Seriously. Who actually thinks about stitch length for quilting.

Are the two pieces of fabric sewn together? Mission accomplished.

What often becomes an after thought (at least in my sewing room) can be a great tool you can use to help to make your quilt last longer, make your quilting prettier, or even just make the project go by quicker.

Finding the ideal stitch length for quilting on your project can be a confusing choice, but with the right know-how, you’ll be able to set your stitch length with confidence and know your quilt will look beautiful. 

More importantly, it’ll be able to withstand lots of year of wear and tear to come. 

What does stitch length mean

Stitch length refers to the length of each individual stitch your sewing machine makes in millimeters. 

The smaller the number on your dial, the shorter the stitch you’ll get. 

Depending on your quilt and what part of the quilt you are working on, you may want to adjust your quilting stitch length to give you a different look vs. more stability. 

So why does stitch length matter, and what happens if you use the wrong stitch length

Stitch length for quilting is half about aesthetics of the actual quilting, and half about the stability of the quilt. 

The longer the stitch length for quilting will often give a very clean and organized look to the design you’ve chosen, however the longer the stitch, the more space between stitches.

I’m about to pull out some high school physics here so bear with me.

When a quilt is being used, thrown, washed, etc, strain is naturally placed on the seams that  hold the quilt together in the form of tension on the thread. 

This tension is often really caused by one of two things – gravity (especially when its wet) or wear and tear. 

When that strain is placed on the quilt, the stitches become the weakest part of the quilt and the first place it’ll fail. 

If the stitches can’t withstand the stress, the only other option is that the thread breaks under tension and the seams in the quilt start to unravel. 

There is, however, a way to combat stress from normal use wear and tear. 

That tension that gets put on the stitches, gets equally divided among all of the stitches in that area. 

The more stitches you have in any given inch in a line of stitching, the more stitches to share the load of that tension.

This means that you are essentially able to minimize the amount of stress any one stitch experiences, giving you a better chance at avoiding that thread breaking threshold of tension on your stitches. 

So why not go as short as possible then?

The shorter stitch you go, the slower the machine pulls the fabric through making it a much longer and drawn out process. 

The longer your stitches are, the faster the machine goes, simply because it has to push more fabric through before it can drop the needle again. 

There is also an element of how a short stitch looks compared to a longer stitch when it comes to quilting. 

Since a shorter stitch naturally has more stitches, you have a lot more opportunity to get bends and wobbles in your lines. With longer stitches, not only is each stitch easier to see, but you have less room for your line to wiggle, making it look straighter and smoother. 

So finding a middle ground gives you the best of both worlds. A pretty look that has as much stability as possible, all while having the sewing machine go as fast as possible.

How do stitch lengths change on a machine

Believe it or not, on a sewing machine, stitch length is not controlled by the needle. 

The stitch length is actually controlled by the feed dogs of the sewing machine. If you’ve never heard of feed dogs, take a look at the metal plate on your sewing machine deck. 

Right underneath the presser foot you’ll see some jagged teeth sticking out. Those are your feed dogs. 

When your sewing machine is running, the feed dogs pull the fabric through at the rate defined by the stitch length dial on the machine. 

The lower the number, the less the feed dogs pull the fabric through so when the needle drops down again, the fabric has only moved a little bit, giving you a smaller stitch length. 

For larger stitch lengths, the opposite happens. The feed dogs pull more fabric through in the same amount of time it takes that needle to go up and come back down giving you a bigger stitch. 

Factors that affect stitch length choice

Your stitch length choice is made by weighing out a couple of different factors, some of them more technical, but most are just preference:

• Will you actually be able to see the stitches when the quilt is completed?
• What is their purpose in the quilt? Are they necessary to keep the quilt from falling apart or just aesthetic?
• If they are just aesthetic, do you like the look of them? 
• Is there a reason a larger or smaller stitch might be better for your situation?

Depending on your situation, asking yourself these questions can help you figure out what stitch length you might prefer for a certain part of your quilt. 

Your quilt may use different stitch lengths for different stages of the process and that’s totally normal. 

Not sure how your answers relate to actual numbers on the dial? Let’s talk about our go to stitch lengths for different uses and why to get you started.

Best stitch length for quilting by step

Type of Quilting	Stitch Length	Purpose	Highest Priority
Machine Quilting	2.5 – 3.5	Maintain Batting Location	Aesthetic
Piecing Quilt Blocks	2.5	Hold Seams Together	Structural
Foundation Paper Piecing	2	Hold Seams Together	Structural
Seam Basting	4	Temporary Hold	Convenience
Free Motion Quilting	2.5 -3.5 (Manual)	Maintain Batting Location	Aesthetic
Hand Quilting	3.5-4 (Manual)	Maintain Batting Location	Convenience

Machine Quilting/Walking Foot

Stitch Length: 2.5-3.5 

Why:

When you are doing any type of top stitch quilting, your highest priority when it comes to stitch length is aesthetics. 

These are the stitches everyone will actually see, so we definitely want them to look nice. 

When you are machine quilting, especially with the walking foot, density of your quilting (or how close your lines of stitching are together) is what stabilizes your batting, not the actual number of stitches within the line. 

You aren’t creating a seam so you don’t have to be quite as concerned with using a shorter stitch length for strength. 

Using a smaller stitch will give your lines more places to wobble, and using longer stitches will allow that line to smooth out. 

This is very similar to line graphs, the more points on the line graph, the more jagged the line can be, the less points, the smoother the line is. 

This concept is very similar when you are machine quilting with a walking foot. The puffier your batting is, the longer stitch length you’ll likely want, but staying in that 2.5-3.5 range will get you a nice professional and clean look.

Traditional Piecing

Stitch length: 2.5

Why:

In traditional piecing, you are fighting the battle between strength vs. time. The more stitches that go in, the stronger it is, but also the more time it takes for the sewing machine to physically make those stitches. 

A stitch length of 2.5 gives you a good density of stitches while also being able to cruise through your piecing stage very quickly. This is my personal go-to stitch length for 95% of my projects. 

Going too big of a stitch length on this phase has the potential to pop a stitch and unravel a seam revealing the batting after some years of wear and tear on the quilt. 

While a seam failing will not likely happen immediately, the longer the stitch length for traditional piecing, the sooner it will happen due to wear and tear compared to a shorter stitch. 

If you want to change this stitch length at all, go shorter, it might take you a little longer, but your quilt will be stronger for it. 

Foundation Paper Piecing

Stitch Length: 2 

Why:

Foundation paper piecing is a great way to take complicated blocks and make them super easy by essentially sewing by number. 

If you’ve never heard or looked into foundation paper piecing before, be sure to check out our beginner foundation paper piecing tutorial here!

The basic process goes like this: you print a paper piecing template on a special type of paper (similar to newspaper). 

Using the lines on the paper, you sew directly through the paper to get add your pieces giving you consistent lines, angles, and shapes to your blocks. 

A maximum stitch length of 2 when foundation paper piecing is our go-to because eventually you have to pull the paper template out!

To pull a paper piecing template out, you have to basically rip it out from in-between your seams. 

By using a smaller stitch length, you are able to perforate the paper at a higher rate (more punches through the paper) which means it’ll be significantly easier to remove without damaging your block. 

Too high of a stitch length here, and you won’t puncture the paper enough for it to tear away on its own.

Not only will it take you longer to remove the templates, but you’ll have to rip it against your stitches in order to get it to come out which has the potential to pop your beautiful new stitches!

Go with a maximum stitch length of 2 here and you’ll be golden. 

Basting Seams

Stitch Length: 4

Why:

What does it mean to baste a seam? 

One of my favorite quilting hacks when I just can’t get my seam intersections or points to line up nicely, is to baste the seam. 

Basting a seam and basting a quilt basically mean the same thing. 

Temporarily make the thing stay until you can make it permanent. 

When you baste a seam, you are giving yourself the opportunity to make sure your seams or points are lined up the way you like them before using a smaller stitch and making a final seam. 

What benefit does this give you? 

Using a large stitch length of 4 takes two seconds to rip if they ended up misaligned under the sewing machine and you decide you want to try again. 

If you are having trouble lining up seams and are determined to make them perfect, using a basting stitch will give you the ability to try again without spending a silly amount of time ripping all those tiny stitches in between attempts. 

Once you get them lined up nicely, go back over the basting stitches with your smaller traditional piecing stitch length to seal it in. 

Interested in learning more about this technique? Check out our tutorial on how to baste seams and get perfect points or seam intersections.

Free Motion Quilting

Stitch length: 2.5-3.5 manually

Why:

This one is a bit of a trick question. 

Free motion quilting is the quilting technique where you control the direction of the quilt entirely underneath the sewing machine. 

This allows you you to get amazingly fun, unique, and often curvy, quilting designs that a walking foot simply can’t achieve. 

New to the idea? Check out our FMQ beginner guide here for the basics on what it really means and how to get started. 

In free motion quilting, the first step is to drop your feed dogs. 

As we mentioned at the top of this post, the feed dogs are what pulls your quilt through the machine. 

The problem for this technique though that that they pull the quilt through the machine from the front only. 

If you wanted to change directions and go sideways, the feed dogs would stop you from pushing in that direction. 

So step number 1 in free motion quilting is to drop your feed dogs in order to get true “free motion” underneath your sewing machine. 

Dropping your feed dogs however, also removes the ability for your machine to control stitch length. 

So no matter what your stitch length setting is, when you drop your feed dogs, it won’t make a difference.

When you control the direction of the quilt, you also control the stitch length. The harder/faster you push, the longer the stitches, the slower you push, the shorter the stitches. 

If your goal is to practice getting a consistent stitch length manually when you are free motion  quilting, aim to get in that 2.5-3.5 range.

But when it comes to the physical setting on the machine, feel free to leave it at whatever you used last, it won’t make a difference. 

Hand Quilting

Stitch Length: 3.5 Manually

Why:

You are doing everything by hand. 

We don’t need this to take ANY longer than it absolutely has to haha. 

One of the most popular hand quilting stitches to use is a running stitch which means half of the line of stitching will show up on the top of the quilt, and the other half on the bottom as it “runs” across the project. 

So while 3.5 seems dense to do by hand, you are really only seeing half of the actually stitches at one time. 

The trick to hand quilting is consistency in your stitch length, not necessarily the actual stitch length. 

People will notice a difference in stitch size before they ever think the stitches are too “long”.

You’ll likely err to the side of larger stitches which is okay. 

While stitching by hand will never be as strong as a machine stitches, there is an undeniable charm to the look of hand stitching that makes it worth the extra time it takes. 

So get out there and make some quilts, and if you liked this post and want more tips and tricks straight to your inbox, be sure to enter your email below AND you’ll get immediate access to our FREE (yes I said free) stash of baby quilt patterns to make alllll the quilts.