You spent fifty hours on this quilt top, whether you drafted it yourself or started from a precut quilt kit. Maybe seventy. Maybe a hundred. You chose every fabric, cut it all apart, pieced it all back together, and carried it to the frame. And then, right there, with the quilt loaded and the machine waiting, a question arrives that has nothing to do with your skill and everything to do with your confidence.
Do I custom quilt this, or do I do an edge to edge?
Underneath that question there is usually another one, quieter and heavier. If I choose the allover design, am I taking the easy way out? I gave this top months of my life, so shouldn't the quilting match that effort? Would a real quilter custom quilt this?
This gets answered well by the longarm quilter behind The Quilt Room in Australia, in the video below. The written version follows underneath, in case you want to come back to it later without scrubbing through.
The short answer
More quilting is not automatically better quilting. A well chosen edge to edge design can carry almost any quilt. A badly chosen custom design can bury one. The hours you put into piecing do not create a debt that the quilting has to repay.
What the two words actually mean
Edge to edge
The same design travels from one side of the quilt to the other, top to bottom, without changing. It might be stitched freehand, traced from a pantograph at the back of the machine, or run on a computerised system. However it is made, the principle holds: the quilting does not change when it reaches a different block or a border.
There is a reason edge to edge is used so often. It is quicker, it is efficient, and it keeps the finished quilt soft and cuddly rather than stiff, which is also a question of the batting you put in the middle. Choose the right design at the right scale and it is a beautiful option on most quilts.
Custom quilting
Here the different areas of the quilt get treated differently. You look at the blocks, the sashing, the borders, and you decide which design belongs in each particular space. The quilting stops being texture and starts being part of the design.
Six edge to edge quilting designs, and when each one works
Choosing an allover design comes down to two things: the scale of the piecing underneath it, and how much the quilt top is already saying on its own. These six cover most of what comes off a longarm.
Meander. The workhorse, and the one most quilters learn first. It has no direction and no repeat to line up, so it forgives a top that is slightly out of square. On a busy scrappy quilt it reads as pure texture, which is exactly what that quilt wants.
Swirls. Softer and more deliberate than a meander, with enough movement to look considered. Good on florals and on anything where you want the eye to keep travelling rather than settle.
Feather. The one that reads as traditional quilting even when it is running edge to edge. It needs a little room to breathe, so it suits quilts with wider sashing or calmer prints. Run it too small on a busy top and the plumes disappear.
Crosshatch. Straight lines on the diagonal, and the most architectural of the six. It flatters geometric piecing and solids, and it is the design that makes a quilt look crisp rather than cosy. It is also the least forgiving of a top that is not square.
Loops and stars. Loops with a motif dropped in at intervals. The motif can be a star, a heart, a flower. Children's quilts and patriotic quilts are the obvious homes, and the motif gives the eye somewhere to land.
Waves. Long horizontal movement with very few stops. It is quick, it keeps the quilt soft, and it works beautifully on anything with a water, sky or landscape theme.
Scale is the decision most people get wrong, not the motif. A dense design on a busy top turns to noise, and a large loose design on fine piecing looks careless. Match the scale of the quilting to the scale of the piecing and most of these will work.
The first question: is there anywhere for the quilting to show up?
Anything can be custom quilted. That is not the useful question. The useful question is whether anyone will see the work once the quilt is finished and washed and thrown over the end of a bed.
Negative space is where custom quilting earns its keep. Large open blocks, a wide plain border, a big applique medallion, a solid background waiting for feathers or ruler work. Give the stitching somewhere to be read and it becomes part of the quilt's design rather than a private note between you and the machine.
Take a quilt that is already full. Lots of colour, lots of print, lots of movement. Three days of custom quilting can disappear into it completely. So the honest first question is not "can I custom quilt this?" The answer to that is always yes. The question is whether the extra time, the extra money, and the extra effort will make enough of a visible difference to be worth it.
Three quilts, three different answers
The scrappy quilt
Scrappy quilts almost never get custom quilted, unless the person who made it has genuinely set her heart on it. You will hardly see the stitching. What an allover design gives you here is texture, and texture is exactly what a scrappy quilt wants. Spending days on custom work inside all that busyness is spending days on something nobody will be able to see.
The modern quilt with negative space
This one is the opposite case, and it is worth your time. All that open space and solid fabric is sitting there asking for something. If you have been itching to try ruler work, or you have a feather you have been practising and nowhere to put it, this is the quilt. The quilting can lift an otherwise plain top into something people stop and look at.
The applique or embroidered quilt
Many quilters assume that applique and embroidery oblige them to custom quilt. They do not. The better first question is: how much do you love this quilt?
If someone has spent three years stitching down every petal, still loves the quilt, and wants to spend the time and the money, then quilting it properly is an honour. But plenty of quilters arrive assuming custom is compulsory and are visibly relieved to hear there is another way. An edge to edge design can run beautifully over applique and over embroidery. A lattice design that reads almost like a crosshatch can bring a quilt to life without over quilting it. On a busy applique top, an allover design can be the thing that pulls all that piecing together and keeps the piece calm instead of letting the quilting take over.
When custom quilting really is the only answer
There are quilts where an allover design simply cannot go. Heavily embellished wool applique is the clearest example: think of the work of designers like Sue Spargo or Wendy Williams of Flying Fish Kits, where the surface is covered in thick layered wool, beads, and stitched embellishment. You cannot run a pantograph across that. It has to be quilted around.
And there are quilts that are asking for it. A Swoon top, from the Thimble Blossoms pattern by Camille Roskelley, made with a deliberate amount of white space left around the blocks, is a quilt built for custom quilting. When the maker leaves the room on purpose, fill it.
Time and money belong in this decision
Custom quilting takes much longer, and not only in stitching hours. There is the designing time. The stitching in the ditch to stabilise everything before the real work starts. Thread changes. Working around applique. Swapping rulers. Sometimes turning the whole quilt to finish the borders. Every one of those small decisions adds time.
If you quilt for clients, that has to be paid for. At The Quilt Room, custom quilting starts at a minimum of three times the price of an edge to edge quilt. That multiplier is not a statement about worth. It is a statement about hours, and about the plain fact that a human body cannot quilt for as many hours in a day as a computer can.
Which brings the whole thing back to a single, freeing idea. A well chosen edge to edge design can make any kind of quilt. A badly chosen custom design can overwhelm one.
Two questions to ask before you load the quilt
- Is there somewhere for the quilting to show up? Open space, plain fabric, a wide border, a quiet background.
- Do you actually want to spend the extra time? Not should you. Do you want to.
If the answer to both is yes, go and do it, and enjoy every hour. If the answer to either is no, choose a beautiful allover design at the right scale and finish the quilt. Both of those are the work of a real quilter.
Questions quilters ask about this
Can you do an edge to edge design over applique? Yes. It is done all the time and it looks lovely, as long as the applique is flat enough for the machine to travel over. Heavily embellished wool applique is the exception.
Does edge to edge quilting mean the quilt is finished cheaply? No. It means the quilting is doing the job of adding texture and holding the layers together, which is the job quilting has always done. It also keeps the quilt softer, which matters if the quilt is going to be used.
How do I know which allover design to pick? Scale is the thing most people get wrong. A dense small design on a busy scrappy quilt turns into noise, and a large loose design on a fine pieced top can look careless. Match the scale of the design to the scale of the piecing.
I have decided this quilt deserves custom quilting. Now what? That is a different question, and a much bigger one. Working out which design goes in which space is where most quilters get stuck. Send a photo of your finished top to a longarmer you trust and ask what they would do with it, before you commit to a plan.
And if you are between projects rather than between decisions, our free quilt patterns library is a good place to find the next top.
