Margaret Ashby 
If you have looked into affordable, all-purpose sewing machines for quilting, the Brother CS7000X has probably come up. It shows up in our best sewing machine for quilting beginners guide and in our Janome vs Brother comparison as the budget computerized pick. This Brother CS7000X review covers what the machine offers, where it falls short, ... Read more
If you have looked into high-speed straight-stitch machines for quilting, the Brother PQ1600S has probably come up. It shows up in our own large-throat and free-motion quilting guides, and in our Janome vs Brother comparison, as one of the machines worth taking seriously once you outgrow a standard home machine. This Brother PQ1600S review looks ... Read more
If you have spent any time researching straight stitch machines for quilting, you have probably already come across the Juki TL-2000Qi. It shows up again and again in our roundups of free motion and large project machines, and for good reason. It is fast, simple, and built to hold up under heavy use. This Juki ... Read more
If you have spent any time researching heavy-duty home sewing machines, you have probably run into the Janome HD3000 more than once. It shows up in general sewing forums, on Amazon best-seller lists, and in our own picks for the best sewing machine for quilting beginners and the best sewing machine for free motion quilting. ... Read more
Uneven tension shows up right when you don't want it to, usually about two feet into a quilt top you spent a weekend piecing. The stitches look fine on the front, then you flip the fabric over and find a mess of loops on the back, or the thread's snapped twice in the last ten ... Read more
Ask five quilters which types of quilt batting they use and you will get six opinions, one of them delivered with real heat. Part of the disagreement is taste. Part of it is that cotton, wool, bamboo, and polyester batting genuinely behave differently under a needle, in a dryer, and on a bed fifteen years ... Read more
Walk into any quilt shop's ruler wall, and you'll see forty-plus shapes staring back at you: rectangles, squares, wedges, curves, something called a "Stripology" that looks like a cutting board grew a handle. New quilters see that wall and assume they need most of it. They don't. Picking the best quilting rulers for a beginner's ... Read more
Mechanical or computerized sewing machine for quilting? Here's what actually changes for piecing, free motion quilting, and long term durability, and which one is worth the extra cost.
Ask five quilters to settle a Janome vs Brother sewing machine debate, and you'll get five confident, contradictory answers usually based on whichever brand happens to be sitting on their sewing table. That's not a knock on either brand. It's just that most of the "Janome vs Brother" content online compares the companies in the ... Read more
The best thread for machine quilting isn't a single spool. It is a small kit built around what you are doing: piecing your blocks, quilting the top, or filling the bobbin. A quilt that skips stitches, breaks thread constantly, or comes out stiff after washing usually traces back to a mismatched thread-and-needle combination rather than ... Read more