Tips & Tricks: Machine Quilting with 28 Weight Thread

This lovely quilted pillow cover was made from our latest pattern, the Conservatory Quilt.  We made this quilted pillow using the new supplies we got for the Summer Cabin Pillow Tutorial, which was from our turn on the OLFA + Aurifil Slice & Stitch Challenge last week.

We used our 16″ square OLFA ruler, which was a dream for this pattern.  Look how easy it is to square up these big blocks!  Remember those lovely colors of 28 weight Aurifil thread?  We were able to find a whole new set of fabrics from our stash to match them.  Can you tell these are some of our favorite colors?

Since this thread is a bit thicker than what we usually use for machine quilting, we thought it would be a great time to share some of our tips and tricks for machine quilting with it.

There are a few things that you will need:

• 28 weight thread (You can also use 12 weight thread if you want a chunkier look, like we did in the spiral quilting on this mini quilt.)
• 90/14 needle.  This is necessary for the thicker thread to fit through the needle and the hole it makes in the fabric as your machine sews.
• Walking foot.
• 40 or 50 weight thread for the bobbin, ideally in a matching/similar color.

Once your machine is set up with all those things, you should be good to go.  Use the design of the quilt to help you keep your lines fairly straight.  Make sure to backstitch at the beginning and end of the quilting if you’re not sewing off the edge.

We usually wing it on the design of straight line quilting, but we follow certain marks on the walking foot to keep things spaced evenly.  You can see that we did a slightly different pattern of straight lines for each different color in the pillow.  If we’re not sewing over the seams, we make sure to do a line of quilting about 1/8″ away from the seam on both side to help secure it.

Here’s the pillow with the queen size Conservatory Quilt, for an idea of scale.

These 26″ pillows are such great statement pieces.  You can find inexpensive pillow forms this size at IKEA, if you’re needing a few.  Leave a comment if you have any questions for us!