You’ve done it! You’ve finished your first quilt top! 

You may have even basted it and are officially ready to start quilting it. 

Now what? 

What do you choose? There are so many options!

The most classic and timeless option is just a simple straight line quilting, and is very likely the easiest option for getting the hang of quilting on your first quilt. 

What is Straight Line Quilting

Straight line quilting is just that, straight lines that go from the top of the quilt to the bottom the quilt. 

And if you are feeling fancy, some also go in a grid style across the quilt in both directions. 

So if it’s that easy why am I even bothering to write about it?

Because like most things, even though it’s easy, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. 

Will it ruin your quilt by making any of these mistakes? No most definitely not. A finished quilt is a perfect quilt.

But if you are wondering why your straight line quilting doesn’t look quite the same as those you see on instagram or pinterest, you might be making one of these mistakes!

So let’s dive in.

My 5 best tips for perfect straight line quilting every. time. 

Baste Really Well

When you are quilting in the same direction across your quilt top over and over again, it has the tendency to push the quilt top down, and make a pleat under your quilting. 

To avoid having pleats or puckers in the quilting, the quilt sandwich must be basted really well.

If you have never heard of basting before, or haven’t tried it yet, basting is the process of securing the backing, batting and quilt top together in one piece.

This prevents layers from shifting so everything stays under the sewing machine. 

If you prefer a spray basting method like I do, a good hack to making sure everything is secure is to iron literally everything. Backing, batting, top, and then when you have everything basted together, iron both sides. 

The heat will help the adhesive over every inch of your quilt adhere perfectly so absolutely NOTHING moves. 

Set up your machine with a walking foot 

Which foot to use: the walking foot

A walking foot is fantastic for handling all of the layers of a quilt and keep a consistent stitch length and straight line quilting is the perfect time to break it out and put it to use. 

How does a walking foot work?

A walking foot has feed dogs built in that feed the quilt through the machine from the top. 

The feed dogs in the walking foot work together with the feed dogs on the bottom to pull all the layers at the same time. Doing this ensures you get consistent stitches and that minimal shifting occurs between the layers as it goes through the machine

The consistent stitch length gives you beautiful quilting while the double set of feed dogs helps all of the fabric to stay in place so you don’t see any puckering or stretching in the areas of the quilt that aren’t quilted.

Can you do straight line quilting without a walking foot?

You can absolutely do straight line quilting without a walking foot. It will take a little bit more time and effort to complete though. 

Since a piecing foot is only designed for a couple of layers, you may find that your quilt sandwich layers will shift much more easily potentially causing waves and weird textures. 

You also won’t have the ability to attach a quilting guide to keep your lines spaced out nicely. 

If you are determined to make another foot work, or are in a pinch, my best tip is to sew very slowly so you can be sure that your layers are feeding into the machine consistently, and mark your lines with a Hera marker before you sew to make sure you stay straight and evenly spaced. 

I get it though, there are many many different types of presser feet to buy for your machine. Of all the options though, I find that I only ever use three, and a walking foot is one of them. 

It’s one of the most versatile presser feet you can use when quilting so be sure to invest in a walking foot to get great consistent straight line quilting every time.

Use a guide to get evenly spaced lines

A walking foot will give you even stitch lengths and an overall great line, but it won’t keep you evenly spaced among all of your lines across the quilt. 

You could have lines with all different gaps between them when you were going for a perfectly spaced look. 

Metal walking foot guides exist to give you a reference when you are making straight lines with your walking foot. 

The guide serves as a reference to help you keep the walking foot the exact distance away that you need to make a perfectly spaced line. 

These two together give you perfectly straight and evenly spaced lines, no tilting or waving in the lines. 

Using a walking foot guide is a great cheap way to get professional results!

Use a Marking tool

Using a marking tool is a great alternative to using a quilting guide.

Mark each line out using a quilting ruler and a tool to mark with and then simply sew directly down the line to keep things straight and evenly spaced.

You can use a quilt marking marker design to disappear when it sees water or you can use a Hera marker to mark up each line before going to sew it,

The marker will last as long as you don’t wash the quilt, however the Hera marker simply creases the fabric to mark it and will disappear much quicker. 

My personal go to is this Hera marker, I know the ink in the marker disappears but I just can’t get my brain wrapped around the idea of coloring on the quilt and it makes me nervous that I’ll grab a sharpie or something by accident haha.    

Sew Slow

When doing any sort of straight line sewing, its tempting to go super fast and get it done quick. 

When you are quilting with a walking foot though, this is the opposite of what you want to do. You actually want to go slow!

Going slower will help the walking foot feed dogs actually keep up with the sewing machine so it does its job correctly. 

Going fast not only will cause uneven or even skipped stitches, but will also make the top more likely to pucker and pleat. Both of which are not ideal.

Start each line of quilting at the same edge of the quilt

When you are machine quilting, typically you want to avoid breaking the thread as much as possible. 

Many times this leads to quilters quilting down the quilt, turning the whole quilt, and quilting back the opposite way. 

Typically you want to avoid doing this when you are quilting straight lines. It’s best  to break your thread and start at the top again.

If you don’t, when you do the first pass, you are pushing all of the fabric down in the direction you are quilting, and when you quilt back the opposite way, you then take all that fabric and push it in the opposite direction. 

This causes a weird herringbone texture to the quilt which will not flatter your quilt and will look similar or worse than the picture above. 

By starting your quilting on the same edge every time, all of the quilting is going in the same direction and you will avoid getting this effect!

Variations of Straight Line Quilting

Echoing Shapes

Straight line quilting doesn’t always have to be straight! For this Playful Zag quilt that I made, I quilted echo lines of the chevron keeping all of these techniques in mind. 

Using my walking foot and my quilting guide, as well as starting each line on the same edge of the quilt. Each line just turned a little bit when it hit the points of the chevron. 

It gives a fun and clean quilting design to this baby quilt that is a little different than the every day straight line quilting. 

Use decorative stitches on your machine

Consider using different decorative stitches that come standard on your sewing machine! 

For this Almost Friday quilt I made last year, instead of keeping my dial on the straight stitch setting I changed it to a decorative zig zag stitch.

The stitch wasn’t necessarily big enough that you could point out how I did it without getting up close, however this easy straight line quilting hack gave a fun zig zag texture that helped give this minimalist quilt pattern a modern look. 

Cross Hatching

For this Refine quilt I was in a rush, I had a few projects I was working on at the time and was just looking to cross this one off the list. 

A quick cross-hatch design was a great easy and quick option to knock this project off while finishing up super cute at the same time. 

To accomplish this look, quilt two lines relatively close to each other (about a half inch or so) and then move over 2-4 inches in either direction and quilt another two lines. 

Repeat the process across the full length of the quilt and when you are done, repeat the process going perpendicular to the first set of lines so they cross over them. 

When you are finished you get this fun grid effect. This design is especially pretty on gingham plaid type quilts where the two lines close together split the seams of the blocks.  

Stitch in the ditch

For a more subtle effect, try using it to outline patches like this More Than Stars quilt. 

The way these sawtooth star blocks lined up, the seams simply lined up from block to block where I could just keep the line of straight line quilting going without stopping. 

I could start at one side and do all of the diagonal lines, and then turn it and do all of the horizontal lines. 

This is one of my favorite subtle quilting designs because the stitching falls in to the “ditch” of the seam and almost disappears. 

So while you don’t necessarily see the stitching, you get this effect where each patch of the star has a 3D effect and pops from the quilt. 

Using a walking foot is one of my favorite ways to quilt a quilt, if you are looking for other walking foot quilting ideas, be sure to check out these border quilting designs using just a walking foot. 

FAQs on Straight Line Quilting

How far apart should straight line quilting be?

This depends on two things, your personal preference, and the recommended quilting density of the quilt batting you are using. 

Most quilting batting recommends a maximum of 4 inches between quilting lines.

Over time due to use, washing, wear and tear, the batting inside can become loose and begin to pull apart. If you’ve ever used an old comforter where all the batting somehow migrated to the corners of the comforter, that is exactly what happened. 

To make sure your batting stays where its supposed to, don’t quilt any farther apart then what is recommended on the packaging. 

If you are looking for ideas though, the Almost Friday quilt was quilted with lines 3/4” apart. The Playful Zag Quilt above was about 1” apart, and the Refine quilt above was 1/2” between the small gaps, and 2” for the large gaps. 

Do you need quilting gloves to do straight line quilting?

For straight line quilting, quilting gloves are not necessary.

Quilting gloves are typically used for free motion quilting when your feed dogs are dropped giving you complete control of the direction the quilt feeds through the machine. 

Since there is no force from the feed dogs helping move the quilt, the friction from quilting gloves gives you extra grip to push and pull with.

Since straight line quilting uses a walking foot, your feed dogs stay engaged and you won’t need to push the quilt through the machine yourself using quilting gloves. 

What to do if you run out of bobbin thread

Depending on who you talk to, there are a few different ways to tackle this straight line quilting problem, however my favorite way is the simplest way:

Pull out any stitches that are loose or unraveling until you get to stitches with tension. After rewinding your bobbin and rethreading your machine, back up three or four stitches and sink your needle into the line of stitching. 

Start stitching a couple stitches so you stitch over the last couple of stitches where your bobbin previously ran out, and reinforce your stitches by reverse stitching two or three stitches. 

Continue stitching as normal. 

Restarting this way secures where your stitches finished off with the first bobbin, and reinforces the start of your second bobbin all in the same set of stitches. 

Bored of Just Straight Lines?

Did you know you can use straight line quilting techniques for more designs than just a matchstick quilting?

By adding in the occasional turn, you can put those straight line quilting techniques to use to create pantographs like the one in the photo above.

If I’m being perfectly honest, straight line pantographs are my favorite form of quilting. I can stick with my walking foot to quilt, but the lines are more spread out than a typical matchstick quilting which means I finish the quilting faster!

Not to mention a turn every now and then takes some of the tediousness out of the machine quilting process.

Interested in trying out the straight line design above? I made a machine quilting template for it that you can get FOR FREE!

Sign up below and I’ll send a copy of the printable template straight to your inbox so you can start knocking out that WIP pile ASAP!