Stitch in the Ditch Quilting

Stitch in the ditch quilting can be a way to quilt your project when you don't want your quilting to really show that much. You want the fabric or maybe the design that you have pieced to be the star and you want your quilting to be in the background. For example, this is a simple nine patch. And if I wanted to do stitch in the ditch quilting, I would simply quilt along the ditches that are the seam lines. So bringing in a little sample here that I've already done that on, and you can see that it looks pretty much just like the fabric below. You can hardly tell that there's any quilting done on it, but if I flip it over to the back, you can see I've just done some straight lines. And this stitching was done in the area that is the seam, this is called the ditch. Now, it can be one of those types of quilting that you either really like it or you really don't like it because it can be kind of tedious. So, you can see, we have two very contrasting colors of fabric, one dark and one light. When you are doing stitch in the ditch quilting, you want your stitches to be hidden in the ditch, and it can be hard to decide what color of thread to use because if you get too close on this lighter color fabric with a darker thread, you can see it, and same thing if you're using a light thread on dark fabric. So obviously you wanna try and get as close to in that ditch as you possibly can with your stitches to make sure that they are hidden. One thing that can help you do that is to use a foot that is a stitch in the ditch foot. And depending on your machine and your brand of machine, it might actually be called something different. But the main component of this foot that you need it to have is this little fin right here. So this is a little fin that's on the underside of the foot. You can see it a little bit here from the right side, but you can definitely see it if you turn it over and look at it, look at the bottom here. This is the little fin, and this is what needs to be lined up in the ditch of your fabric when you're sewing. So lining it up right on there, it even sort of catches on the seam on whichever side of the fabric is a little bit higher due to how you pressed it. And doing this helps you line up your stitching right along this ditch. So I'm gonna take it over and put this on my machine. This foot goes onto your machine, just like any other presser foot does. Mine just clips in place there. And what you wanna make sure is that you have your needle in the center position because that is where the fin is on the underside of your foot, is that center position. So it doesn't really help if you put the foot on and then your needle is in the wrong position. So I have my needle in the center position, I can now bring my fabric in place and I just have the same nine patch that I showed you before. But all I have done is pin basted it. So I have my quilt sandwich together, and you can see I'm starting right here on the edge. And now when you're looking down at your sewing, when you're working, it's really easy to see whether your fin is lined up right on your ditch. And so that's why I've used contrasting colors of fabric, we have really light, really dark. And I have my fin right along the seam line here. And all I have to do is stitch. Again, I'm keeping that fin lined up right along that edge. You still wanna start out going fairly slow, this is another reason why maybe you either like this type of quilting or you don't because it can be a little bit slower style of quilting until you get the hang of it. Once you get the hang of where you need to be stitching and where you need that fin to be lined up while you're stitching, you can go much quicker. Now I'm reaching sort of the intersection of four of my squares. So where I had light colored fabric on the left, now my light colored fabric is gonna be on the right. If you need to do any sort of adjusting when it comes to where your fin is lined up as you approach the intersection, you wanna do that before you get there. That way, as you move along to this next section, your fin is still right in place, right along the ditch of that fabric, and you can keep stitching in a straight line. So all you'd have to do is keep stitching straight, and I'll bring the sample back in because I've already done all of the stitching. You can see on the right side here, you can barely even see those stitches there If I kind of pull the fabric apart. You can kind of see them a little bit, you can definitely see them on the back, so you know that they're there, but that is how you use a stitch in the ditch foot to help you very accurately stitch along those ditches and do some quilting that is sort of hidden in your project.