How to Quilt Crazy Curves

The main difference is what the machine is doing – with walking foot quilting the machine’s feed dogs are doing the work for you and pulling the quilt through the machine one stitch at a time.

Unless you take a heavy hand with the quilt and start shoving it through the machine (which can happen when you’re impatient and the walking foot is feeling a little slow!), your stitches will be the same size.

Ruler foot quilting, which is a form of free motion quilting doesn’t use the machine’s feed dogs so you can quilt in all directions, but you’ll no longer have the guaranteed consistent stitch length that you get from walking foot quilting.

So it’s a bit of a trade off, but ruler foot quilting is faster. You can speed up and so long as you can match the speed of your hands with the speed of the machine, you can move the quilt faster.

The only downside is your stitches may sometimes get bigger / smaller depending on your speed / movement ratio.

Feeling confused? It’s hard to understand the differences of these types of machine quilting until you try them! Give Crazy Curves a try this weekend and quilt half your quilt sandwich with walking foot quilting and the other half with rulers or with free motion quilting.

I promise you’ll learn a lot and have a new perspective on these different types of machine quilting!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day