #2000 thread on the machine and in the bobbin. I seriously recommend that you try it!