Walking foot

Yesterday Mrs. Ochiai came out and she picked up my walking foot and the little quilt arm that I'd ordered. Next to figure out how to use them.

Not too difficult. Thanks to the warnings from fellow bloggers about how to put a walking foot onto the machine we were able to attach it with very few problems. Made a trial run on some scraps and we were very happy with the results. Mrs. Ochiai bought a walking foot too so she was going home to try it on her machine also.

In the late afternoon I actually put my 365 Challenge into the sewing machine and started quilting! Lots of questions though that I hope someone can answer for me.

Last week my friends helped me saftey pin base my 365 Challenge but we weren't at all sure how far apart the pins should have been. I know more is better but we just sort of hodge-podged. How far apart are pins supposed to be placed for machine quilting? Will a walking foot hold a quilt securely without pins every two inches or so?

When hand quilting you start from the center and work out. How about with a quilting foot? I couldn't figure out if I was supposed to start at one edge of the quilt (in the center or at the side?) and then just quilt all the way across, or if I was supposed to start in the middle, sew to the edge, turn the quilt around and do the other side the same way.

I can see that the quilting foot is going to make straight and continuous lines very easy to sew. How about starts and stops? All my 365 Challenge strips will be easy to quilt up and down. I had thought that I would want to quilt in the ditch between the days too, ie. horizontal lines. But I can't figure out how I'm going to do that. The lines aren't continuous. Am I going to have stop at the beginning and end of each block? They don't even match up across so if I zip through the small vertical borders I'll end up with zig-zags. If I try to stay within a block I'll have to turn the quilt 45 degrees and restitch. But I don't think it is possible to turn this quilt in my small working space. Shall I just forget about the horizontal lines?

Another question. My friend who does some machine quilting sews in all the threads by hand at the beginning of the stitching and at the end. She "buries" the threads. My sewing machine has an automatic thread cutter. Should I just use that or am I really supposed to bury all those startings and endings?

Any advice on walking foot usage would be appreciated!