Determining Free Motion Quilting Stitch Length

A very common question that I'm asked all the time in machine quilting classes and elsewhere is, you know, what should my stitch length be? I always have a hard time not giggling because I, I assume that people understand that as soon as you put your feet dogs down and throw on your free motion foot your machine no longer controls your stitch length. So when you are free motion quilting your machine does not control your stitch length. You do. It's all you, it's all on you. And how it is controlled is between how you manage the movement of your hand and the speed at which you operate the machine. So if you operate the machine at a really high speed but move your hands really slowly your stitches are gonna be very tiny right on top of each other. Conversely, if you run your machine very slow and move your hands really fast then your stitches are gonna be huge. We call them toe grabbers. We don't want those either. What we're looking for is about 10 stitches per inch in free motion quilting. That's kind of the, the Zenith, if you will. That means 10 stitches on top 10 stitches on the bottom. So 10 visible stitches on the top surface per inch. And it takes a while to get there. You don't have to get there. You can, you can get to the point where you almost always have nine stitches per inch. That's your stitch length, or you always have about 12 stitches per inch. That's your stitch length but 10 inch per 10 inches 10 stitches per inch is a really tidy, neat tight enough stitch length. So I'm gonna show you, kind of how we make this happen. So first I'm gonna show you what not to do. So I'm gonna just gonna start stitching here. And I'ma get my machine going really fast and I'm gonna move my hands really, really slow. And then I'ma remove my hands really, really fast. Okay. So first, when I was moving my hands really really slow I'm almost getting what would be called a bullion stitch. Those stitches are right on top of each other and they're building up the surface and they look like I've got attention problem. And that's because my stitches are far too small. Here we've got stitches that I can easily catch my scissors on. Right there. These are toe grabbers. Those are way, way too big. And if you saw what I was doing, I was moving my hands very slow, running the machine at full maximum. Here I'm running the machine at full maximum but I'm moving my hands really, really slow. Generally speaking, if your machine has a slider that means it's this little guy that controls the speed on it. It has a minus on one side and a plus on the other or it has a turtle on one side and a rabbit on the other. If you put that so that the slider is at approximately 75% Meaning it's 75% over to the fast and then keep your machine floored at all times you can keep a consistent high speed not so high that you can't control easily though. So that's what I've just done. And I want you to hear what the machine sounds like. So, this is the high 75%. Now here, when it's at max, you hear that slight difference? Back down to 75%. Sounds a little quieter. When it's at that revving sound. It's probably too fast for you to manage really detailed designs. So if you have a slider my first suggestion is to put it on that 75% Then, learn how fast to move your hands to yield that consistent 10, nine, or 12 or 11 or whatever it is in that ballpark, stitches per inch. But what our goal is, is to have every inch of stitching have approximately the same amount of stitches in it so that our stitch length is consistent. And I'm just stitching here and you can see how slow I'm moving my hands. I'm not moving 'em fast like this. Like I was doing earlier, getting those big toe grabbers. And I'm not moving 'em so slow that I'm getting that bullion stitch but consistently slow and smoothly. And getting a consistent stitch length. So now when we look at this we can look all the way across here and see that all those stitches are approximately the same size. And if I look in approximately an inch worth of stitching so I'm gonna go from here to here. So it's about an inch. I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 12 stitches there. And from here to about here is another inch one, two three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 in that one. Very consistent 12 in one inch 11 in the other. And that is what we're looking for is that content, con, consistent stitch length. Find your rhythm, use your machine if it has that ability to do that 75% of max. If it doesn't, then pay attention to how it sounds before it revs up and keep it just under that rev up sound with your foot pressure and then move those hands slowly and consistently. This is what we're looking for. This is what we don't want. This is what we don't want. So practice and you'll get lots and lots better.