Nesting the Bats and Stars: Carrying an Offset Design Down the Halloween Quilt
Happy Feature Friday, quilting friends! The pink Halloween cutie is back on the frame in the sewing studio this week. In Feature Friday 2026 Episode 43, Aubrey picks up right where she left off and uses the nesting feature to carry those staggered bats and stars down the quilt, twice, so you can see just how smooth the rhythm becomes once a layout is dialed in.
Where We Left Off
Last week we set up the Bats & Stars design using nearly every Edit feature on the system: repeat, proportion lock and auto scale, move, a second row, an extra horizontal repeat, offset, spacing, and a crop to trim the overhang. After a false start with black thread, Aubrey switched to a pale pink, and the first two offset rows were stitched out.
The fabric deserves another mention, too. Instead of the usual orange and black, this quilt mixes pumpkin-spice oranges with blacks and pinks, which gives it a sweet, slightly different take on Halloween. And now that more of the quilting is in, Aubrey is even happier with her thread switch. The pale pink adds texture without pulling attention away from all those cats, pumpkins, and potion bottles.
Step 1: Select and Mark Your Nesting Point
Nesting starts right from the Home screen, exactly where the last rows finished. Tap the Nesting feature, and the on-screen instructions walk you through the rest.
For this pattern, Aubrey chose the bottom of one of the bats as her nesting point. As with April Showers and the mermaid quilt, picking a point low on the design is a good habit. She lined her needle up with the bottom of the bat and dropped it right into the fabric.
If you'd rather not leave your needle in the quilt, mark the point with a chalk pencil or another marking tool instead. Just make sure it will come back out of your fabric, since nobody wants a permanent mark in the middle of a finished quilt.
Tap the check mark.
Step 2: Roll the Quilt
Unlock the roller bars and give the quilt a roll. This time it doesn't take much, because two rows of bats and stars don't use a lot of space.
It's the same balancing act as always:
Leave enough room behind the machine so it never touches the back roller bar.
Leave enough room in front to stitch out the next set of rows.
Lock the rollers back in place and tap the green check mark.
Step 3: Return to the Nesting Point
Next, the system asks you to move the machine to your nesting point. With the needle already sitting in the fabric, you're already there. If you used a marking tool, simply hover the needle over your mark. Tap the check mark.
Step 4: Check the Nested Rows
Now the new rows appear on the display:
Gray bats and stars are what's already been stitched.
Black bats and stars are the new rows, sitting inside the layout box.
The system asks you to move the machine to place the nested row, but there was nothing to change. The new rows lined up perfectly, offset and all. That's the payoff from last week's setup: the spacing Aubrey adjusted between row one and row two in the Edit features carries straight over into nesting, so every set of rows sits at the same distance and the whole quilt looks cohesive.
If you ever do need to adjust, you can move the machine forward, back, left, or right, or type a new spacing value on the keypad. Neither was needed here. Tap the green check mark, and "Nesting complete" appears.
Step 5: Needle Up, Then Start
Before anything else, pull the needle out of the fabric. The machine is about to travel to the start of the next row, and a needle still sitting in the quilt could cause real trouble.
Since you never left the Home screen and the needle is still engaged from the earlier rows, press the green start button. Aubrey double-checks the needle again when the prompt comes up, just to be sure, then taps the check mark. The machine travels over to the little green circle on the bat's wing where the row begins.
When to Anchor the Sides (and When You Can Skip It)
Here's a helpful detail from this episode. Because these rows are fairly short, there was still enough anchor stitching down the sides from the first section to hold the quilt in place. So on the first nesting pass, Aubrey didn't need to stitch the sides down again.
If your rows take up more space, or your earlier anchoring doesn't reach far enough, stitch the sides down before pressing start. The goal is simply to keep the quilt from shifting as you go.
Stitching the Next Rows
From there, it's the familiar startup routine:
Single stitch. Take a single stitch and tap the check mark.
Pull up the bobbin thread. Move the machine out of the way and bring the bobbin thread up so both tails are on the surface. Confirm.
Recenter and lock. The system recenters on the starting point. Cycle the needle to lock the stitches and tap the check mark.
Stitch. Turn stitching on, tap the check mark, and off it goes.
One More Time, Start to Finish
Since there isn't always time to show more than one nesting pass in an episode, Aubrey ran through it a second time to show how quickly it goes once you know the steps:
From the Home screen, tap Nesting.
Drop the needle at the bottom of a bat and tap the check mark.
Unlock, roll, and relock the quilt, leaving space front and back. Tap the check mark.
The machine is already at the nesting point. Tap the check mark.
Check the gray (stitched) and black (new) rows, then tap the check mark. Nesting complete.
Pull the needle out of the fabric.
This time the rows had moved far enough down the quilt that the sides needed anchoring, so Aubrey stitched down both the left and right sides to the batting and backing before going any further. Then it was the same start-up routine: start button, double-check the needle, single stitch, pull up the bobbin thread, recenter, cycle the stitches, and stitch on.
Bats and Stars All the Way Down
By the end of the episode, row after row of offset bats and stars is filling the quilt, each one nesting neatly into the last. The plan is to keep going and get this little bat quilt finished in time for Halloween, ready for its spot on the living room couch.
The Takeaway
The real work on an edge-to-edge design happens during setup. Once the repeat, offset, and spacing are just right, nesting carries that same layout down the quilt with almost no adjusting: mark a point, roll, return, confirm, and stitch. The small habits around it still matter, though: rolling with enough room front and back, pulling the needle out before you start, and checking whether your sides are anchored far enough to keep the quilt from shifting.
Want to see the nesting process in action? Check out the complete video here: Feature Friday 2026 Episode 43: Nesting.
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