Straight Line Quilting Tutorial for a Domestic Sewing Machine

Y’all know that one of my 2021 goals is to learn how to Free Motion Quilt, and while I can’t wait to learn how to do that, today I am going to walk you through a Straight Line Quilting Tutorial that can be done on your kitchen table, with your sewing machine.

Yes, with your sewing machine.  If you can piece together the quilt top, you can do the quilting too!  This is my set up, basting on the kitchen table, little machine on the kitchen table, movies on the laptop, mess in the background.

The first key to successful straight line quilting on a domestic sewing machine (that means- not a long arm machine) is basting.  I use spray basting, and you can read all about how I baste to avoid puckers and wrinkles in this basting tutorial.

The one addition I’ve employed since writing that tutorial is to iron after each step of basting.  It gets out the last few wrinkles! 

The second key to successful straight line quilting is to decide WHERE you want those straight lines to be!  I’m going to show you:

1. Quilting right along the seam lines
2. Outlining the seam lines
3. Diagonal straight lines

Straight Line Quilting: Stitch in the Ditch

First, stitch in the ditch, which is lining up your quilting to be perfectly in the seam lines. 

This is the quilt I am using for this first type of straight-line quilting.  The quilt pattern is Sensation which was one of my 2020 pattern releases.

Now, I roll up my quilt and work from the center out.  Other quilters start from the edge and work in.  You do whatever you are most comfortable with.

Line up your quilt so that the needle is right in line for the first seam.  I use my presser foot for quilting, but this step will work with a walking foot too.

I like to use a longer stitch length for quilting than I do for piecing, but as with many things, that is a personal preference and you should do what works best for you and your machine.  Stitch right along the length of the seam.

If you are accurate at keeping your line straight, and staying right within the seam line, your quilting won’t show at all, it will be hidden within the seam, which is why it’s called Stitch in the Ditch.

This type of quilting is also useful for those times when you find a seam that is open, AFTER you’ve already basted the whole quilt, because if you move just a fraction to the left or right of the seam, you can close that opening in a way that is not noticeable. 

I quilted all of the vertical and horizontal block lines in this way.  I honestly don’t remember if I did vertical or horizontal first, either way is fine.  Since this quilting doesn’t show well in photographs, here are some exaggerated white lines to show you just where I quilted.

Straight Line Quilting: Outlining the Seam Lines

This next type of quilting, outlining the seam lines, is just as easy as Stitch in the Ditch quilting, really all straight line quilting is, but this one adds a little something extra by enhancing the block design rather than hiding. 

I am still using this same quilt for this next round of quilting, because triangles just beg to be outlined. 

The white line is very faint, but this innermost diamond is the first round of quilting shown in the next few steps.

I started with rolling one side of the quilt, from a corner in towards the center, but it didn’t stay rolled for long.

This time you are going to line up your needle so that it is ¼” from the seam line.  I do this by placing the outside edge of the presser foot right along the seam.  Start in any one of the four corners if you are working within a diamond, a square or a rectangle. 

If your quilting will go from edge to edge of your quilt (like mine will once I get further out towards the edges) you can start right at the edge of the quilt.

Quilt straight along, until you either reach the other edge of the quilt, OR until you reach the point at which you want to turn the direction you are quilting.

With the needle DOWN, lift the presser foot and pivot the whole quilt so that you are lined up with the next side of the diamond.  Put the presser foot back down, and continue on to the next corner.

Continue around until you are back where you started.  Knot and bury your threads.

Now, you’re going to do the exact same thing, but on the other side of the line.  You can see in this next photo that I’m starting on the same corner as the previous round, but this time I’m on the outside of the diamond and it’s the left side of my presser foot that is lined up against the seam.  You can just make out the previous quilting on the other side of the seam (in the candy cane fabric).

It’s hard to see in the quilting, but this second line goes around the same diamond in the middle of the quilt, it’s just around the outside of the diamond where the last quilting line was around the inside of the diamond.

You’ll use this exact same technique to quilt inside and outside of each diamond, and then once you get towards the edges of the quilt, you can quilt these straight lines without the need to lift the presser foot and pivot the quilt, you’ll just be going straight along the lines (see the upper left of the photo for the straight lines).

Straight Line Quilting: Diagonal Lines

Now that you know how easy straight quilting is, both stitch in the ditch and outlining the seam, I bet diagonal straight line quilting doesn’t seem so daunting, does it?

Oh, it still does?  Never fear, the rest of this tutorial is going to make it easy for you!

This is the quilt I did my diagonal quilting on.  This is Blitz, a quilt pattern from 2019.

The original set up for this style of straight line quilting is just like the previous two, baste your quilt and roll up the edge until you reach the point where you will start your quilting.  This time you are rolling from a corner, rather than a side.

I’m going to quilt ¼” to the left and to the right of my line, just like the last quilt, and the lines I want to use as a guide are going to be the outside edges of the white diamonds, in this corner of the quilt it’s just one quarter of a diamond.

Here’s the same white line, but with the whole quilt in view, to help you to orient yourselves.  And to help me to orient myself too!

Just like the previous steps, line up the right side of the presser foot to be right at the corner of the square, so that the needle will be ¼” to the left of the corner.  With squares this small, I do not draw a line as it’s fairly easy to make sure that I’m following the diagonal from one corner to the next.  For larger squares, I would absolutely draw a line with chalk or a water soluble pen.

Start quilting, continuing to follow the diagonal line of the squares.  Just as planned, the quilting will be ¼” inside of the white diamond.

This is what the quilting looks like.

Continue all the way to the other end of the quilt, trim threads and come back to the same starting point.  This time, line up the presser foot with the diagonal, but this time on the left edge of the presser foot so that the quilting is ¼” to the right of the diagonal.

Repeat on all diagonals that will follow the outside edge of the white diamonds.  These white lines show the first two lines I followed when quilting, and because I was quilting on either side of the line, at this point I actually had four lines of stitches.

I decided that these lines were a little far apart for my taste, given how small the squares are, so I went back and quilted on either side of a third line in the middle of the first two.

Continuing this same pattern (plus some extra lines nearest to the corners of the quilt) along the whole quilt lead to these lines.

Then I decided to go back and add three more lines, that each went through the center of the diamonds.

All of these lines are double quilted, ¼” to the right and to the left of the line drawn on the photograph.  It seems like a lot, but really, it makes the whole quilt nice and secure, so that none of those seams open up with use and washing.  Plus, that way you get the awesome, crinkly texture with repeated washings.

Repeat all of these steps with the same diagonals going the other direction too, shown in blue lines in the photo below.

Now, you could be done at this point. And it would be a beautiful quilt.  But, because all of the white diamonds are quilted around the outside edge, I wanted to quilt them around the inside edge too.

For the two complete diamonds, use the strategy learned in the second example above, to start in the corner, quilt around the diamond ¼” inside the inner edge of the diamond, and then to go around again ¼” around the outside the inner edge of the diamond.  Pivot at each corner, until you’ve returned to the corner where you started.  Knot and bury your threads.

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For the quarter-diamonds, quilt ¼” on both sides of the line that is the inner edge of the diamond, but continue it all the way to the edges to of the quilt. 

For the diamonds that have three corners, it’s sort of a mix of the quarter-diamonds and the full diamonds.  Quilt ¼” each side of the line that is the inner edge of the diamond, pivot at each corner, AND continue the line to the edge of the quilt.

What do you think of my straight line quilting?  Do you do your own quilting, or do you send your quilts out to a long arm quilter?

Quilts used in this tutorial are Sensation and Blitz, both are made using a variety of To Be Jolly, Deck the Halls and Tahoe Ski Week fabrics.