How to Do Cross Hatch Quilting Tutorial – using a Walking Foot!

Whenever I want to finish a quilt quickly and still have it look amazing, I quilt a cross hatch pattern on it.

Don’t believe me? Check out these quilts that I used an easy cross hatch pattern on…

My Easiest Baby Quilt Ever (free pattern coming soon)

My Christmas Irish Chain Quilt (free pattern)

My Choose Joy Quilt (it’s a Block of the Month Quilt)

And all of my Glitter Quilt Patterns.

Plus even a Big Beautiful Bag (free pattern).

So have I convinced you that you want to learn this beautiful quilting technique that you can sew with your walking foot (or your even feed foot – they are the same thing)?

Let me show you…

Preparation

Prepare for quilting by sandwiching your quilt top, batting, and backing, and basting using your preferred method.

After that, you may want to mark your quilt top with diagonal lines using a fabric pen to help you sew straight and evenly spaced lines. Certain quilt designs make marking partly or completely unnecessary when quilting with a crosshatch pattern.

On the Christmas quilt above, some of the diagonal lines did not need marking because of the diagonal seams in the quilt. However, I did use a ruler and blue fabric pen to measure and mark small ‘tics’ about 4’’ apart for most of the other lines.

You may feel more comfortable drawing the entire lines to stitch over, and that’s fine. Your lines will be nice and straight!

If your sewing machine has a guide like the one shown above that attaches to the foot, you can mark just the first line, and use it to help you keep the other lines parallel.

My patchwork baby quilt didn’t need any marking at all because I could easily sew diagonally across the quilt from patchwork corner to corner.

In my opinion, a walking foot (or even feed foot) for your sewing machine is a must for straight line quilting like this. Without it the top layer may be pushed and move faster than the bottom layers, causing rippling. An even feed foot does just what the name says – it helps all the layers to feed evenly.

Roll or fold up one side of your quilt so that you can begin quilting at one of the corners. Start sewing on the batting and follow your marked line or sew from corner to corner if your quilt is made up of patchwork squares like the one above.

Sew slowly and smoothly, helping the quilt move through the machine by making sure the front edge of the quilt doesn’t get caught on your sewing machine or table and the back doesn’t fall down off the table and pull from that direction.

When you reach the end, sew onto the batting and cut threads. Take your quilt out and pull it all the way towards you so that you can start the next line to the right of the first and going in the same direction.

Continue sewing lines moving to the right and you will notice the lines getting shorter and shorter until the last one.

Now turn the quilt all the way around 180 degrees and quilt the rest of the lines in the opposite direction.

(This quilt was not a square so my second set of lines didn’t start at the corner, like the first.)

When you have completed diagonal lines across the entire quilt, it may be time to mark one or more lines that run perpendicular to the first set.

Mark as needed, and then continue quilting the rest of the lines.

When you are done, trim away the extra batting and backing and you are ready for binding!

Happy sewing,